Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell pushed back Monday against a slew of attacks labeling him “Moscow Mitch” in the wake of blocking Democratic election reform bills last week, calling the accusations “modern-day McCarthyism” and saying that Democrats were playing right into Putin’s hands.

The Kentucky senator defended his record on election security by pointing to the hundreds of millions of dollars in funding the Senate has already approved and highlighting the foreign interference bills the Senate has already passed, saying that Congress and the Trump administration had made “huge strides” toward improving election security.