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- McConnell said the GOP will “make sure Joe Biden is a moderate” if they retake control of Congress.
- During an appearance on “Fox News Sunday,” the GOP leader blasted Biden’s tenure in office.
- McConnell said if the GOP holds power, he will work with the administration to find common ground.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell on Sunday said that Republicans will “make sure Joe Biden is a moderate” if the party regains control of Congress in the upcoming midterm elections.
During an appearance on “Fox News Sunday,” the Kentucky Republican told anchor Dana Perino — a former White House press secretary under ex-President George W. Bush — that Republicans would prioritize issues they have sought to hold influence over since Biden entered the White House.
“Well our agenda next year, if we’re fortunate to be in a majority, will be focused on exactly what you and I’ve been talking about — crime, education, beefing up the defense of our country,” he said.
He added: “We got big power competition with the Russians and the Chinese. We need to meet the demands of the international situation. So all of those will be on our agenda.”
McConnell said that the economy, the “precipitous” withdrawal from Afghanistan, and energy production are all issues that the administration has fumbled.
“I think they’re headed toward a pretty good beating in the fall election,” he told Perino.
McConnell — who has served in the Senate since 1985 and was its majority leader from 2015 to 2021 — has a long personal and working relationship with Biden, who represented Delaware in the upper chamber from 1973 to 2009.
However, McConnell reiterated that he would move the administration’s agenda in a more conservative direction.
“We will not have the presidency for two more years,” he said. “Obviously, we will have to work with the administration to see what we can agree on.”
He continued: “Let me put it this way. Biden ran as a moderate. If I’m the majority leader in the Senate and Kevin McCarthy is the speaker of the House, we’ll make sure Joe Biden is a moderate.”
McConnell has been denounced by Democrats for years for his hardball legislative tactics when he controlled the agenda, most notably in 2016 when he blocked then-President Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nomination of then-Judge Merrick Garland.
After Donald Trump won the 2016 presidential election and took office, the former president was able to fill the vacancy that was held open for months with a conservative jurist — Neil Gorsuch. McConnell also helped Trump fill several lower court vacancies left open after slowing down the process for Obama to make appointments when Republicans took over the Senate for the last two years of the Democratic president’s White House tenure.
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