Mitch McConnell on his future, flipping the Senate, China, Israel, and Donald Trump

Senator Mitch McConnell discusses his decision to step down as Republican leader in the Senate and his future in the body, aid to Ukraine and the message that would be sent to China, reuniting the Republican party, politics in Frankfort, money coming to the Commonwealth, ending the conflict in Israel, his relationship with President Donald Trump, the new basketball coach at the University of Louisville, and the need for the NCAA...

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
The Senate Republican leader is Mitch McConnell, and he's in studio with us.
Great to see again, Senator,glad to be here. Jerry as always
appreciate you coming by our studio whenyou're home. I know you're home for
another week or so. Yeah,we'll get to talk in sports in a
few minutes because I know you're curiousabout the new basketball coach in the future
there. And we want to sendour heartfelt condolences to Elaine. I'm the

(00:22):
loss for sister. You. Well, that's been a horrible situation for your
family. Yeah, not good.Okay, you've made the decision. You're
not going to continue. You're notgoing to go for leadership again. So
what's your mindset now when your feethit the floor in the morning, when
you wake up, what do yousee ahead? Well, first, let

(00:44):
me just say I've been served longeras a leader than anybody in American history,
eighteen years. So look, ifinally thought it was time to go
in a different direction. But I'mnot leaving the sh and I'm particularly involved
in actually fighting back against the isolationistmovement in my own party and some and

(01:10):
the other as well, and thesymbol of that lately is are we going
to help Ukraine or not? AndI think it's extremely important that we do
that. I'm not a particular fanof the Biden administration, particularly decision to
run out of Afghanistan, which islike sending putin green light. But we

(01:34):
are where we are, and theEuropeans have stepped up. Most of the
money that we are authorizing is beingspent in this country, some of it
in Kentucky because we needed to rebuildour industrial base for what lies ahead with
Russia and now China as a nationalsecurity problem. So I've got just sort

(02:00):
of on my mind for the nextcouple of years. There's something I'm going
to focus on. So you're lookingthrough the whole term. I know that
some people saw it that, ohthis is a this is just a move
to slowly step away. You're stayingthrough your entire term. Oh yeah,
yeah, you know. I Idon't know how many times I can say
that, but that's exactly what I'mgoing to do. When you're talking about

(02:24):
these powers that are threats to us, like China, Russia, or you're
we talking about spending money for moredefense mechanisms to cut down on whatever it
is there because the technology keeps changingand their their their threats come in different
forms. Yeah, I mean thisis the most dangerous time since right after

(02:45):
the fall of the Berlin Wall wehad terrorism. We experienced that ourselves on
nine to eleven. Israelis are certainlyexperiencing it now. But in addition to
the terrorist threats, we have powercompetition. The Russians have become like the
old Soviet Union. The Chinese,which are tough commercial competitors, have now

(03:08):
become national security problems as well.It's time for the democratic world to be
unified. And you've heard somebody arguments. One of the arguments that somehow will
to concentrate on Asia. Well,the President of the Prime Ministry of Japan
said, if you want to sendPresident she a message, beat putin.

(03:30):
That's the view of the South Koreans, the Taiwanese and the Australians. This
is a worldwide problem for democracies andwe need they look, they need our
leadership and we need their partnership.And so that's where I'm going to put
the main part of my focus inthe coming years. You referenced the isolationist

(03:50):
faction of the GOP. Well,everybody's got to sing out of the same
hymnal with the upcoming election eventually,So how is this going to come together
by convention in time? Your owncolleague Rand Paul is trashing you, saying
you're not in touch with people herein Kentucky. So how are we going
to get everybody married again? Well, you know, Rand would be the

(04:12):
first one to say that he's anisolationist. He has been all along.
This isn't anything new for him,and he and I've always disagreed on this
kind of issue. What's made itmore troublesome is it seems to be others
are heading in that direction, makingarguments that I think are easily refuted.
We're not losing any of our troops. The Ukrainians are the one doing the

(04:34):
fighting. If the Russians take Ukraine, some NATO country would be next,
and then we will be right inthe middle of it. So I think,
on the fact basis, this isabsolutely what we ought to do,
and we just disagree on this.But there are a lot of people on
the Republican side though, that seemlike they're doing their own little side show

(04:57):
for TikTok influence or clicks or whateverit happens to be. So how do
you get these people all on boardwith whomever the Republican nominee is? And
I think we know who that is, but whoever happens to be the nominee
coming through the convention, You've gotto get everybody all the eggs in that
one basket in order to defeat theBiden administration. Well, problem on both

(05:20):
sides. You know, Biden's gotproblems too. You know, both these
candidates don't score very well with thepublic, but one of them's going to
win. What am I going todo. I'm going to concentrate on try
to turn my job over to thenext majority leader. I've been the majority

(05:43):
leader, I've been the minority leadermajority better. And a good example of
that was a decision I made whileas a majority leader not to fill the
Supreme Court vacancy even Justice Scalia passedaway. So we've got a good chance,
I think of flipping the Senate nomatter how the presidential race comes out.
I've got thirteen incumbents, not I'mwith a tough race. We've got

(06:08):
West Virginia, which I think we'vewon, which is fifty and good pickup
opportunities in Montana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and believe it or not, Maryland.
We've got a great candidate in Maryland. You wouldn't think we could compete
there, but we are. So. My point is, what's within my
level of impact is trying to flipthe Senate, and I'd like the person

(06:31):
who succeeds me to be the majorityleader. You bet. Are you being
treated any differently now that you saidI'm not going to run for the leader.
I mean there are other people blowingpast in the hallway. Who's that
guy? No, it's pretty muchthe same. I've still got this job
until January, and I'm going toconcentrate, as I said, on inside

