Senate

McConnell dealt blow by Trump on border bill

by Alexander Bolton - 02/07/24 6:00 AM ET

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) lost a significant battle to former President Trump and his supporters with the collapse of the bipartisan border bill Tuesday, underscoring how his control of his conference is increasingly on difficult ground.

McConnell argued to colleagues last week that the border legislation would crack down on the huge flow of migrants across the border and possibly would be the last chance for years to reform outdated immigration and asylum law.

But he faced a big political headwind from Trump, who repeatedly called on GOP lawmakers to reject any deal that didn’t give them “everything” they wanted.

Trump on Monday declared on social media that “only a fool, or a Radical Left Democrat, would vote for this horrendous Border Bill” and blasted it as “a great gift to the Democrats, and a Death Wish for The Republican Party.”

In the end, McConnell acknowledged there was no path forward for the bill, a turn of events that left serious questions over whether Congress would approve new funding for Ukraine in its war with Russia, a key priority for the Senate GOP leader.

There are a couple of big factors that explain why it is becoming more difficult for McConnell to steer the GOP in his preferred direction.

He’s certainly feeling the absence of longtime allies who have retired from the Senate and could be counted on in the past to get major bills passed: former GOP Sens. Roy Blunt (Mo.), Rob Portman (Ohio), Richard Shelby (Ala.), Richard Burr (N.C.), Pat Roberts (Kan.) and Lamar Alexander (Tenn.).

Many of them have been replaced with more MAGA-aligned Republicans who won election to the Senate with Trump’s backing.

The second coming of Trump, who has repeatedly feuded with McConnell and now seems certain to be his party’s presidential nominee this fall, is another big problem for the Senate GOP leader.

Since Senate Republicans started working on a border deal in early October, Trump has steadily grown his support within the Senate GOP conference. At least 30 GOP senators have formally endorsed his presidential campaign.

The senators most aligned with Trump are also the most vocal in criticizing McConnell.

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Two first-term lawmakers — Sens. JD Vance (R-Ohio) and Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.) — who won with Trump’s endorsement in 2022 took the lead in bashing the bipartisan border security deal Tuesday.

“The leadership really screwed this up,” Vance declared at a midday press conference “I think they made a series of political arguments that were never going to actually fly. They knew, or at least should have known, that this bill was never actually going to get there.”

Vance, who replaced Portman, slammed it as a “Ukraine-first bill masquerading as a border security bill.”

“Certainly on the Ukraine question, I think leadership is massively out of touch with Republican voters. We are not as a Republican Party behind unlimited, unaccounted-for aid to Ukraine without any goals in mind,” he said.

Schmitt, who replaced Blunt, argued “the language” of the bill “is actually worse than anyone could have possibly imagined.”

He called the bill a “total disaster” and urged his GOP colleagues to vote against advancing it on the floor.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), appearing Tuesday next to Vance, Schmitt, and GOP Sens. Mike Lee (Utah), Ron Johnson (Wis.) and Roger Marshall (Kan.), called on McConnell to step down from his leadership post.

“I think a Republican leader should actually lead this conference and should advance the priorities of Republicans,” he added.

Asked to respond to Cruz’s comments, McConnell quipped: “I think we can all agree that Sen. Cruz is not a fan,” alluding to Cruz’s long history of taking shots at him.

But McConnell also acknowledged his efforts to pass the border security and Ukraine funding package had fallen short.

He said Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), a close Trump ally, shut the door on passing a $118 billion defense supplemental spending bill with border reforms, tacitly acknowledging Trump’s grip on the party — particularly his grip on House Republicans — had doomed the bill.

“It looks to me and to most of our members as if we have no real chance here to make a law,” McConnell told reporters Tuesday afternoon, noting the changing political environment.

“Things have changed over the past four months, and it’s been made perfectly clear by the Speaker he wouldn’t take it up even if we sent it to him,” he said of the failed package.

McConnell’s top deputy, Senate Republican Whip John Thune (S.D.), said Tuesday there wouldn’t be enough Republican votes later in the week to even begin debate on the bill.

“I would expect that the motion to proceed to the bill will fail,” he said.

McConnell deployed his usual tactics to get the border bill passed through the Senate: He tapped a credible intermediary, Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.), to extract significant concessions from Democrats, and he got the White House to engage in the talks.

The resulting bill picked up key endorsements, including from the National Border Patrol Council, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board.

But while McConnell hailed the deal as “a quality product” and touted what he saw as major Republican wins, many Republican senators didn’t see it the same way or didn’t want to risk getting bashed by Trump for voting for it.

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), a member of McConnell’s leadership team who has made it known he would like to become Senate GOP leader someday, said immigration is a very tough issue to manage.

But he said the task was made even more difficult by the leader’s decision to handle all the negotiation behind closed doors instead of in open committee sessions.

“It was just inherently hard, but I also think the negotiation essentially in secret did not help because different pieces of it leaked,” he said. “And then people began to take positions. People began to get suspicious because it was secret and wondered what’s in it.”

“And when it finally broke [into public,] the idea that we’re all going to vote on this Wednesday is a bridge too far,” he said, adding that he will vote against beginning debate on the legislation.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), who worked closely with McConnell to get the Ukraine funding and border security package through the Senate, said the collapse of the bill shows Trump’s influence is spreading across the Capitol.

“Within 24 hours of releasing the long-awaited bipartisan compromise that our Republican colleagues demanded as condition to move Ukraine forward, Leader McConnell and the Republican conference did a 180-degree reversal. They were quaking at the knees at the fear of Donald Trump,” Schumer said, calling it a “bad moment for the Republic.”