(AP) – Top Senate Democrat Harry Reid is going after Majority Leader Mitch McConnell after the Kentucky Republican declined to label Donald Trump’s criticism of U.S. District Court Judge Gonzalo Curiel as racist.
The feisty Nevada Democrat Reid called McConnell, “the poster boy for Republicans’ spinelessness that allowed Donald Trump to be the Republican nominee.”
Trump has said several times that Curiel, who was born in Indiana to Mexican immigrants, can’t be impartial in lawsuits against Trump University because his ancestry puts Curiel in conflict with Trump’s plan to build a wall between the U.S and Mexico. Republicans and Democrats have rejected Trump’s comments, with members of the GOP publicly telling him to stop. Curiel has not commented, and Trump’s legal team has not sought his recusal from the case.
A day earlier, McConnell said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that he wants Trump to stop talking about Curiel. McConnell said the GOP is behind the billionaire’s presidential run because he is the presumptive nominee and the party wants to win the election.
