Mitch McConnell: "Trump clearly needs to change" to win general election
Sen. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell can't yet bring himself to say that Donald Trump, the presumptive GOP nominee, is ready to win the presidency.
"Trump clearly needs to change, in my opinion, to win the general election," McConnell said in an interview with Time Warner Cable News' Geoff Bennett. "What I've said to him both publicly and privately: 'You're a great entertainer. You turn on audiences. You're good before a crowd. You have a lot of Twitter followers."
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The senate majority leader continued, "That worked fine for you in the primaries. But now that you are in the general, people are looking for a level of seriousness that is typically conveyed by having a prepared text and Teleprompter and staying on message.'
"So my hope is that he is beginning to pivot and become what I would call a more serious and credible candidate for the highest office in the land," McConnell said.
Bennett followed up by asking, "I hear you saying he does not meet that threshold of credibility?"
Not quite yet, it seems.
"He's getting closer. Getting closer," McConnell said.
McConnell had already hedged once this week on the question of whether Trump is fit to be president.
In an interview on ABC's "This Week," on Sunday, the Kentucky Republican was asked if he believes the presumptive GOP nominee is qualified to be commander in chief.
"I think there's no question that he's made a number of mistakes over the last few weeks. I think they're beginning to right the ship. It's a long time until November. And the burden, obviously, will be on him to convince people that he can handle this job," McConnell said.
Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wisconsin, recently said he has no plans to rescind his endorsement of Trump. Republicans are a month away from their convention in Cleveland.