LOUISVILLE — Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was followed to his car Saturday by protesters who hurled both personal insults and political rhetoric at him while he left a Kentucky restaurant, The Washington Post reported Sunday.
The encounter, which took place in a parking lot outside of a Louisville restaurant, was captured on camera by one of the protesters. In the video, you can hear the group of protesters chanting “vote you out!” and “abolish ICE!” to the Republican senator from Kentucky. One man can be heard calling the senator “turtle head” and repeatedly saying “we know where you live” as the senator and two dining companions climb into their parked vehicle.
McConnell did not respond to the protesters’ comments.
The encounter was the second one to occur to McConnell in the last two weeks. In late June, the senator and his wife, Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, were confronted by protesters in Washington, DC, while leaving an event at Georgetown University.
According to the Post, hundreds of people were protesting Saturday outside Louisville’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement Office, just a few miles from the restaurant. Among the protesters were members of the local chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America. When someone noticed McConnell at the restaurant, they called on the protesters to confront the senator.
“If the Leader comments on being called a fascist and a supporter of ICE by a small handful of extremist protesters then I will let you know,” McConnell’s spokesman, David Popp, told the Post after the incident.
Popp repeated the remark in a statement to CNN.
Like the group of Washington protesters, the Louisville group took aim at McConnell for his support of the Trump administration’s detention of families who illegally cross the border. McConnell does not, however, support the administration’s now-reversed policy of separating immigrant children from their parents.
“Where are the children?” one protester asked McConnell. “Where are the babies, Mitch?” another said.
But the democratic socialists of Louisville told the Post that although three members were in the crowd, the organization was not associated with the man who shouted about knowing where the senator lived.
“This person is not a DSA member, nor do we know who he is or what he meant by that statement,” the chapter wrote in an email to the Post. “We believe it is a reference to peacefully protesting in front of McConnell’s house, which is a regular occurrence in Louisville. However, we cannot speak more to the comment because it did not come from our organization or our members.”
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