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.

“I expect to support most of what this administration is trying to accomplish,” McConnell said at the time. “So, what happened in the past is irrelevant to me.”

Still, it would be easy to lump McConnell into the emerging “YOLO” caucus, a buzzy nickname for the group of retiring Republicans who are no longer worried about what a critical remark would do to their political career, or their relationship with the president.

In fact, McConnell seemingly relished in his newfound freedom when he stepped down after nearly two decades as GOP leader, admitting to colleagues and the press that he felt “liberated” from the burden of governing and planned to be more outspoken as a rank-and-file member.

McConnell announced that he would retire from leadership in early 2024, before Trump won a second term in the White House. A year later, he confirmed what many had suspected: that he would not seek another term representing Kentucky after four decades in the Senate.

McConnell is slated to be replaced next year by Rep. Andy Barr (R-KY), a congressman who once interned for McConnell but successfully bridged the divide with Trump and earned his endorsement.

Over the last year and a half, McConnell has softened the blow with stray compliments to Trump. In a brief encounter at the White House last year, McConnell praised the president’s decision to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities, a prelude to the war that began in February.

McConnell also avoids targeting the president directly in his statements, choosing to chide his advisers as Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC), another retiring Republican, frequently does when leveling criticism.

Last month, McConnell penned an op-ed questioning why Elbridge Colby, one of Trump’s defense undersecretaries, was “stonewalling” Congress on $400 million in delayed assistance to Ukraine.

THOM TILLIS APPEALS TO TRUMP ‘LEGACY’ WITH GROWING WHITE HOUSE CRITICISM

Still, McConnell no longer has to manage his relationship with Trump the way he did as a member of Senate leadership and largely held back during the president’s first term.

The two had a marriage of convenience that allowed McConnell to cement a conservative majority on the Supreme Court and enact other Republican priorities, and only occasionally did he reproach some of Trump’s more incendiary remarks.

His most forceful comments, after the 2021 Capitol riot, came once the president was on his way out of office.

Now, McConnell, 84, is in the twilight of his career and has a goal focused more on his party’s direction. He’s a Reaganite and an institutionalist, and he’s using what little time left he has in the Senate to serve as a policy counterweight to Trump’s brand of “America First” populism.

McConnell’s approach to a second Trump presidency has been to focus on the narrow set of issues where he feels he can draw the sharpest ideological contrast, particularly on foreign policy, and, as the top appropriator for the Pentagon budget, has criticized the president on everything from peace talks with Ukraine to his hostility toward NATO.

Economically, the biggest point of friction has been tariffs, and McConnell has not shied away from voting accordingly. He’s repeatedly joined a small group of Senate Republicans to oppose Trump’s duties, retorting after one vote that “no cross-eyed reading of Reagan” could undo the economic harm of trade wars.

Owing to his retirement, McConnell has drawn less attention than other Senate Republicans on the outs with Trump. Two of them, Sens. John Cornyn (R-TX) and Bill Cassidy (R-LA), were dramatically ousted from their seats this month by a Trump-backed challenger.

And compared to other Republicans with an independent streak, McConnell’s commentary looks pretty restrained. He’s long avoided hallway interviews and prefers to deliver statements in the form of op-eds and the occasional speech from the Senate floor.

By contrast, Trump is being needled almost weekly by Tillis and other GOP senators whose chattiness with the press has drawn the ire of the president. Last week, Trump accused Tillis of “screwing” the Republican Party with his criticism of the White House.

When McConnell has registered on Trump’s radar, it’s been for his votes. Trump called him “bitter” and trashed his tenure as GOP leader when he voted against Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. last year over his vaccine skepticism. McConnell is a childhood survivor of polio.

THUNE NAVIGATES FRESH ROUGH PATCH WITH TRUMP AS SENATE FRUSTRATIONS BOIL OVER

On tariffs, Trump fumed that McConnell and several other “no” votes were suffering from “Trump derangement syndrome” and had been “extremely difficult to deal with” for Republican leadership.

Trump came to McConnell’s defense more recently, claiming that one of his aides had embarrassed him at a committee hearing and should be fired. He then proceeded to slip in a dig at McConnell for “stupidly” opposing his efforts to eliminate the filibuster.