“He put a gun to his head and pulled the trigger"

“I feel exhilarated by the fact that this fellow finally, totally discredited himself,” McConnell told Jonathan Martin, one of the authors of a new book called “This Will Not Pass,” when asked about his feelings on the violence and the rioters.

Trump, the Kentucky Republican said, “was pretty thoroughly discredited by this.”

“He put a gun to his head and pulled the trigger,” he said, standing in a doorway of the Capitol after midnight. “Couldn’t have happened at a better time.”

“What do you hear about the Twenty-Fifth Amendment?” he asked Martin, eager for intelligence about whether the Cabinet and vice president might remove Trump from office, according to the book. Then McConnell said, according to the book, that he had spoken to Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) about issuing a joint statement telling Trump to stay away from the inauguration. A McConnell spokesman declined to comment on the book.