(Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call via AP Images)
Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), the longest-serving party leader in U.S. Senate history, spoke to the Financial Times this week about his plans for his last two years in office as a rank-and-file senator, now that he is officially out of leadership.
FT’s Alex Rogers met with McConnell on Capitol Hill and wrote about the longtime Washington powerbroker’s final act. “At the age of 82, McConnell is “ready to do something else”. A pivotal politician in a tumultuous time, McConnell earned power and used it to shift the country to the right during his 17-year tenure. He won races across the country, raised more than $1bn to boost his colleagues and negotiated trillion-dollar-plus bills, including the aid that lifted the country out of the pandemic,” began Rogers, detailing some of McConnell’s accomplishments.
The conversation inevitably turned to President-elect Donald Trump, who views McConnell as an arch-nemesis and regularly targets him with his unique brand of vitriolic attacks.
McConnell has become an outspoken critic of Trump’s more isolationist policies and the MAGA wing of the GOP that pushes to cut foreign aid, particularly aid to Ukraine in its battle against invading Russian forces.
“We’re in a very, very dangerous world right now, reminiscent of before World War Two,” McConnell told Rogers, adding, “Even the slogan is the same. ‘America First.’ That was what they said in the ’30s.” Rogers reported further on their exchange:
Warming to his historical theme, McConnell turns to one of the portraits behind him, an influential Senate Republican of the wartime era named Robert A Taft. Son of the 27th president William Howard Taft, Robert was “a raging isolationist” who opposed Lend-Lease before the second world war and both the creation of Nato and the Marshall Plan afterwards, says McConnell.
“Thank goodness Eisenhower beat him for the [presidential] nomination in ’52 and had a much different view of America’s role in the world,” McConnell added. “The cost of deterrence is considerably less than the cost of war.” Rogers added of their conversation:
His words are targeted directly at Trump and vice-president-elect JD Vance, who have argued that the US should not be spending any more money on Ukraine. McConnell is a strong believer in the Ronald Reagan view of the US role in the world, rather than the Trump one.
“To most American voters, I think the simple answer is, ‘Let’s stay out of it.’ That was the argument made in the ’30s and that just won’t work. Thanks to Reagan, we know what does work — not just saying peace through strength, but demonstrating it.”
McConnell also took issue with Trump’s regular claim that there are Americans, he calls them the “enemy within,” who are more dangerous to the U.S. than Russia and China. “I don’t agree with that,” said McConnell.
McConnell, who saved Trump during his second impeachment after the Jan. 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol, has become one of Trump’s fiercest critics on the right – despite endorsing him in 2024. McConnell told AP’s Michael Tackett for his recent biography that he believed Trump was responsible for the attack on the Capitol. “I’m not at all conflicted about whether what the president did is an impeachable offense,” McConnell said, adding, “I think in his urging insurrection and people attacking the Capitol as a direct result is about as close to an impeachable offense as you can imagine, with the possible exception of maybe being an agent for another country.”
Tackett’s book, titled “The Price of Power,” also quoted McConnell tearing into Trump’s character calling him “stupid” and a “despicable human being.”
