Mitch McConnell Morphs From Obstructionist to Bipartisan Dealmaker — The Daily Beast

It’s a low bar, but compared to the GOP renegades holding the House hostage, Mitch is a pragmatic diplomat.

How Mitch McConnell ‘wrecked’ the Senate under Trump | THE LAST WORD with Lawrence O’Donnell, MSNBC

In a new book, author Ira Shapiro writes that Sen. McConnell saw the Trump presidency as an opportunity to push his agenda – cut taxes for the rich, attack the ACA, and turn the Supreme Court far to the right. “With the exception of the Affordable Care Act, he accomplished them very well,” Shapiro tells Lawrence O’Donnell. But, he adds, McConnell’s legacy is “far broader and far darker” than just the Trump years.

 

New Congress in 2023 — The German Marshall Fund

New Congress in 2023

Panelists discussed the impact of the 2022 midterm elections on the 118th Congress and potential presidential candidates in 2024. The German Marshall Fund hosted this virtual discussion.

 

Ira Shapiro with Moment

The U.S. Senate: America’s First and Last Lines of Defense with Ira Shapiro and Rabbi Eric Yoffie

Today’s Senate looks very different from the Senate of the 1960s and 1970s, a time when those serving in Congress put “country over party.” Ira Shapiro, a former longtime Senate staffer and author of the new book The Betrayal: How Mitch McConnell and the Senate Republicans Abandoned America, discusses the many functions of the Senate, how it’s failed to provide leadership and what lies ahead of the 2022 elections and beyond. Shapiro is in conversation with Rabbi Eric Yoffie, President Emeritus of the Union of Reform Judaism, about how we can return to a time when Senators worked across the aisle.

American democracy in peril: The US Senate’s crucial role — United States Studies Centre

Ira Shapiro’s recent book, The Betrayal: How Mitch McConnell and the Senate Republicans Abandoned America, chronicles the US Senate during the Trump presidency. As a veteran scholar and former Senate staffer with bipartisan experience, Shapiro determines that the Senate and its Republican members, led by Mitch McConnell (R-KY), ultimately abandoned late Senator John McCain’s (R-AZ) guiding principle ‘Country first’. Can the Senate recover its purpose and help resolve legislation to address America’s fundamental challenges? To discuss these issues, the United States Studies Centre hosted a webinar featuring Ira Shapiro and Bill Kristol, editor-at-large of The Bulwark, Director of Defending Democracy Together, former chief of staff to Vice President Dan Quayle and one of the most incisive Republican intellectuals and commentators, in conversation with USSC CEO Dr Mike Green and Non-Resident Senior Fellow Bruce Wolpe.