In the moments after Attorney General Bill Barr unveiled the long-awaited report from special counsel Robert Mueller, the top Republican in the US Senate went before cameras in Louisville to make a significant public policy announcement.
But it didn’t have anything to do with Mueller or Barr or the investigation that has captivated much of the nation for more than two years.
McConnell, like many other GOP lawmakers, doesn’t seem consumed by the all-encompassing coverage of the Mueller report and is using the two-week congressional recess to tend to issues back home, notably his re-election in 2020 to a seventh term.
“I know, obviously, there is a pretty important news conference going on in Washington on another and important subject. It won’t surprise you to know, I haven’t had a chance to digest that yet,” McConnell said at the top of his news conference as he warned the local reporters he wouldn’t answer questions about Mueller’s findings. “Sorry to disappoint you.”
Instead, McConnell unveiled federal legislation he will schedule for a Senate vote soon to raise the age for buying tobacco products from 18 to 21. The age increase also applies to vaping products, the new nicotine delivery devices wildly popular with high school and college-aged people, especially in Kentucky where the tobacco culture looms large and where addictions of all kinds are at epidemic levels.
Vaping is so new to the American scene that the 77-year-old McConnell mispronounced it a couple of times, although he didn’t struggle to detail its dangers.
“Alarmingly, 45% of Kentucky high school students report having tried these devices,” he said. “In addition, we all know people who started smoking at a young age who struggled to quit once they became adults.”
McConnell’s staff, which gave reporters in DC only about an hour’s notice on the tobacco news conference, making it impossible to attend in person, declined to say why it was scheduled at the same time the Department of Justice made public Mueller’s report, something that starved it of publicity it otherwise might have received.
“I hope and expect this legislation to gain strong bipartisan support in the Senate,” McConnell promised, reminding his constituents of the unique power he holds as the top leader in the Senate. “As you know, I’m in a good position to enact legislation and this is a top priority I’ll be working on.”
Speaking later at a luncheon at the Oldham County Chamber of Commerce in LaGrange, McConnell noted that the other three top congressional leaders in Washington are from the East and West coasts and he views it as his responsibility to look after the middle of America, especially the commonwealth of Kentucky.
Only at the very end of that speech, did McConnell voluntarily raise the Mueller report, which ended without indictments against Trump despite the special counsel saying there was evidence that the President worked to obstruct his investigation. Instead, McConnell praised the way the investigation was handled by Barr, Mueller, and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.
“I don’t want you to buy any notions that somehow these people are political hacks. They’ve never run for anything, they have sterling reputations. I can’t imagine any one of the three of them would want to jeopardize their own reputations – and not be able to sleep at night – by not handling this extremely controversial and complex investigation in a straight up way,” he said. “What I think our friends on the other side will do is try to destroy their reputations because they don’t like what they are hearing.”
After the speech, McConnell took a few minutes of questions from reporters but repeatedly declined to discuss some of the Mueller report’s harsher conclusions about Trump.
“I haven’t read the report yet. I think it’s too early to start commenting on portions of it,” he said. “I think it is premature.”
Back at the tobacco news conference, McConnell was also blunt when a reporter asked if it was fair that an 18-year-old is old enough to vote, but can’t make his or her own decision about vaping. McConnell’s bill has an exception for the use of tobacco by members of the military who are under 21.
“I’m sure some people will look at it that way,” McConnell replied. “We’re going to do it this way.”