National Defense

McConnell Launches Attack On ‘America First’ Despite Trump’s Electoral Mandate

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) giving a press briefing with Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (W.V.), Sen. Steve Daines (Mont.) Sen. John Thune (S.D.), and Sen. Joni Ernst (Iowa). (Screen Capture/CSPAN)

A notable critic of President-elect Donald Trump appears to be gearing up to oppose key parts of the incoming administration’s foreign policy agenda despite America First’s electoral mandate.

Republican Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell is going on offense against the president-elect’s foreign policy worldview, calling on Trump to reject America First’s right’s so-called “flirtation with isolation and decline” in an essay published in Foreign Affairs on Monday. The former Senate Republican leader is also urging the administration to embrace many foreign policy positions that Trump notably rejected during the campaign, including issuing support for additional foreign aid and free trade agreements, solidarity with NATO and more weapons transfers to Ukraine.

“The [Trump] administration will face calls from within the Republican Party to give up on American primacy,” McConnell wrote in Foreign Affairs. “It must reject them. To pretend that the United States can focus on just one threat at a time, that its credibility is divisible, or that it can afford to shrug off faraway chaos as irrelevant is to ignore its global interests and its adversaries’ global designs. America will not be made great again by those who simply want to manage its decline.”

“The response to four years of weakness must not be four years of isolation,” McConnell added.

McConnell’s remarks advocating for an interventionist foreign policy reminiscent of the George W. Bush administration and larger defense budget to deter multiple adversaries raises questions over how far the Kentucky Republican is willing to go in opposing the president-elect’s nominees and agenda.

“We’re in a very, very dangerous world right now, reminiscent of before World War Two,” McConnell told the Financial Times in an interview published on Dec. 11. “Even the slogan is the same. ‘America First.’ That was what they said in the ’30s.”

The former Senate Republican leader appears to be most at odds with Trump over the Ukraine issue. McConnell claims that the Trump administration’s deterrence of Chinese aggression cannot be achieved without preventing a Russian victory in Ukraine.

“Standing up to China will require Trump to reject the myopic advice that he prioritize that challenge by abandoning Ukraine,” McConnell wrote in Foreign Affairs. “A Russian victory would not only damage the United States’ interest in European security and increase U.S. military requirements in Europe; it would also compound the threats from China, Iran, and North Korea.”

Trump has promised to bring an end to the Russia-Ukraine War and has criticized President Joe Biden’s decision to escalate tensions with Russian President Vladimir Putin during the final months of his presidency.

“It’s crazy what’s taking place. It’s crazy. I disagree very vehemently with sending missiles hundreds of miles into Russia,” Trump told TIME during his 2024 person of the year interview on Thursday. “Why are we doing that? We’re just escalating this war and making it worse. That should not have been allowed to be done. Now they’re doing not only missiles, but they’re doing other types of weapons. And I think that’s a very big mistake.”

McConnell’s critique of Trump’s foreign policy record and worldview follows the president-elect’s decisive electoral victory against Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris, which marked the first time a Republican candidate won the so-called popular vote since 2004.

McConnell was reportedly one of the four senators who tanked former Republican Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz’ bid to serve as Trump’s attorney general and has yet to meet with Pete Hegseth or Tulsi Gabbard.

Though McConnell has stepped down from Senate GOP leadership, he has pledged to spend the remainder of his time in the Senate pushing back against Trump’s foreign policy worldview. The Kentucky Republican will be the incoming chair of the Senate Appropriations Defense subcommittee, giving the former Senate Republican leader a high profile to advocate for a larger defense budget and additional military aid for Ukraine.

“Members of my own party now contend that, somehow, the stability of markets and the deterrence of adversaries are achievable without tending to the requirements of American hard power,” McConnell said during a keynote speech at an American Enterprise Institute event that celebrated the Kentucky senator’s foreign policy views on Nov. 12. “Confronting this particular challenge is where I now place my focus. Shoring up American primacy, combatting the dangerous tendency toward isolationism, and urgently restoring America’s hard power: this is how I will spend a great deal of the time I have left in public life.”

McConnell is up for reelection in 2026 and has not commented on whether he plans to seek an eighth term.

The Trump-Vance transition team did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment on McConnell’s criticisms of the president-elect’s foreign policy views and attack on the America First movement.