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Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell provided a scathing assessment of the modern Republican Party in a forthcoming biography, saying the “MAGA movement is dead wrong” and that Ronald Reagan “wouldn’t recognize” the party today.

“I think Trump was the biggest factor in changing the Republican Party from what Ronald Reagan saw and wouldn’t recognize today,” McConnell told Associated Press’ Michael Tackett for the upcoming biography “The Price of Power.” , obtained by CNN prior to his release.

McConnell added that the former president “did a lot of damage to our party’s image and our ability to compete.”

“Trump appeals to people who have not been as successful as other people and gives an excuse for that, that these more successful people have somehow been duped, and that you don’t deserve to think of yourself as less successful, because things are not.” It wasn’t fair,” he said.

Some of McConnell’s strongest comments focused on Trump’s behavior after he lost the 2020 election, calling him “erratic.”

“Unfortunately, about half the Republicans in the country believe whatever he says,” McConnell said at the time, adding to an oral historian: “I think it’s pretty safe to say that it’s not just Democrats who are counting the days until he leaves on January 20, but Republicans as well.” McConnell gave Tackett access to his personal archives, including an oral history he has recorded for the book since 1995.

The Republican leader ultimately voted to acquit Trump during the second impeachment trial, which focused on the former president’s involvement in the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. However, Tackett reports that McConnell was leaning toward voting for conviction on certain points .

“I’m not at all conflicted about whether what the president did is a criminal offense. I think it is. “Inciting an insurrection and having people attack the Capitol as a direct result… is about as close to an impeachable offense as you can imagine, with the possible exception that you may be an agent for another country,” McConnell said .

“I don’t know if you can make a conclusive argument that he is directly responsible for the storming of the Capitol, but I don’t think there’s any question that those people wouldn’t have been here in the first place if he hadn’t asked them to come.” and to disrupt the effective acceptance of the results of the election,” the Senate GOP leader said.

The Kentucky Republican did not mince his words, calling Trump a “sleazeball,” a “narcissist” and saying the former president is “both stupid and bad-tempered.” He added that Trump is “not very smart, short-tempered, mean, and has pretty much all the qualities you wouldn’t want in someone.”

While he dismissed Trump’s attacks against him, saying “every time he shoots at me, I think it’s good for my reputation,” he added that the former president’s attacks on his wife, Elaine Chao, Trump’s former Secretary of Transportation, went too far. .

In 2022, Trump called Chao McConnell’s “Chinese loving wife, Coco Chow” in a post on Truth Social. Tackett reports that Chao was “deeply disturbed” by the comments, and McConnell said his wife is “not used to being spanked.”

Tackett also reports that McConnell cried as he addressed his staff in the hours after the attack on the Capitol. “You are my staff and you are my responsibility,” he told them. “You are my family, and I hate that you had to go through this.”

He called the rioters who entered the Senate chamber “narcissistic, just like Donald Trump, sitting in the vice president’s chair and taking pictures of himself,” adding that it was a “shocking event and further evidence of the complete unfitness of Donald Trump for office.”

In a statement to CNN about his comments about the former president in the book, McConnell said: “Whatever I have said about President Trump pales in comparison to what J.D. Vance, Lindsey Graham and others have said about him, but we are all now on the same team.”

The Senate Republican leader and the former president have long had a rocky relationship, as Tackett describes in the book. However, McConnell has supported Trump and met with him in June this year during Trump’s meeting with Senate Republicans on the Hill.

McConnell did not limit his comments in the biography to the former president. He also criticized Sen. Rick Scott, who led the Senate Republicans’ campaign committee during the 2022 midterm elections and proposed a highly controversial policy plan that was criticized by both parties before unsuccessfully challenging McConnell for GOP leader in the Senate. Scott has announced he will run for leader again this year, although this time he will not challenge McConnell, who will leave his leadership post.

“I don’t think Rick is a very good victim,” McConnell joked. “I think he did a poor job running the (Senate campaign) committee. His plan was only used by Democrats against our candidates last weekend (before the election). He promoted the fiction that we were in the middle of a cleanup when there was no tangible evidence of it. And I think his campaign against me was some kind of ill-fated attempt to divert attention from him and onto someone else.”

McConnell will remain in his role as leader of the Republican Senate until the end of the year, until the start of the new Congress in early January.

The Kentucky Republican, who has previously said he is most proud of his legacy in shaping the Supreme Court and leading efforts to confirm three new conservative justices during Trump’s presidency, acknowledged that Judge Clarence Thomas was “a fairly questionable judgment,” when he chose to accept trips from a major GOP donor. “But then again, I’m not sure what the rules are,” he added.

When McConnell was asked about the reports of the trips in April 2023, he accused Democratic senators of launching political attacks on Thomas. “The Supreme Court and the judicial system are a very separate part of our Constitution,” he said. “And it seems to me that Democrats spend a lot of time criticizing individual members of the court and pursuing the court as an institution.”

McConnell has previously praised Thomas’ judgment and his work on the Court. “I have full confidence in Judge Thomas’s impartiality in every aspect of the Court’s work,” he said on the Senate floor in 2022, before reports of Thomas’ travels came to light.

McConnell also expressed support for special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into Trump’s actions surrounding the 2020 election and the insurrection. “I think this was – in a category of its own – the most of how wrong it all was and there’s no question who inspired it, and I just hope he has to pay a price for it,” McConnell said. “If he hasn’t committed any crimes, I don’t know what is.”

CNN’s Manu Raju and Ted Barrett contributed to this report.