Three months in the past, Mitch McConnell ran the Senate GOP. Now he’s going it alone as he wages battles in opposition to a few of President Donald Trump’s highest-profile nominees.
The Kentucky Republican grew to become the one member of the Senate GOP’s 53-seat convention to oppose multiple Trump choose along with his votes this week — first opposing Tulsi Gabbard’s director of nationwide intelligence nomination on Wednesday after which Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Well being and Human Companies nomination on Thursday.
“He has expressed the very fact that he’s going to be unbiased,” mentioned Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.). “He’s not burdened with … management, and if he has a disagreement on a specific particular person he’ll categorical that.”
McConnell was hardly alone amongst Senate Republicans in elevating doubts about Gabbard, Kennedy and Protection Secretary Pete Hegseth, whose affirmation he opposed final month. A number of colleagues who hail from the identical traditionalist wing of the GOP aired related issues about these nominees’ health for workplace.
However solely the 82-year-old Kentucky Republican ended up voting in opposition to all three. That’s a mirrored image of the truth that he’s unlikely to face for reelection and thus has no have to curry favor with Trump. Their relationship, the truth is, went bitter years in the past. It provides him immunity from the first threats, arm-wringing and behind-the-scenes lobbying that introduced different GOP senators into line.
Requested about his votes, McConnell’s workplace on Thursday pointed again to his Jan. 16 flooring speech the place he supplied an early define of what his method could be. Often known as a ruthless operator however dedicated Senate institutionalist, he mentioned he would assist a “giant slate of nominees” who’ve “credentials and data show them worthy of the very best public belief and whose coverage views align with the administration’s purpose.”
In feedback since then, McConnell has been unflinching in making clear he believed the Senate ought to train its constitutional powers and reject a few of Trump’s nominees.
“The Senate’s energy of recommendation and consent isn’t an possibility; it’s an obligation, and one we can not faux to misconceive,” he mentioned in a blistering assertion opposing Gabbard. “When a nominee’s report proves them unworthy of the very best public belief, and when their command of related coverage falls wanting the necessities of their workplace, the Senate ought to withhold its consent.”
Trump shot again Thursday, saying in feedback to reporters after Kennedy’s affirmation that McConnell was “a really bitter man” and “not geared up mentally” for the Senate. He additionally recommended McConnell’s opposition was a type of payback.
“I used to be the one which received him to drop out of the management place, so he cannot love me,” he mentioned. “He is not voting in opposition to Bobby. He is voting in opposition to me.”
Nonetheless, Republicans don’t anticipate McConnell to be a bigger headache the place it would matter — on Trump’s legislative agenda, with the previous chief himself predicting that he’ll assist most of what the administration tries to do.
With 53 seats, the Senate GOP can afford to lose his vote at occasions, releasing him to solid symbolic opposition to a few of Trump’s most controversial nominees whereas supporting the remaining. Notably, he voted to advance Hegseth, Gabbard and Kennedy previous key procedural hurdles earlier than opposing their last affirmation. He has additionally voted for the opposite 13 of the 16 nominees the Senate has confirmed to date.
McConnell can also be following the golden rule of the Senate: The way you vote is as much as you, however don’t shock your personal occasion leaders.
Senate Majority Chief John Thune mentioned McConnell’s votes weren’t surprising. “Like all senator he’s entitled to vote nonetheless he chooses to vote,” he mentioned.
McConnell made clear that after stepping down as occasion chief he would use his perch within the Senate to attempt to enact and communicate up for his priorities — significantly by pushing again on an isolationist worldview that has more and more dominated his occasion’s international coverage posture.
Forward of Trump’s formal return to workplace, McConnell mentioned at a nationwide safety convention on the Ronald Reagan Library in December that “America is not going to be made nice once more by those that are content material to handle our decline.”
He additionally warned in a press release late final yr that Trump’s picks ought to keep away from attempting to undermine vaccines, saying that “anybody looking for the Senate’s consent to serve within the incoming Administration would do effectively to keep away from even the looks of affiliation with such efforts.”
McConnell, a polio survivor, took an particularly dim view of Kennedy’s skepticism in regards to the vaccine that might have spared him from a devastating childhood sickness that affected his mobility into maturity.
But these warnings didn’t stop any of the picks he opposed from finally getting confirmed — or from stopping a few of his colleagues from criticizing his technique. It’s a transfer that will have as soon as been unthinkable given McConnell’s iron grip over his convention, however grew to become more and more frequent within the last years of his management reign.
“As I mentioned after I ran in opposition to him for chief, we should have someone up right here who helps the Trump agenda and helps the Trump nominees and he hasn’t now — he hasn’t, he doesn’t,” mentioned Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), whom McConnell simply defeated in a management race in 2022.
Lisa Kashinsky contributed to this report.
