McConnell: Standing up to Trump — too late

"No longer in charge, Sen. Mitch McConnell is speaking his mind," said Lisa Mascaro in the Associated Press. Now in his seventh and final term, the 83-year-old former Senate Republican leader has opposed President Donald Trump's most controversial Cabinet nominees — "alone."

Last week, McConnell was the sole GOP senator to vote against confirming Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard, calling them unqualified and extreme. He also voted "no" on Pete Hegseth for Defense Secretary. That's because McConnell is an actual conservative, not a Trumpist, said Jay Nordlinger in National Review. He "tells the truth" about the Jan. 6. insurrection and the 2020 election results, fully supports Ukraine, and opposes Trump's tariffs as a tax on Americans. A furious Trump called McConnell a "loser" and "failure" for voting against Gabbard and Kennedy, both of whom used to be "despised" by Republicans. "So who changed? The Republicans or McConnell? Not McConnell."

Too bad he is "totally irrelevant," said Ed Kilgore in New York magazine. Even if McConnell hadn't voluntarily stepped down as his party's leader in November due to ill health, he would have been deposed by the now-dominant MAGA Republicans, who have yet to forgive him for publicly blaming Trump for the Jan. 6 riot. But for years, McConnell was an über-partisan who delivered on Trump's priorities, "whipping his troops into partisan uniformity" on tax cuts, delivering a "steady flow of easy confirmations" of executive and judicial appointments, and "relentlessly" opposing Joe Biden's agenda. McConnell's recent gestures of independence and integrity "are far too little and way too late."

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In fact, McConnell "is the reason Trump is back in power," said Joan Walsh in The Nation. McConnell failed to vote to convict Trump after the House impeached him for his attempted coup in 2021. If the then–Senate majority leader had whipped colleagues to convict, they could have legally barred Trump from running again. Earlier, McConnell led a "judicial coup" — blocking President Obama's Supreme Court nomination of Merrick Garland, and then enabled Trump to confirm three conservative justices. Those justices went on to grant Trump broad immunity from prosecution for his failed insurrection.

Obviously, McConnell is now "trying to atone" for his past sins, said Joseph Gerth in the Louisville Courier-Journal. But by casting some meaningless "no" votes, McConnell is "never going to fix what he's broken."