No one in the GOP has done more to push the U.S. Supreme Court to the far right than
Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky), who recently announced that he won't be seeking an eighth term in 2026. After blocking former President Barack Obama's High Court nominee, Merrick Garland, in 2016, the then-Senate majority leader aggressively pushed all three of President Donald Trump's SCOTUS picks: Brett Kavanaugh, Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett.
In 2022, Justices Kavanaugh, Gorsuch and Barrett were part of the 5-4 majority ruling that overturned
Roe v. Wade after 49 years in
Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Center. Yet Trump deeply resents McConnell, and vice versa — even though McConnell gave Trump a lukewarm endorsement in the 2024 election.
In
a biting opinion column published by The Hill on March 10, journalist Juan Williams argues that McConnell, now 83, has done a lot to bring the United States to the "perilous moment" it faces during Trump's second term — despite all the bad blood between him and Trump.
"The bad news for McConnell is that despite his decades towering over Washington as a top GOP leader, he is now eclipsed by President Trump's takeover of his party,"
Williams says. "Trump has called McConnell 'a dour, sullen, and unsmiling political hack' and warned that Republicans would lose if they remained aligned with him. And Trump issued a racially pointed insult to McConnell's wife. McConnell didn’t fire back."
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