Earlier this week Mitch McConnel made news when he took to the floor of the Senate to complain about the “McCarthy-style” attacks on his “good name and record”. But what about Kentuckians? How do they feel about #MoscowMitch? While there are no polls to garner a standard pulse on the voters over the issue, you can’t help but wonder if they feel Mitch is more worried about protecting Trump than his own constituents.

Just last week a group of about 120 retired Kentucky coal miners, suffering from black-lung disease, traveled 10 hours on a bus to meet with their Senator. Once they arrived, they were able to talk to his staff for about an hour and merit about one minute of face time with their Senator before he quickly exited. One person in attendance, Jimmy Moore, the head of the Letcher County Black Lung Association, called the meeting “worthless.” Moore added “he might have stayed a minute” and described McConnell’s conduct as “rude.”

But the plight of coal miners in the Bluegrass state doesn’t stop there. Earlier this month Blackjewel mining entered bankruptcy. Workers at Cloverlick Mine 1 in Harlan County, Kentucky, which is owned by Revelation Energy LLC, a subsidiary of Blackjewel, were escorted off the property and given no information, or pay for work they had already done. After a month without work or pay, these miners have had enough and decided to shutdown the railroad cars hauling coal away from their former place of employment.

So, while Mitch is busy whining about the meanies online and in the media, his own constituents are truly suffering from disease as well as no food or even income. And as they face an uncertain future, McConnell would rather work to block things like election security bills, instead of helping the very people he offered to help. And while Donald Trump made miners a key component of his campaign, instead of working to help these suffering people, he is more worried about defending his buddy Mitch. No American should go through what these individuals are, and no American should be so blatantly used as nothing more than political pawns as we are seeing now. Meanwhile #MoscowMitch shows no sign of wanting to help his own constituents.