Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has been pursuing a risky strategy for months to approve further funding for Ukraine.
He’s demanded that Democrats negotiate a compromise on the border before Republicans greenlight that aid.
The move reflects a political reality in the Republican-led House, where conservatives complain the United States should not be protecting other countries’ borders before defending its own.
However, a new reality — that Donald Trump will once again be the Republican nominee for president — has led McConnell to cast doubt on that strategy as the former president prepares to campaign on immigration.
McConnell told his Republican colleagues at a Wednesday conference meeting that the Senate is in a “quandary” over Ukraine and seemed willing to defer to Trump’s judgment on the border.
“We don’t want to do anything to undermine him,” McConnell said, according to Punchbowl News.
The remarks set off a furor of confusion, and pushback, within the conference on Thursday morning.
McConnell was not saying Ukraine and the border should be split, a fired-up Thom Tillis (R-NC) told reporters.
“I didn’t hear anything about bifurcating the various pieces of the supplemental,” he said. “We may have to get there, but that was not what Mitch McConnell said yesterday, and there’s a transcript. So, if somebody wants to disagree with me, maybe we should make the transcript public.”
Others were baffled at the characterization — multiple Republicans told the Washington Examiner he made nothing more than a passing remark and that they walked away with a different impression than what was initially reported.
“I was there. I did not hear that at all,” Sen. Jerry Moran (R-KS) said.
But multiple senators also confirmed the thrust of what McConnell said — an acknowledgment of where things stand politically. That Trump is the presumptive nominee and Republicans were in a difficult spot on Ukraine.
“He said that Trump’s the apparent nominee, and he’s weighed in, so we’ve got to respect that,” Sen. Mike Braun (R-IN) said of McConnell’s remarks.
Importantly, McConnell’s office did not dispute the original reporting.
Republican leaders have in recent days defended linking Ukraine to the border, noting Republicans won’t have the same kind of leverage if they assume the majority again. John Thune (R-SD), the No. 2 Senate Republican, has argued it would give a future Trump administration new tools to stem the flow of migrants.
But McConnell appears to be softening in his stance as Trump privately lobbies Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) to oppose an emerging Senate compromise.
That lobbying so far does not appear to extend to the Senate. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), a staunch Trump ally and border hawk, suggested he had not recently spoken with Trump about the deal. Other Republicans gave the Washington Examiner the same answer.
McConnell’s relationship with Trump fractured after the Jan. 6 riots, and he has repeatedly declined to weigh in on the 2024 race. But McConnell is also pragmatic. Trump decisively won primary contests in Iowa and New Hampshire this month, all but guaranteeing he will face President Joe Biden once again in the fall.
The feuding has become outright bitter — Trump has lobbed racially tinged nicknames at McConnell’s wife.
But the president sets the direction for the party, and with Biden underwater in public polling, there’s a distinct possibility Trump will return to the White House.
The comments leave Ukraine, and McConnell’s legacy on it, in limbo. The minority leader remains the most vocal defender of further aid, calling it a matter of “cold hard American interest” as recently as Wednesday.
Senate Republicans appear newly interested in paring back the nonlethal portions of the more than $60 billion in funding, but even if Democrats agree to trim the humanitarian and economic assistance in the legislation, the aid will still be unpalatable to conservatives who question the wisdom of funding a conflict that has settled into a stalemate.
“I’d like to see it pared down to zero,” Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) quipped on Tuesday.
Republicans appear to have won real concessions in border talks with Senate Democrats and the White House. On the table are restrictions on asylum and a new expulsion authority for the president. There even appears to be a compromise of sorts on the thorny issue of parole.
But conservatives doubt the deal would force Biden to rein in border crossings. A deal to secure the border that does not actually secure the border, they say, is nothing but a fig leaf.
Those conservatives still represent a distinct minority of the Republican conference in the Senate, but Trump has demonstrated he still controls the party.
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He has not publicly come out against a deal but urged Johnson to reject a compromise that is not “perfect.”
The speaker, who has taken a back seat in border talks, is receptive to “transformative” policy changes, but he will be under pressure from his own House colleagues to reject anything short of H.R. 2, their flagship border bill.
