How Trump allies are driving major wedge between McConnell and Johnson

29 January 2024

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) is hoping for a bipartisan deal on military aid to Ukraine and U.S./Mexico border security that both House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) and President Joe Biden will agree to.

But according to Politico reporters Jordain Carney and Burgess Everett, some allies of former President Donald Trump are doing everything they can to drive a wedge between McConnell and Johnson.

"Mitch McConnell and Mike Johnson, two wildly different congressional GOP leaders, are about to find out whether they can extract immigration concessions from President Joe Biden — or whether Donald Trump and his allies will pull them apart," Carney and Everett explain in an article published on January 29. "As a bipartisan group of senators labor to deliver a deal that would tie stricter border policies to Ukraine aid, with text expected as early as this week, McConnell and Johnson are facing a unity test that will define their party during the 2024 election cycle."

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McConnell and Johnson have considerably different relationships with Trump.

Johnson is a Trump loyalist who supported his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election results, but there has been a great deal of tension between Trump and McConnell. Trump has been encouraging Senate Republicans to pick someone than McConnell as their leader, and McConnell has responded by ignoring the former president.

"If McConnell can get a majority of his 49 members on board, while keeping Johnson's conservatives from strangling the deal, the GOP can crow that it forced Democrats to swallow an immigration deal that would amount to remarkably right-leaning concessions from Biden," Carney and Everett report. "If the border-Ukraine agreement implodes, Trump will have cemented his return to control over the entire party…. As Congress inches toward a decision on a border-Ukraine deal, conservatives in both chambers are growing bolder in their public criticism and private pushback against party leaders."

The Politico reporters continue, "The former president, now Republicans' likely 2024 nominee, is propelling that rebellion. As the Biden Administration warns Ukraine is effectively out of money, Trump is influencing Johnson's resistance to bipartisan Senate negotiations and mucking up McConnell's plans."

Read Politico's full report at this link.

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