President Joe Biden expressed disappointment over Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s announcement that he will step down from his leadership role.
While Biden said he trusted McConnell and they had a good working relationship, some argue McConnell has misled Republicans at times.
“One of life’s most underappreciated talents is to know when it’s time to move on to life’s next chapter,” McConnell said. “So I stand before you today … to say that this will be my last term as Republican leader of the Senate.”
New letter from Capitol attending physician Monahan to McConnell:
“There is no evidence that you have a seizure disorder or that you experienced a stroke, TIA or movement disorder such as Parkinson’s disease.” pic.twitter.com/DTnRJSUqh2
— Igor Bobic (@igorbobic) September 5, 2023
“As I have been thinking about when I would deliver some news to the Senate, I always imagined a moment when I had total clarity and peace about the sunset of my work,” he added. “A moment when I am certain I have helped preserve the ideals I so strongly believe. It arrived today.”
“I’m sorry to hear McConnell stepped down,” Biden said.
“I’ve trusted him, and we have a great relationship,” he said. “We fight like hell. But he has never, never, never misrepresented anything. I’m sorry to hear he’s stepping down.”
Some Republicans, like Senator Ron Johnson, have accused McConnell of secretly negotiating a border security bill and misleading the conference about leveraging Ukraine aid to secure the border.
Johnson said this betrayed Republicans and angered those who wanted stronger border policies.
“McConnell said his top priority was funding for Ukraine,” Sen. Ron Johnson said.
“But public opinion and the very strong political rhetoric that we ought to secure our own border before we spend $60 billion to secure Ukraine’s was effective. And so McConnell finally switched and said, ‘OK, we’ve got to let Democrats know that we are serious. We are going to defeat closure on this bill, and we are going to demand that border security is going to be attached to funding for Ukraine,’” Johnson added.
“Then secret negotiations occurred on an issue the public supports Republicans on, and we end up with this monstrosity of a bill. It is an immigration bill. It’s not a border security bill. But during that time frame, we repeatedly talked about making Ukraine funding contingent on border metrics,” he said.
“Using his own authority without telling the conference even though he knew the conference supported tying border security or Ukraine funding to actually securing the border, McConnell just took that off the table.”
“And that moment of leverage we had where we could use Biden’s desire for Ukraine funding to actually force him to use his executive authority to secure the border has been lost, and that is why so many of us are speaking out against McConnell,” Johnson said. “It was such a breach of his leadership position and such a, just a horrible thing to do to Americans who want a secure border.”
As the longest serving Senate leader, McConnell was one of Biden’s main negotiating counterparts, so his departure removes an individual the president has familiarity with.
However, some feel McConnell at times prioritized his own deals over the interests of the Republican conference.