No Republican has done more to push the United States' federal courts to the far right than former Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky), who blocked former President Barack Obama's U.S. Supreme Court nominee, Merrick Garland, in 2016 after Justice Antonin Scalia's death and went to aggressively champion all three of President Donald Trump's High Court nominees: Amy Coney Barrett, Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch. The High Court now has a 6-3 GOP-appointed supermajority, and McConnell played a key role in that.

Yet deep resentment of McConnell is widespread in the MAGA movement, and McConnell's lukewarm endorsement of Trump in 2024 didn't erase the animosity that many MAGA Republicans still have for him because of his vehement criticism of Trump following the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol Building.

In an article published by CNN on September 25, reporter David Wright stresses that some of the Republicans who once interned for McConnell are now distancing themselves from him.

"On the precipice of retirement, Mitch McConnell has become a pariah among the Republicans trying to succeed him," Wright explains. "The top three Republicans running in Kentucky's Senate primary started in state politics interning for McConnell. Two of them once referred to him as a mentor. Now, they are racing to distance themselves, insulting not just McConnell, but their rivals for alleged closeness to him. It's a reflection of how President Donald Trump has all but extinguished the influence of any challengers within the GOP."

Wright notes that Rep. Andy Barr (R-Kentucky) once described McConnell as a "mentor," and a group associated with the Club For Growth is attacking him for it. Barr, however, has "worked to distance himself from McConnell," according to Wright.

Similarly, former Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron once said he was "proud to call" McConnell a "mentor" but is now showing a "new willingness to criticize" him.

Meanwhile, ultra-MAGA candidate Nate Morris is attacking Barr and Camerson as "McConnell's boys" and says they have "the stench of Mitch."

Read the full CNN article at this link.

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