WASHINGTON — A new biography of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., says that privately in recent years, he made several critical comments about former President Donald Trump.

The two have long had an icy relationship.     

Excerpts of the book “The Price of Power,” by Associated Press deputy Washington bureau chief Michael Tackett, set to be released later this month, include McConnell calling Trump “stupid,” a “despicable human being” and a “sleazeball.”

After the 2020 election, McConnell reportedly said the American people have had “just enough of the misrepresentations, the outright lies almost on a daily basis, and they fired him.”

Though McConnell blamed Trump for inciting the deadly Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol, he voted to acquit the former president in his impeachment trial.

According to the book, in 2022, McConnell said of Trump, “Unfortunately, about half the Republicans in the country believe whatever he says.”

McConnell endorsed Trump in March this year, long after other Republican leaders and Kentucky lawmakers on Capitol Hill had done so. 

He wrote, “It should come as no surprise that as nominee, he will have my support.”

The Associated Press reports that in a statement this week, McConnell said, “Whatever I may have said about President Trump pales compared to what JD Vance, Lindsey Graham, and others have said about him, but we are all on the same team now.”