Evan Gershkovich, Paul Whelan and Alsu Kurmasheva are on U.S. soil after a historic, multi-country prisoner swap. Vladimir Kara-Murza, also released, was flying to Germany. There has been some tremendous journalism detailing the ordeal, especially from the Wall Street Journal.
What’s on McConnell’s mind. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell was booed at the GOP convention last month. The Kentucky Republican’s party has moved away from him on so many core issues, most notably foreign policy. McConnell’s critics have referred to him as a “lame duck” leader, suggesting he should hang it up early.
But as McConnell transitions out of the top Republican post he’s held for a record-breaking 18 years, the minority leader is sending a clear signal that he’ll remain engaged and defiant. Not only on halting his party’s rightward drift, but also by reminding everyone that he’s the guy who almost single-handedly cemented the Supreme Court’s conservative majority.
In an exclusive interview with us this week, McConnell jabbed at both former President Donald Trump and the left, while haranguing President Joe Biden’s Supreme Court reform proposal as an effort to undermine the high court itself.
“That’s what some people were trying to do Jan. 6 — to break the system of handing an administration from one to the next,” McConnell told us. “We can have our arguments, but we ought to not try to break the rules.”
Yes, that’s McConnell comparing Biden’s SCOTUS pitch to the violent attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6 to stop the certification of Biden’s victory. And it shows exactly why McConnell has been such a maddening figure to Democrats over the years.
McConnell’s longtime Democratic detractors believe that while he should be commended for his role in getting Ukraine aid packages over the finish line, the Kentucky Republican largely enabled Trump and didn’t do nearly enough to push back on the former president.
Yet McConnell is a political animal at heart. He wants Republicans to win up and down the ballot. That’s why he’s supporting the GOP ticket of Trump and Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), even though McConnell has long despised Vance’s worldview and believes Trump is culpable for Jan. 6.
“It’s not my job to tell the president who he ought to run,” McConnell said when asked if he’s dismayed at the selection of the Ohio Republican as the VP nominee. “With regard to Sen. Vance… yeah, we have a different point of view.”
It’s also worth pointing out that, despite McConnell’s efforts to root out what he calls an “isolationist” wing taking over the GOP, Trump isn’t changing his behavior. Just two days after McConnell pleaded with his fellow Republicans to stop idolizing Hungarian strongman Viktor Orbán, Trump hosted Orbán at Mar-a-Lago. A few days after that, Trump chose Vance to be his running mate.
Without directly criticizing Vance or Trump, McConnell said the foreign policy doctrine Vance and others in his party believe in is “nonsense,” adding: “I mean, even the slogans are what they were in the 30s — ‘America First.’”
It’s classic McConnell, twisting the knife in his own unique style. Even in criticizing Democrats over the Supreme Court, too, he pokes his own party — referring here to the fact that Republicans have lost several winnable Senate races in recent cycles. (We have more on McConnell’s outlook on the Senate map below.)
“The way you win the argument is to get more people elected,” McConnell said. “And [Democrats] have done a better job of that over the years than we have.”
Passing the torch: In the run-up to the GOP leadership elections in late November, McConnell is doing everything he can to preserve the power of the top Senate Republican.
Each of the candidates to succeed him is putting forward proposals that, to varying degrees, would restrict the power of the leader and empower the rank-and-file. Some have endorsed the idea of term limits for the top job.
In closed-door GOP Conference meetings recently, McConnell has made clear he thinks all of this is dangerous, noting that individual senators already have a lot of power because the chamber operates on unanimous consent.
“I don’t think this job is broken and needs fixing,” McConnell told us. “If the conference were to decide to strengthen the position further, I think that would be good, but it certainly doesn’t need to be weakened.”
Some Republican senators we’ve spoken with are surprised that McConnell is beating this drum as often and as loudly as he has.
Here’s McConnell’s response:
McConnell, though, isn’t planning on endorsing a successor.
