Trump savaged Mitch McConnell over his debt-ceiling deal, saying he abandoned the GOP's best negotiating tool

Trump slammed McConnell over his debt-ceiling negotiations to avert an economic crisis.
"What he's done is unthinkable. He gave up the debt ceiling," Trump said on a radio show.
The comments come after McConnell and 13 Republicans voted with Democrats to approve a debt ceiling overhaul.

Former President Donald Trump lashed out at Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell on Friday over the deal he reached with Democrats to avert a debt ceiling default.

Speaking on Texan conservative talk radio show The Mark Davis Show, Trump said that McConnell had given up "the most powerful negotiating tool we have."

"The Build Back Worse plan is going to get done now," Trump continued, referring to President Joe Biden's Build Back Better, a spending bill that would significantly increase investments in the country's social safety net and climate programs.

"It's like taking money and throwing it out the window, and Mitch McConnell could have killed it," Trump added. "What he's done is unthinkable. He gave up the debt ceiling. That was the best negotiating tool that we had [to] kill this horrible bill."

McConnell, in Trump's estimation, is "so bad, for our party, and he is so bad for the country," he said. "It's just incredible what he did. And he did it without the support of the Senate."

Trump's comments come after McConnell, along with 13 Republican senators, on Thursday voted with every Democrat to avoid a first-ever federal default. In a 64-36 vote, the Senate advanced a measure that will allow Democrats to bypass the 60-vote filibuster requirement for a one-time bill to lift the debt ceiling limit, less than a week before the government is expected to default on December 15.

McConnell's maneuver enables Republicans to say that the party didn't directly vote to raise the country's borrowing limit. Instead, the Democrats will have to handle it on their own with a simple-majority vote.

"Congressional Democrats have rammed through trillions in unnecessary spending over the past year, and next week they will have to finance their spending by raising the debt limit alone – without a single Republican vote," Sen. Roger Wicker of Mississippi, who voted for Thursday's measure, said in a statement after Thursday's vote. "It is time for Democrats to go on record and own this reckless spending. Our nation cannot afford to suffer the irreparable damage of a default on our debt."

Even Republicans who didn't approve the deal praised McConnell's efforts.

"I believe Mitch cut the best deal he could have, given the circumstances that in some respects some Republicans created," GOP Sen. Kevin Cramer of North Dakota, who opposed the bill, told Insider on Thursday.

But some members of the GOP publicly disapproved of the plan, echoing Trump that it helped Democrats pave the way to pass Biden's spending agenda.

"I think it was a mistake," Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas told Insider. Sen. Lindsey Graham also called it a "mistake" that puts Republicans in a position to get "shot in the back."

This isn't the first time Trump has criticized McConnell over his debt-ceiling negotiations. Last week, Trump called on McConnell to use the debt ceiling as a political weapon to "kill" Biden's agenda, though such a move would've been catastrophic for the US economy.

"McConnell is a fool and he damn well better stop their 'Dream of Communism Bill' and keep his Senators in line, or he should resign now, something he should have done a long time ago," Trump said in a November 18 statement.

Read the original article on Business Insider