The majority leader Sen. Mitch McConnell also praised President Trump’s selection of Sonny Perdue to be secretary of agriculture. | Mark Wilson/Getty Images McConnell offers olive branch as Trump furthers feud

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said he is “a little concerned by some of the trade rhetoric” emanating from both Democrats and the White House, a lone point of dissent in remarks Thursday morning that were otherwise praising of President Donald Trump, with whom he has feuded in recent weeks.

The president, meanwhile, continued to thump McConnell, writing on Twitter that “The only problem I have with Mitch McConnell is that, after hearing Repeal & Replace for 7 years, he failed! That should NEVER have happened!”


The majority leader, whose remarks in Kentucky concluded before the president’s post to Twitter, was much warmer in his rhetoric regarding Trump – excluding a brief portion focused on trade policy.

“I’m a little concerned by some of the trade rhetoric not only by the president, who succeeded, but by the people who were running against him. And I think we still have a selling job to point out to most Americans that trade is a winner for America,” McConnell (R-Ky.) said at a breakfast hosted by the Kentucky Farm Bureau, noting that the U.S. enjoys a net surplus from its international trade deals. “The assumption that every free-trade agreement is a loser for America is largely untrue. But we’ve got a selling job to do and of course in agriculture, there’s nothing more important than trade.”

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Trump has pledged to reset the nation’s trade policy, backing out of agreements like NAFTA that he has characterized as unfair. His position has been met with hesitancy from many in his own party, which has traditionally embraced trade deals.

The comment on the president’s trade agenda was a lone point of contention in remarks that largely cast Trump and Capitol Hill Republicans as allies. The warm rhetoric marked a departure from tensions between Trump and McConnell in recent weeks, with the former publicly castigating the latter for failing to shepherd through the Senate legislation to repeal and replace Obamacare. McConnell, for his part, said Trump had “excessive expectations” for what could be accomplished by Congress.

Thursday morning, McConnell said the president, along with the GOP-controlled House and Senate, “is very oriented toward rural and small-town America.” He heaped praise on the president’s agenda and accomplishments, celebrating Neil Gorsuch’s nomination to the Supreme Court and the reversal of several Obama-era regulations.

McConnell said the recovery from 2008’s recession had been “tepid” because of an “experiment” by the administration of former President Barack Obama in “overregulation” and “tax increases on the most productive citizens and businesses.” Trump and the Republican Congress, the majority leader said, is “taking our foot off the brake and putting it on the accelerator” with the goal of achieving a 3 percent growth rate in the nation’s gross domestic product, a number the White House cites often in its economic proposals.

The majority leader also praised Trump’s selection of Sonny Perdue to be secretary of agriculture, joking that it was a “quaint notion” that someone with a farming background would be given the job.

On another of the president’s policy goals, tax reform, McConnell recalled the 1986 rewrite of the tax code, a bipartisan effort that was supported by prominent Democrats including Sen. Bill Bradley and Rep. Dick Gephardt. McConnell said he expected no such bipartisan cooperation this time around and that he had been told as much by Democrats in the Senate, although he would welcome it.

Overall, McConnell said Trump’s election represented a dramatic shift in Washington, away from the coasts and toward the more rural center of the nation.

“If you look at the federal government today and last year’s elections, I think it’s pretty safe to characterize what happened last year in many respects as a comeback for rural and small-town America,” he said. “Look at the map of last year’s election, a sea of red between the coasts. Our friends on the other side are largely dominated by the coasts, by big cities and that characterizes so many of the debates that we have in Washington. I think it’s pretty safe to say this Congress wants to look after rural America.”