Vice President J.D. Vance, on Tuesday, criticized the recent voting patterns of Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), saying that it showed a unique degree of “pettiness”.
McConnell was the only Republican who voted against Colby. The Senate had confirmed him earlier in the day by a 54-45 vote. Democrats Elissa Slotkin of Michigan and Mark Kelly of Arizona, as well as the ranking member of the Armed Services Committee Jack Reed of Rhode Island, voted against their party’s majority to support Colby.
Vance wrote on X: “Mitch’s vote today, like so many of his last few years in the political world, is one of the greatest acts of political pettiness that I’ve seen.”
McConnell’s voting against Trump’s cabinet appointees began on Day 1. He started with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
McConnell told his colleagues he felt liberated after stepping down as Senate Republican Leader, allowing him to speak with an independent voice. Vance had to vote the tiebreaker to confirm Hegseth. McConnell also voted against Tulsi Gabrield, Director of National Intelligence, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
McConnell justified the vote on Tuesday by claiming that Colby was not as unique a national security thinker as his supporters had made him out to have been.
“The prioritization Mr. Colby claims is fresh, new and urgently necessary is a return of an Obama-era concept of a la carta geostrategy. The senator stated that abandoning Ukraine and Europe and minimizing the Middle East to focus on the Indo-Pacific was not a clever move.
McConnell’s antipathy towards Trump dates back to his first administration. McConnell’s Senate maneuvers that blocked Merrick Garland as then-President Barack Obama’s nominee for Supreme Court Justice can be credited, but he has continued to be a thorn in Trump’s side ever since.
McConnell, in a speech made on the Senate floor at the hearing for impeachment 2021, called Trump’s actions before the protest on Jan. 6, 2018, at the U.S. Capitol “disgraceful neglect of duty.” Trump responded by calling McConnell a “dour and sullen political hack.”
McConnell joined other GOP senators on Monday to oppose Trump’s tariffs. They were trying to limit Trump’s power to impose them without the approval of Congress. If Congress does not approve the tariffs imposed by the president, they will be invalidated after 60 days.
