Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) is sailing into retirement with a political luxury he never had as Senate GOP leader: the chance to openly break with President Donald Trump.Some of McConnell’s most biting criticism came last week when he denounced an “anti-weaponization” fund the Justice Department might use to compensate those pardoned after storming the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.“So the nation’s top law enforcement official is asking for a slush fund to pay people who assault cops? Utterly stupid, morally wrong — take your pick,” he said in a statement.
At other times, McConnell has critiqued the administration’s “illegal” tariffs and Trump’s perceived coziness with Russia. He’s also one of the few Republican wild cards on the Senate floor.
McConnell voted against three of Trump’s Cabinet nominees at the outset of his second term. More recently, he helped sink a vote on the SAVE America Act, a Trump-backed bill that he says, if passed, would be tantamount to a federal takeover of elections.
McConnell suggested that he did not want to relitigate their years of enmity when Trump returned to the White House. And in a sign of reconciliation, McConnell attended the president’s inauguration with his wife Elaine Chao, despite Trump’s history of taunting her with racially tinged attacks.
