Mitch McConnell is determined to be a thorn in the side of conservatives.
He’s signaling that he’s ready to undermine the President-elect.
And Mitch McConnell started one fight with Donald Trump he’s going to live to regret.
Mitch McConnell takes aim at Donald Trump’s America First foreign policy
President-elect Donald Trump reoriented the Republican Party’s foreign policy when he won the 2016 Election.
His America First foreign policy avoided the endless foreign wars and achieved peace through strength.
The Republican establishment is still clinging to the Bush-McCain vision of foreign policy of endless foreign wars and interventions.
U.S. Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY) stepped down as the Senate Republican leader, but he will still be a major factor in what is likely his final two years in office.
He delivered a speech at the annual Reagan National Defense Forum at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California, where he trashed Trump’s America First Foreign policy.
McConnell claimed that “influential voices” had forgotten the lessons learned during the Cold War.
“Within the party Ronald Reagan once led so capably, it is increasingly fashionable to suggest that the sort of global leadership he modeled is no longer America’s place,” McConnell claimed.
He took a not-so-subtle swipe at Trump’s Make America Great Again campaign slogan.
“But let’s be absolutely clear: America will not be made great again by those who are content to manage our decline,” McConnell said.
McConnell is prepared to battle Trump on defense and foreign policy
McConnell stepped down from leadership but he will be the chair of the Subcommittee on Defense Appropriations next year.
That will give him the ability to shape the Pentagon’s budget.
He insisted that the United States needed to double down on its commitment to NATO and other globalist institutions.
“At both ends of our politics, a dangerous fiction is taking hold — that America’s primacy and the fruits of our leadership are self-sustaining,” McConnell said. “Even as allies across NATO and the Indo-Pacific renew their own commitments to hard power, to interoperability, and to collective defense, some now question America’s own role at the center of these force-multiplying institutions and partnerships.”
McConnell warned of “anemic” defense budgets coming back to haunt the country.
“The Pentagon is not equipped to meet the demands of protracted or multi-theater conflict – neither is our defense industrial base,” McConnell claimed.
McConnell is even more dangerous now that he’s out of Senate leadership.
He’s free to do whatever he wants because he doesn’t have to worry about the rest of the Republican Senate caucus.
The 82-year-old Senator suffered another health scare after he fell at the Capitol and sprained his wrist.
McConnell is up for re-election in the 2026 Midterms and almost certainly won’t run for re-election.
Trump has promised to bring a quick end to the war in Ukraine when he takes office in January and require NATO allies to spend money on their defense budgets instead of freeloading off the United States.
Mitch McConnell can spend the end of his political career trying to undermine Donald Trump and his foreign policy.
