Chris Wallace Says McConnell Was ‘Taking a Shot At Trump’ For Endorsing Candidates Who Will Lose the Senate

CNN anchor Chris Wallace said Mitch McConnell was “taking a shot at” former President Donald Trump when he remarked that “candidate quality” in the GOP Senate field might not be great.

At an event this week, McConnell said “I think there’s probably a greater likelihood the House flips than the Senate,” and added that “Senate races are just different. They’re statewide. Candidate quality has a lot to do with the outcome.”

On Friday morning’s edition of CNN’s New Day, co-anchor Brianna Keilar and John Berman asked Wallace about those remarks, and Wallace suggested they were partially aimed at Trump’s endorsements of candidates like Dr. Mehmet Oz and Herschel Walker:

JOHN BERMAN: Mitch McConnell is not a man of many words or few words, but precise words like each word carefully chosen. So why is he telling us this now?

CHRIS WALLACE: Well, you know, I’ve been sort of riddling that myself over the last 24 hours. You’re exactly right. McConnell doesn’t say what a single, unguarded thing and you would think, even if he believes that Republicans are in trouble in taking back the Senate. Why would he say that? It’s certainly not going to be good for for fundraising.

And I think Melanie put our finger on the two reasons.

One, hoping that it’ll get those Republican candidates and their donor base energized again, not to take the idea that the Senate is going to go with the House and flip to Republicans.

And two maybe to take a shot at Donald Trump, because it seems that a lot of these races, Herschel Walker in Georgia, Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania that President Trump, in terms of his endorsements and his backing, went more for a celebrity than he did for candidate experience, political experience.

A lot of these people are being dismissed as amateur candidates.

I mean, Pennsylvania, just a classic case in the last few days, what’s being called Crudite-gate, because Mehmet Oz did a video, perfectly sensible, the price of everything going up. He went to a store first, they call it Wegner’s, when Wegmans is the name of the grocery chain, which is very popular in Pennsylvania.

And then he said, you know, instead of just saying, look, look at the cost of broccoli or carrots or whatever, he said, you know, my wife wanted to make a crudite plate. And, you know, I’m not sure in Pennsylvania that that translates very well.

Watch above via CNN.