President Donald Trump derided former Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., as “not equipped mentally” after he went from being the face of the GOP in the upper chamber to opposing his entire conference and voting with the Democrats on Trump’s key Cabinet nominations in just a matter of months.
“He wasn’t equipped ten years ago, mentally, in my opinion,” Trump told reporters at the White House after McConnell refused to vote in favor of confirming his controversial Health and Human Services (HHS) pick, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
“He’s a, you know, very bitter guy,” Trump added of McConnell, with whom he has had a strained relationship with over the years, including during his previous presidency.
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The GOP’s recent and longest-serving Senate party leader has stood in opposition to his conference multiple times, demonstrating the party’s significant transformation in the age of Trump. (Reuters)
While such a shift from GOP leader to defiant Republican might be optically jarring, the move was unsurprising to Jim Manley, former senior communications advisor and spokesman for former Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and the Senate Democratic Caucus.
“He was living on borrowed time the last couple of years,” he told Fox News Digital of McConnell. Manley speculated that if he hadn’t decided to step down from leadership voluntarily before the 119th Congress, he would have had significant trouble being re-elected. “[I]t’s evident just how exactly out of step he is with the caucus,” he said, noting that it has become “much more conservative.”
In three pivotal Senate votes on Trump’s most vulnerable Cabinet nominees in the last few weeks, McConnell bucked his party. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s nomination was confirmed by a razor-thin margin, 51-50, after Vice President JD Vance was called in to break the tie.
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McConnell and Trump have had a thorny relationship. (Reuters)
Moderate GOP Sens. Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, joined him in voting against the controversial defense pick.
However, McConnell was the only Republican to vote against the similarly controversial Director of National Intelligence (DNI) nominee Tulsi Gabbard and HHS pick Kennedy. Even Collins, Murkowski, and several other senators with reputations for being somewhat hesitant got behind them.
“If Senator McConnell was looking to accelerate the deterioration of his legacy as the former Republican Senate leader, he’s succeeded,” a Senate GOP source remarked. They described the Kentucky Republican’s actions as “an attempt to embarrass the president and the Republican Party” and evidence “of why he was no longer fit to lead our conference.”
McConnell released lengthy statements following each vote, explaining his reasoning. He also wished each of them well and committed to working with them.
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Hegseth was confirmed after JD Vance cast a tie-breaking vote. (Omar Marques/Getty Images)
A defense hawk and chairman of the Senate Committee on Appropriations Defense Subcommittee, McConnell was unconvinced that Hegseth or Gabbard were the best national security selections.
As for Kennedy, McConnell recalled his childhood experience with polio and touted the effectiveness of vaccines, of which the now-HHS secretary has been consistently critical.
McConnell did vote in favor of Trump’s other, less-controversial and lesser-known Cabinet nominees.
Republican strategist Matt Dole called the former leader “an enigma.”
“[H]e sought to rule the Republican Caucus with an iron fist when he was leader,” he pointed out.
“That makes his own, lonely, votes stand out as all the more egregious.”
McConnell’s successor, Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., reacted to the “no” votes in an interview with Fox News Digital. “I think he knows better than anybody how hard it is to lead a place like the United States Senate, where it takes 60 votes to get most things done, and that you got to have everybody, sort of functioning as a team,” he said.
According to Thune, McConnell “is still active up here and still a strong voice on issues he’s passionate about, including national security, and so when it comes to those issues, he has outsized influence and a voice that we all pay attention to.”
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Thune succeeded McConnell as Senate GOP leader. (Reuters)
He explained that while the conference doesn’t necessarily agree with him, “we respect his positions on these, some of these [nominations], and I know that a lot of big stuff ahead of us, he’s going to be with us. He’s a team player.”
One former top Senate Republican strategist explained the former leader has “nothing to lose” at this point. In fact, they said, the feelings he is expressing about Trump’s most controversial selections actually reflects those of a number of other senators. But they can’t oppose the picks themselves “for fear of retribution by Trump or primary voters that will make a difference on whether or not they remain in power.”
“Not being in leadership can be quite liberating,” GOP strategist John Feehery added.
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According to Grant Reeher, a political science professor at Syracuse University, “I think he wants to make a symbolic statement in favor of an older Reagan-era type of conservatism and a more traditional Republican Party—this is the way he wants to be remembered.”
McConnell’s office declined to comment to Fox News Digital.
