Bette Midler Accuses ‘Utterly Useless’ Mitch McConnell of Cheating in His Reelection

Bette Midler isn’t happy with Mitch McConnell and she doesn’t care who knows it. The actress and comedian voiced her disapproval of the Senate Majority Leader on Thursday, calling him “utterly useless” and accusing him without evidence of cheating in his reelection last month. Midler, 75, retweeted a photo of McConnell, 78, next to a list from U.S. News and World Report of Kentucky’s low rankings among states on health care, education and the economy. The list showed Kentucky ranking 44th in health care, 38th in education and 39th on the economy.

“How did he win with an 18% approval rating?” Midler wrote of the Republican, appearing to refer to a poll from 2017. “F—ing cheated, that’s how! #Kentucky, you are keeping us all down. I demand a #KentuckyRecount.” No evidence has been presented to suggest that McConnell, who has been a member of the Senate for 35 years, cheated in the vote, of which he won 58 percent.

In another tweet, Midler referred to both Kentucky senators McConnell and Rand Paul as “crooks.” Her comments drew strong responses from her Twitter followers, many of whom agreed with her, but others asked her to rethink her argument. “I love you but ‘cheated’ is a really big word and one we shouldn’t be using without an awful lot of proof,” one of her followers wrote. Someone else cited McConnell’s pro-life and pro-NRA policies as reasons he was reelected.

The Hocus Pocus actress has long been a vocal critic of the Republican Party and President Donald Trump, who she referred to as a “parasite” after he voiced his disapproval of the South Korean film of the same name winning Best Picture at this year’s Oscars. In August, Midler received backlash for mocking First Lady Melania Trump’s accent.

At the time, Melania, who is originally from Slovenia, was speaking at the Republican National Convention. Midler tweeted, “Oh, God. She still can’t speak English.” She also wrote, “#beBest is back! A UGE bore! She can speak several words in a few languages. Get that illegal alien off the stage!”

The comments were met with a bevy of criticism. “There were a million things to criticize about this speech. This wasn’t one of them,” one Twitter user wrote. In response to the backlash, Midler once again took to social media to write that she was simply giving Republicans a taste of “their own immigrant-bashing medicine,” adding that they were clearly “not keen” on what she had to say. Later, she wrote that she was “wrong” to make fun of Melania’s accent. “Well, all hell has broken loose because I said Melania “still can’t speak English” last night,” she wrote. “I was wrong to make fun of her accent. America is made up people who speak with all kinds of accents, and they are all welcomed always.”