For years, Republican leader Mitch McConnell’s distaste for former President Donald Trump was marked by calculated restraint, but in a new biography of McConnell set to be released next week, McConnell criticizes the former president in no uncertain terms, slamming Trump various points “stupid”, “bad-tempered”, a “narcissist” and a “despicable human being”.

With less than two weeks until Election Day when Trump could return to the White House, McConnell, who served as his party’s leader in the Senate for 17 years, says Trump’s MAGA movement has “done a lot of damage.” ‘ to the Republican Party and turned it into something that former President Ronald Reagan ‘wouldn’t recognize’.

ABC News has obtained an advance copy of the book “The Price of Power” by Michael Tackett, deputy chief of the Associated Press Washington Bureau. The book provides an in-depth treatment of McConnell’s life, beginning with his early bout with polio and ending with his impending departure from leadership after the upcoming elections. His departure from his position at the top of his conference is colored by his break with Trump and the direction he has taken with the party.

“I know I can’t influence the broader Republican Party, but I do have influence here, and I’m going to use it because I think this is important for the country, and I think the MAGA movement is completely wrong,” says McConnell. in the book.

“The Price of Power” chronicles McConnell’s growing dissatisfaction with Trump in the run-up to the 2020 election and in the days that followed.

After the election, McConnell said, “It’s not just Democrats who are counting the days” until Trump leaves office, and that Trump’s attempts to raise baseless electoral challenges and claim a rigged election is “just the underline the good judgment of the American people. “I’ve just had enough of the misrepresentations and outright lies that occur almost every day, and they fired him.”

Yet Trump enters November 5 with an endorsement from McConnell.

“Whatever I’ve said about President Trump pales in comparison to what JD Vance, Lindsey Graham and others have said about him, but we’re all on the same team now,” McConnell said in a statement to ABC News.

‘Detached from reality’

McConnell called Trump’s behavior after the 2020 election “detached from reality.”

“His post-election behavior became increasingly disconnected from reality,” McConnell says in the book, “and it seems to me that he has invented an alternate universe of how things happened.”

The book chronicles McConnell’s day on January 6, 2021, including the speech he gave on the Senate floor in which he urged senators not to oppose the electoral count just before the chamber was evacuated.

McConnell said he believed what Trump did on Jan. 6 was an “impeachable offense.”

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

On February 13, 2021, McConnell gave a speech in which he blamed the insurrection on Trump.

“They did this because they were fed wild untruths by the most powerful man on earth because he was angry. He lost an election. Former President Trump’s actions preceded the riot in a disgraceful dereliction of duty. There is no question that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of the day. There is no doubt about it,” he said in the audience that day.

Yet McConnell would ultimately vote against impeachment. And later, after the Republican Party selected Trump as its candidate in 2024, he also supported him.

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A political calculation

It was a political calculation McConnell made that set him apart from some of Trump’s more outspoken opponents, like Rep. Liz Cheney, who lost her primary largely because she dared to challenge Trump.

“Where I differed with Liz is that I didn’t see how blowing yourself up and taking yourself off the playing field helped get the party back to where she and I probably both think it should be,” McConnell told Tackett , later adding, “I think her kind of self-sacrificing act may sell books, but it won’t have an impact on changing the party. That’s where we differed.”

Even before the 2020 election, McConnell’s relationship with Trump was rocky.

As Trump rose to prominence as a possible nominee in 2016, McConnell described him as “this most unusual nominee.”

“What I tried to do, as I had candidates in different states who were dealing with the Trump factor in different ways, was keep my mouth shut because I didn’t want to become an issue in a particular Senate race,” McConnell told his oral historian. shortly after the election, according to the book.

The book details the behind-the-scenes relationship between McConnell and then-House Speaker Paul Ryan, who said they “took turns” speaking to Trump. Ryan described Trump in the book as an “amoral narcissist.”

“We were more surprised every day, every week, every month, at how crazy he was, how erratic he was, how strange he was,” Ryan says in the book. “He shot the messengers, and Mitch and I were always the messengers. We always had to explain to him the practical limitations of the government. He never liked hearing that.’

McConnell was critical of a number of Trump’s moves, including his decision to interfere in the 2017 special election in Alabama, in which Republican Roy Moore was defeated by Democrat Doug Jones.

“I advised Trump to stay out of it,” McConnell said. Instead, “Trump got in the middle of it and tried to get Moore elected, and amazingly, Alabama elected a Democrat to the Senate.” McConnell said, “I’m glad the Democrat won.”

He said Trump’s decision to fire then-FBI Director James Comey was another misstep.

“His own actions have put him in danger, and I’m sure his lawyers are probably going crazy because he won’t keep quiet about it. He is completely out of control,” McConnell said.

Despite all this, McConnell still appeared at a rally with Trump in Kentucky in the run-up to the 2020 election. He thanked him for “making America great again.”

That speech focused largely on the impact Trump and McConnell had together in influencing the federal courts.