Vice President JD Vance unleashed a wave of MAGA-fueled criticism against Sen. Mitch McConnell on Tuesday, delivering a rare public rebuke of the former Republican leader for refusing to back a key Pentagon nominee.
The war of words began shortly after McConnell became the only Republican to vote against Elbridge Colby, who was chosen by President Donald Trump as the Defense Department’s top policy strategist.
“Make no mistake: America will not be made great again by those who are content to manage our decline,” McConnell said in a statement that was quickly circulated on social media.
“Mitch’s vote today—like so much of the last few years of his career—is one of the great acts of political pettiness I’ve ever seen,” Vance noted in an X post.
A wave of other conservative voices joined the VP, fed up with McConnell’s feud with and behavior toward the president.
“Elbridge Colby is one of the brightest foreign policy minds in the GOP and it’s pathetic watching Mitch McConnell continue to stand with Dems to sabotage President Trump,” Kentucky businessman Nate Morris wrote on X. “This is why whoever replaces Mitch for Senate needs to represent a clean break from him – Time for a change!”
Rep. Mike Collins (R-GA) replied to Vance’s post: “Glad things are changing.”
Meanwhile, Breitbart News referred to McConnell as “China-linked Senator Mitch McConnell” in an X post blasted to its followers. “MITCH MCCONNELL IS A TRAITOR !!” conservative David Hardin declared on X.
Colby was ultimately confirmed by the Senate largely along party line votes, 54-45, with most Democrats once again opposed for the sake of simply disagreeing with Trump.
McConnell suggested in his lengthy statement on Tuesday that Colby’s confirmation could “do irreparable damage to the system of alliances and partnerships” at the Pentagon, without really providing any evidence to back up his claim.
“As I have expressed repeatedly, I remain committed to supporting national security nominees whose records and views make them assets, not liabilities, in the restoration of U.S. hard power,” he said.
Colby has long advocated for a reorientation of American power away from Europe and the Middle East towards the Indo-Pacific as a clearly ascendant China becomes the dominant threat for the foreseeable future. It’s not clear why McConnell thinks that is a bad strategy, especially since the Pentagon has been warning about a rising China for a decade.
McConnell took another shot at Trump this week, suggesting the 47th president’s refusal to blame Russia as the sole aggressor who provoked the war in Ukraine “reflects a gross misunderstanding of the nature of negotiations and leverage.”
In a statement commemorating the third anniversary of the war, McConnell asserted that Vladimir Putin bears sole responsibility for the “human catastrophe” and warned that even if Ukrainian forces surrendered their weapons, “Putin’s aims would not stop with Kyiv.”
“Mistaking this fact is as embarrassing as it is costly,” McConnell said.
He also said that the Biden administration’s “shameful hesitation and half-measures” in responding to Russian aggression were wrong.
While McConnell did not mention Trump by name, he did say that refusing to see that the US wants to defeat Russian aggression would be “even more disgraceful.”
“Refusing to acknowledge Russia as the undeniable and unprovoked aggressor is more than an unseemly moral equivalency — it reflects a gross misunderstanding of the nature of negotiations and leverage,” he said.
McConnell, who is the head of the Senate’s Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, made the statement a few days after Trump said that Trump believed Ukraine started the war with Russia and called Volodymyr Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, “a dictator without elections.”
“America is right to seek an end to this war, but an end that fails to constrain Russian ambition, ensure Ukrainian sovereignty, or strengthen American credibility with both allies and adversaries is no end at all,” McConnell warned.