Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell endorsed Donald Trump for president on Wednesday, a notable reversal from the former critic who blamed the then-president for nefarious actions during the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol but now supports his effort to return to the White House.

McConnell, the last top Republican leader in Congress to align himself with Trump, expressed his support in a brief statement after Super Tuesday victories pushed the Republican front-runner closer to the party nomination.

The two men have not spoken since 2020, when McConnell declared Democrat Joe Biden the winner of that year’s presidential election. But recently their teams had reopened talks for an approval.

It is abundantly clear that former President Trump has earned the necessary support from Republican voters to be our nominee for President of the United States, McConnell said in the statement.

McConnell said: It should come as no surprise that he will have my support as a nominee.

The nod from McConnell, who has criticized Trump as morally responsible for the 2021 Capitol victory, lends an imprimatur of institutional legitimacy to the indicted former president’s bid to return to the White House.

McConnell will resign as leader of the Senate Republicans in November after a record run

It comes after McConnell made his own sudden announcement last week that he would step down as leader after this term, a position he has held longer than any other senator, and as he makes yet another attempt to regain Republican control of the Senate win, with Trump likely at the top of the GOP ticket.

Trump now views all Republican leaders in Congress, including Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Republicans seeking to replace McConnell as leader, as supporting his bid for the White House. Another Republican in leadership, Senator Joni Ernst of Iowa, announced her support for Trump on Wednesday after the Republican Party’s last major challenger, Nikki Haley, suspended her campaign.

McConnell of Kentucky said he and Trump have worked together to accomplish great things for the American people.

In particular, he noted policies that boosted our economy and a generational change of our federal judiciary, most importantly the Supreme Court.

Trump signed a Republican party tax cut package and, with McConnell in charge of the Senate, was able to confirm three justices to the nine-member Supreme Court and fulfill the long-term conservative goal of removing Roe vs. Wade and overturning the constitutional right to abortion. .

While McConnell said early in the election cycle that he would support the eventual Republican presidential nominee, his support of Trump marks a striking reunion for the two men who have put political interests above any personal grievance with each other.

Trump routinely bashed McConnell in public like an old crow

,

And

Trump

hurled racist insults at the senator’s wife, Elaine Chao, who served as Trump’s transportation secretary and resigned in the wake of the Jan. 6 attack, which McConnell called an insurrection.

President Biden slams Trump for the January 6 Capitol riot, a day when ‘we almost lost America’

With McConnell’s support for Trump, it gives the green light to other remaining skeptical Republicans and the deep-pocketed donors who are pushing campaigns to play by the rules despite any reservations they may have about a return to the Trump era.

After the Jan. 6 attack, McConnell issued a stern rebuke of Trump’s behavior, blaming the defeated president for spreading wild claims about a stolen election.

While McConnell declined to vote to convict Trump in the Senate trial on House impeachment charges for inciting the Capitol riot, which could make him ineligible to serve as president again, he warned he that Trump was not immune from civil or criminal prosecution once he left the White House.

He hasn’t gotten away with anything yet, McConnell said in the Senate at the time.

We have a criminal justice system in this country. We have civil lawsuits, and former presidents are not immune from being held accountable by either of them, he said.

Trump has been indicted on federal charges of conspiring to defraud Americans and obstructing an official proceeding in his efforts to overturn Biden’s victory and the Jan. 6 attack, but he has claimed immunity in a lawsuit now before the Supreme Court .

Despite his concerns about Trump’s behavior in the White House, McConnell appears willing to put these issues aside in favor of the results he believes the former president was able to achieve during his term.

McConnell said he looks forward to moving from defending the terrible policies the Biden administration has implemented to insulting policies he thinks will make a difference.

Associated Press writer Mary Clare Jalonick contributed to this report.