GOP’s Lee says border bill shows need for new Senate GOP leader

Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) called for Sen. Mitch McConnell (Ky.) to be replaced as Senate Republican leader Sunday, denouncing the new border security deal McConnell supports as “an unmitigated disaster.”

“This feels like an elaborate practical joke. But it’s not funny. Not one bit,” Lee wrote on social media when the details of the bill were made public.

“I cannot understand how any Republican would think this was a good idea – or anything other than an unmitigated disaster. WE NEED NEW LEADERSHIP — NOW,” he posted on X, formerly known as Twitter.

Lee’s harsh criticism of McConnell’s leadership of the Senate GOP conference is nothing new; he supported Sen. Rick Scott’s (R-Fla.) unsuccessful bid to topple the long-serving Senate Republican leader after the 2022 midterm election.

But the bipartisan proposal to fund the war in Ukraine, provide military aid to Israel and reform the nation’s asylum laws is giving Lee and other Senate conservatives who are critical of McConnell new ammunition to take shots at their leadership.

Lee has mocked McConnell for working closely with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) on the bill, calling their relationship a “bromance.” He’s urging 41 members of the Senate GOP conference to block the bill from moving forward.

He made that comment in response to reporting on social media that Schumer said he had “never worked more closely with Leader McConnell on any piece of legislation as we did on this.”

In another post on X, Lee vented his frustration at what he called the “Law Firm of Schumer & McConnell,” accusing the Senate leaders of “perpetually trying to normalize a corrupt approach to legislating.”

Lee last month said that President Biden “has more than enough tools at his disposal” to stop the flood of migrants across the border and argued the migrant surge was not caused by “inadequate legislation on the books.”

But Senate colleagues noted that Lee supported legislative reforms in 2019, when Donald Trump was president.

“We need to fix the loopholes that the cartels and their smugglers are using to take advantage of us and the desperate migrants they are trafficking,” he said in May of 2019.

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) also took a shot at McConnell on social media Sunday by highlighting Schumer’s quote about working closely with McConnell.

“That’s the problem,” Hawley, who also opposed McConnell’s election as leader in November of 2022, posted on X.

Updated at 3:30 p.m.