Mitch McConnell appears in The Bob Zadek Show’s excerpts only in passing — as a name invoked to illustrate arguments about the Senate, the Republican Party and the American constitutional order rather than as a topic the program examines on its own terms. No episode in the available material is devoted to McConnell, and no guest offers an assessment of his career, his record as a senator, or his stated views. What the excerpts contain are references: to his role in a healthcare effort, to the Garland episode and the payback it allegedly invited, to his conduct during an impeachment, to a caller’s question about recusal, and to his use as a hypothetical in a discussion of patriotism. Each reference is brief, and several are made by speakers who are not making McConnell their subject.
The 2017 healthcare effort
Will Wilkinson, writing in the New York Times, described the Republicans as holding the White House, both houses of Congress and a majority on the Supreme Court yet unable to pass significant legislation. He attributed this to a bind between Donald Trump’s campaign promises — not cutting Medicare or Social Security, and praise for single-payer healthcare — and a party still committed to supply-side economics and to cutting government spending and tax rates. In that context Wilkinson said that in the Senate, Mitch McConnell was pulling out all the stops to jam through a healthcare reform bill, which Wilkinson called the most unpopular bill in the history of bills, less popular than the bill it was supposed to replace even among Republicans. Wilkinson’s explanation for the effort was that it created space for a bigger tax cut, which the party’s free-market wing considered imperative because it believed the economy would not grow without slashing the size of government and cutting tax rates Will Wilkinson: G.O.P. Should Embrace the Welfare State (2017).
Bob Zadek’s framing of the same episode was that Wilkinson, a libertarian, was asking how the GOP could win more elections, and Wilkinson answered that he wanted Republicans to be successful insofar as they promoted policies and ideas he cared about, and that their attitude toward the welfare state was undermining political demand for free-market reform Will Wilkinson: G.O.P. Should Embrace the Welfare State (2017). McConnell enters that argument only as the agent of the healthcare push, not as a figure whose own position is examined.
Court packing and the Garland episode
Introducing a 2019 episode on court packing, Bob Zadek said the Democrats, still angered over the Garland episode with Mitch McConnell, were looking for payback, and that the weapon of choice they threatened was court packing. Zadek told listeners that court packing had a strange and interesting history, that the words should strike fear in the hearts of any American who respects the thoughtfulness by which the institutions were designed by the founders, and that the integrity of and faith in the Supreme Court could be called into question. He described the Supreme Court as the only non-small-d democratic branch of government, with justices appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate, and said that once we lose the Supreme Court, we have lost it all How to Create a Legitimacy Crisis (2019).
The Garland reference is the only mention of McConnell in that excerpt, and it is Zadek’s characterization of Democratic motive rather than a description of what McConnell did. The guest, Ilya Somin, a professor of law at George Mason University School of Law and author of Democracy and Political Ignorance: Why Smaller Government is Smarter, is introduced but does not address McConnell in the available text.
Impeachment and recusal
In a 2020 episode on impeachment with John Rothmann, Bob Zadek asked whether the Senate proceeding was a trial at all, noting that it is labeled a trial from the Constitution and that everything he and Rothmann knew about trials did not apply. Rothmann answered that it was not a trial in the traditional sense — that it was a political process, not a legal one, that senators had taken an oath and signed a register affirming they would be open-minded and impartial, and that this was not what was happening. He described a highly partisan situation in which Democrats were already committed to removal and Republicans to maintenance, and said facts, witnesses and evidence did not matter because positions were fixed. Rothmann then said that somebody had asked him whether Mitch McConnell should disqualify himself, or Lindsey Graham, and that the same thing applied to Chuck Schumer or Dick Durbin, because they had already predetermined Withholding Judgment on Impeachment with John Rothmann (2020).
Zadek followed by noting that the oath was written under the rules of the Senate and is not in the Constitution, and that senators take an oath of impartial justice; he called the arrangement built-in hypocrisy because everyone there is there because they are elected. Rothmann, who said he had worked for Richard Nixon, recounted that the Nixon impeachment never took place because Republicans made the decision: Barry Goldwater, John Rhodes and Hugh Scott went to the White House on August 7th, 1974 and told the president he did not have the votes to survive, with Goldwater telling Nixon he had six votes at most and Goldwater was not one of them. Rothmann said no president facing trial in the Senate has been convicted and removed from office Withholding Judgment on Impeachment with John Rothmann (2020). McConnell figures here only inside Rothmann’s list of senators who might be asked to recuse.
A caller’s question and a hypothetical
A caller named Jacob, in a 2020 episode with Lee Drutman on two-party politics, asked whether Drutman could comment on Israel’s parliamentary system and on how the binary system affected the impeachment, asserting foreign financial entanglements on both the Democratic and Republican sides, mentioning the Bank of China and Ukraine, and asking why Mitch McConnell did not recuse himself because of Bank of China foreign entanglements with his family. Bob Zadek responded that the caller was asking Drutman to write a book on the air and redirected him to the question about Israel Breaking the Two-Party Doom Loop (2020). Drutman’s answer concerned parliamentary versus presidential systems and two-party versus multi-party systems, the UK as a two-party parliamentary system, Israel’s single national district with 120 seats and a low threshold, and his preference for four to six parties; he did not address the McConnell recusal question.
In a 2021 episode with Steven B. Smith on patriotism, Bob Zadek said that loyalty to founding principles and ideals is easier than loyalty to the present constitution — small ‘c’ — of the House and the Senate and the presidency, which almost seems empty, and added that he could not find himself being loyal to Mitch McConnell, who does not make him teary-eyed, while stressing that he was picking McConnell as a hypothetical part of the argument and meant nothing personal Steven B. Smith on Reclaiming Patriotism (2021). Smith’s reply concerned the 1619 Project, the claim that racism and white supremacy have been the core of American national identity from 1619 to 2021, the new-age progressivism he distinguishes from an older progressivism, and Abraham Lincoln’s understanding that American principles were founded in the Declaration of Independence, particularly its clause of human equality, and had not been perfectly realized in 1776 or 1861.
Across episodes
The excerpts show no development in the treatment of McConnell. He is named in five episodes across four years — as the agent of a healthcare push in 2017, as the subject of Democratic payback over Garland in 2019, as a possible recusal question in impeachment in 2020, as the object of a caller’s allegation in 2020, and as a hypothetical in a discussion of patriotism in 2021 — and in none of them does a guest or the host examine his record, his stated views, or his significance as a political figure. The references are incidental to arguments about the GOP’s policy bind, court packing, the nature of the Senate impeachment process, multi-party democracy, and patriotism.
What the sources do not cover
The excerpts do not state McConnell’s state, his years of service, his leadership positions, his committee assignments, or any vote he cast. They do not describe what happened in the Garland episode beyond Zadek’s characterization of Democratic anger over it, and they do not say what the 2017 healthcare bill was called or what it contained. No guest offers an evaluation of McConnell’s constitutional views, his relationship with presidents of either party, or his legacy, and the caller’s allegation about foreign financial entanglements is neither confirmed nor examined by anyone on the program.