While many of his colleagues were eagerly anticipating a Republican “tsunami” ahead of the 2022 midterms, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell was warning against setting expectations too high: “Candidate quality has a lot to do with the outcome,” he said in August, suggesting that wildly flawed nominees like Herschel Walker and Mehmet Oz could help Democrats retain control of the upper chamber. Rick Scott, the National Republican Senatorial Committee chair, bristled at the Kentucky senator’s assessment: “We have great candidates,” he told Politico at the time. 

Now, in the wake of a midterm cycle that saw the Democrats expand their Senate majority and Donald Trump’s handpicked candidates mostly lose in key races, McConnell has a message for his party: I told you so. “Some of you may recall,” he told reporters Tuesday at his weekly news conference, “I never said there was a red wave.” Discussing the 2022 midterms, the minority leader once again expressed disappointment with the cast of wacky Trump loyalists his party put forth this cycle — and went even further in invoking the name of the man who helped saddle Republicans with them. “We ended up having a candidate quality test,” McConnell told reporters, citing winnable races in Arizona, New Hampshire, and Georgia that Republicans lost due in part to poor, Trump-backed candidates. 

“Our ability to control the primary outcome was quite limited in ‘22 because the support of the former president proved to be very decisive in these primaries,” McConnell continued. “So my view was do the best you can with the cards you’re dealt. Now, hopefully, in the next cycle we’ll have quality candidates everywhere and a better outcome.”

McConnell’s unfavorable view of the MAGA losers his party ran in 2022 isn’t exactly a surprise, of course, but his remarks are notable for the more direct blame he’s assigning to Trump. Though the two men have seemingly long viewed one another with contempt, McConnell has been careful not to hit out at the former president — even after Trump suggested McConnell had a “death wish” and disparaged the senator’s wife, Elaine Chao, one of his own former Cabinet officials. But like others in the GOP, who had previously avoided confrontation with Trump in the interest of political gain, McConnell seems to be growing increasingly comfortable throwing jabs, as the former president’s standing wanes. “Anyone seeking the presidency who thinks that the Constitution could somehow be suspended or not followed, it seems to me, would have a very hard time being sworn in as president of the United States,” McConnell said last week after Trump called for the “termination” of the Constitution, echoing similar comments he made after Trump dined with Nazi-loving rapper Ye, also known as Kanye West, and noted white supremacist Nick Fuentes. 

Such criticisms are still pretty pathetic; they're centered on what Trump’s rhetoric and conduct mean for his electability, not on the dangers they pose to the country and its political system. But they nevertheless underscore the weakened political position Trump now finds himself in. Where he once struck fear into the hearts of Republicans, they are now openly casting about for new leaders. The latest to do so is Arkansas governor and potential 2024 Republican presidential hopeful Asa Hutchinson, who said another cycle with Trump as the GOP nominee would be the “worst scenario” for the party. GOP voters may agree: A pair of striking new polls this week found Trump trailing another likely 2024 aspirant, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, by double digits, with a USA Today/Suffolk University survey putting the former president 23 points behind his rival. Polling, especially this early, can only tell you so much. But it does contribute to a general sense that Trump is a man diminished, even if Trumpism continues as a powerful force in Republican politics. 

McConnell, who worked to try to elect all those dangerous weirdos he’s wringing his hands over, clearly isn’t swearing off that movement. He’s just trying to get Republicans to find a less motley crew of torch-bearers for it. “We have to have quality candidates to win in competitive Senate races,” he said Tuesday. The question he should ask himself is: Can candidates like that actually exist under such a banner?