'Too little, too late': How McConnell brought America to 'this perilous moment'

10 March

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."

Williams continues, "The only public shot McConnell ever took at Trump came after the January 6, 2021 riot at the Capitol, saying he was 'morally responsible.' Yet, when it came time to act, he voted to acquit Trump. The weak explanation: 'We have a criminal justice system in this country.' According to the New York Times, at the same time, McConnell told advisers in private: 'The Democrats are going to take care of the son of a b**** for us."

Williams notes that McConnell "tried to regain some dignity by defying Trump with votes against Trump's nominations of Pete Hegseth for defense secretary, Tulsi Gabbard for director of national intelligence and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for Health and Human Services secretary." But he considers such votes "too little too late."

"Despite a few good votes on bad nominees," Williams writes, "the history books will still highlight McConnell's power plays over the years to polarize the Senate with his hard-right ideological agenda. McConnell can't erase the procedural tricks to block President Obama's judicial appointments, thwarting voters who elected a Democratic president and a Democratic Senate majority to nominate and confirm judges."

According to Willliams, the fact that many Republicans "hate" McConnell "because Trump told them to" doesn't erase his history.

"For the history books," Williams writes, "he will be the main player paving the way for Trump…. McConnell will go down in history not as a statesman, but as the man who brought us to this perilous moment. That's not trashing you, senator. It's simply stating a fact."

Juan Williams' full opinion column for The Hill is available at this link.

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