“You can tell how worried Republicans are that they are now the Trump Party by the contortions of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, who aided Trump almost to the end. Rarely has a politician been more blatant in attempting the impossible feat of running with the foxes and hunting with the hounds.

”Moments after voting to let Trump off — 'on a technicality,' as Democratic Rep. Joaquin Castro of Texas shrewdly observed ... McConnell blistered the inciter in chief in a speech the impeachment managers could have written. His words told the world who won the argument. They also underscored how wrenching it will be for Republican politicians to appease the GOP's Trump-supporting majority while pretending to be another party altogether.“

-- E.J. Dionne, Jr., ”The beginning of the end of Trumpism,“ in The Washington Post.

That was Sunday. Yesterday, Trump attacked back in his usual fashion but via an unusual platform: a press release. Apparently his aides didn't want him going off-script in a public appearance. This was the script: ”Mitch is a dour, sullen, and unsmiling political hack, and if Republican Senators are going to stay with him, they will not win again. He will never do what needs to be done, or what is right for our Country. Where necessary and appropriate, I will back primary rivals who espouse Making America Great Again and our policy of America First.“ Blah blah blah. In the midst, I tweeted: ”So weird to be on the side of one of the worst people in the world: Mitch McConnell. But here we are."