President Biden said Wednesday that he was sorry to hear Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) is stepping down and praised him for his honesty.
“I’m sorry to hear McConnell stepped down. … I’ve trusted him, and we have a great relationship. We fight like hell. But he has never, never, never misrepresented anything. I’m sorry to hear he’s stepping down,” Biden said of his former longtime colleague in the Senate.
McConnell announced the decision to leave his leadership post in November in a speech on the Senate floor Wednesday. He said he plans to serve out the remainder of his term, which ends in January 2027.
Biden, 81, and McConnell, 82, have a long-standing relationship as both staples of the U.S. Senate. They have a history of cutting major deals and finding common ground on policy issues, most famously when they struck a deal to temporarily extend the Bush tax cuts and raise the debt limit and avoid a national default in 2011.
McConnell visited the White House just a day before his major announcement, meeting with the three other congressional leaders over government funding.
When McConnell froze up during a public event in Kentucky in August, Biden reached out to him and told reporters he had no concerns about McConnell’s ability to do his job. At the time, the president said McConnell “was his old self.”
The Kentucky Republican has yet to endorse former President Trump, Biden’s likely GOP rival in November, and the two have a frosty relationship since McConnell refused to back Trump’s lie that the 2020 election was stolen.