Trump dialing down the rhetoric? LOL! The mountebank of Mar-a-Lago is worse than ever.

Great news, everyone. Former president and somehow-not-disgraced Florida man Donald Trump is dialing down the rhetoric and isn’t likely to cause problems for Republicans in the upcoming midterm elections!

At least that’s what Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell suggested to USA TODAY while, I assume, not under the influence of any hallucinogenic substances.

Commenting on Trump’s routine, lie-filled endorsements of GOP candidates, McConnell said: “So far this cycle, he's been rather restrained in his nominations. So I don’t see it as a problem.”

Cool, Mitch. It’s reassuring to know the modern Republican Party isn’t sweating a conspiratorial cocktail-lounge act masquerading as a former president traipsing around the country demanding everyone – EVERYONE, I TELL YOU! – acknowledge the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him, which, I’ll remind everyone for the 3,457th time, it most definitely was not.

Nothing to see here, please disperse

McConnell continued to speak optimistically about the midterms: “It depends on not doing and saying foolish things that disqualify you.”

Has he met Trump? Has he met a terrifyingly large swath of his own party?

Enough already: Ginni Thomas' texts show the Big Lie has metastasized into a Big Delusion.

Saying foolish things, for MAGA-aligned Republican lawmakers and candidates, seems mandatory. We witness what appears to be a daily competition among them to see who can out-outrageous the other.

But Trump remains the crown king of the unhinged. The same day USA TODAY published the interview with McConnell, Trump released an anti-endorsement of Republican Pennsylvania gubernatorial candidate William McSwain, a former U.S. attorney who committed the unforgivable act of not looking into ginned-up voter fraud allegations.

In his statement, Trump said: “It was there for the taking and he failed so badly.”

More from Rex Huppke: Elon Musk should take over Twitter, shut it down and fire the social media giant into space

Nothing says “not a problem” quite like a former president accused of trying to overturn a free and fair election writing out and sharing a sentence that clearly states he wanted to overturn a free and fair election.

It was there for the taking! If only our system of government hadn’t survived!

Trump lies and lies and lies and lies

At his rally last weekend in North Carolina, the mountebank of Mar-a-Lago flatly said: “The presidential election was rigged and stolen.”

It was not. At all. In any way, shape or form. That’s a lie. An enormous lie. A lie that, every time it’s spoken, erodes faith in our democracy.

“The truth is,” Trump said, “I ran twice. I won twice.”

That’s not truth. It’s hokum. He knows it. The candidates he endorses know it. And McConnell absolutely knows it.

In December 2020, McConnell said: “Our country has officially a president-elect and a vice president-elect. The Electoral College has spoken. So today I want to congratulate President-elect Joe Biden.”

So I’m not quite sure how McConnell doesn’t see Trump “as a problem.”

I voted for Trump twice. He shouldn't run again.

It’s like if everybody in town is talking about how your grandfather keeps running around the streets buck naked screaming about ghosts in the sewer pipes, and you respond by saying, “The family’s doing fine! Everything’s totally normal.”

That’s not helping grandpa, the town or your family. It’s not helping anyone.

McConnell's appalling lack of concern

McConnell knows Republicans stand a good chance of regaining the House and possibly taking back the Senate in the midterms, with or without the officially defeated former president muscling candidates into embracing the lies that shield his fragile ego. Actual President Joe Biden’s poll numbers are bad, inflation is overshadowing positive employment numbers and midterms generally favor the party not in power.

But what should burn every truly patriotic American’s biscuits is the fact that McConnell is waltzing along knowing a huge faction of his own party has adopted a dangerous fiction in service to an utterly unworthy individual, one who only stops conning people long enough to ring for another Diet Coke.

I am the last of the Obama Republicans. But I still have hope for lasting change.

There’s nothing “restrained” about Trump. Every day, we’re learning more and more about the role he, members of his family and others in his orbit played in attempting what amounts to a coup.

If McConnell gave a damn about America, that would matter.

It clearly doesn’t.

Maybe that’s something that should concern us all.

Follow USA TODAY columnist Rex Huppke on Twitter @RexHuppke and Facebook: facebook.com/RexIsAJerk

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Trump continues election lies while McConnell says he's not a problem