(06:53):
on this isolation's issue, and outsideon trying to help us get to the
majority in the Senate. You feellike there's an end in sight for the
Ukraine battle. It's very very important. I think this is the most dangerous
time for the for the free worldsince right after the Berlin Wall fell down

(07:13):
and right before it fell down,and people have always been reluctant. You
know, my party tends to beisolations when there's a Democrat in the White
House. You know, most Republicansvoted against Lynn Lee's going into World War
Two, and Pearl Harbor straightened thatout. And then after World War Two

(07:34):
the most prominent Republican in the countrywas Robert Tafft, son of a president.
He not only opposed Lynn Lee's,he opposed NATO and opposed the Marshall
Plan. So I think once Eisenhowerbecame the nominee president, since then,
on my side, I've been infavor of playing an international role. I

(08:00):
oh, you don't like dabbling instate politics. But it's interesting that the
state legislature has now passed another law. Andy Basheer has his window open and
override and they can come excuse me, the veto and then they can come
back and override. But since herefused to commit to following that twenty twenty
one law regarding filling the seat ofany departing senator, this new state legislature
supermajority passed a different law that sidestepsthe governor. Is the fear that the

(08:24):
Democrats would sell a vacant seat theway the Obama seat was sold by Rod
Legovitch in Illinois. I like thenew law, and I think Stephen Rudy,
who was the author of it,cited bgor good situation where he went
to jail after selling in effect theappointment. I think it's a good idea.

(08:50):
That way the people themselves get todecide who the successor is, and
I support it. Yeah, thatmakes for a separate election and a new
election, as opposed to I thinkthe other idea was you hand the governor
a list of three names and fromthe party. Well, seem only fair
because voters picked someone from a partythat a person from that party would finish.

(09:11):
This is fair to both sides.I think it's a good change.
You mentioned the money in the newone point two billion dollars spending bill.
You said, some's coming to Kentuckytrillion a trillion, Oh, sorry about
that. It includes a defense department, and one of the things that I

(09:35):
try to do is to take careof Kentucky. I think this last appropriation
bill does a good job of that. And we'll also benefit from this Ukraine
bill once to pass it. Thirtyeight different states for benefiting from the Ukraine

(09:56):
supplemental building a equipment, much ofit to replenish our own stockpiles as we
send older weapons to the Ukrainians,so we're giving them our hand me downs.
You're talking about building new stuff forthem, and we need to do
this anyway because we've got two bigpower competitors now, So I mean this
needed to happen in any event,but this invasion of Ukraine has given us

(10:22):
an opportunity to do what we shouldhave been doing anyway. I mean,
Biden is his requests for the DefenseDepartment that we've had to increase them every
year. There's not going to beany issue with money for this Francis Scott
Key Bridge in Baltimore. But thenpeople say, well, they built in
the five years, why is itgoing to take ten to get a new
one. It's an odd situation.In situations like that, whether it's a

(10:46):
hurricane in Florida or an accident likethis, the federal government will step up
and do the line's share of it. On the Israel fronts the sea fire,
you see the protest. I meanyesterday's Saint Patrick's Cathedral in Manhattan.
People come up on the altar.You know how insulting that is to Catholics

(11:07):
on the altar with a ceasefire nowbanner on Easter Sunday, the holiest day
of the year, and then they'rehustled away. But these things, these
protests are everywhere, and people thinkby I just you know, damaging someone
else's holy ceremony, that that's goingto move people's hearts to say, oh

(11:28):
yeah, I believe what you heldup on a sheet when I was at
Eastern mass What is the end gamehere? Well, if they would release
the hostages, could Israel net andYahoo? I know he was out for
a Herni operation, but could wemove him to some Generally, speaking with
our democratic allies, we don't tellthem when to have elections, and we

(11:52):
don't tell him how to conduct militarypolicy. Apparently Benjamin Nettlan, who is
so unpopular in this country that wenow have the administration and the majority leader
of the Senate, basically tell themthey ought to have a new election and

(12:13):
they ought to have this kind ofinvasion instead of some other kind of invasion.
My view is in a democracy,you ought to yield to whoever's in
power, whether you like them ordon't like them, and we ought not
to be telling the Israelis how toconduct the war. Let's assume we had
a similar experience from one of ourneighbors. You think we'd sit passively behind

(12:37):
I think not, And so Ibelieve we all to stick with the Israelis.
I think they're doing the best theycan in a very very challenging situation.
And I don't think we ought totell them what their policy ought to
be or when they ought to havean election. Speaking with Senator Mitch McConnell
here on eight forty whas Louisville,a couple more minutes, you can't.

(13:01):
We haven't talked sports yet. Yeah, first let's talk about Radio City Music
Hall. Three former presidents were onstage. They raised twenty five million dollars
a few nights ago. Are theRepublicans able to counter this sort of fundraising
fire hose? Yeah? I don'tthink either side will be underfunded, let's
put it that way. I thinkmoney won't make the difference. There are

(13:24):
about seven states. We're not oneof them, but they're about seven states
that are going to elect the president, and they're going to be a wash
in all advertising that can possibly bedone by both candidates. Do you have
any contact at all with Donald Trump, the presumptive nominee for the Republic,
Well, I got my hands fullof dealing with the Senate. You guys

(13:46):
don't talk, and eventually there's goingto have to be come to Genie my
time on the Senate. Okay,no, no texts, No. I
thought we were going to talk aboutthe new basketball we are. I just
wanted to know if there's a crackat all in the I mean, he's
called you old crow, you sendhim old crow whiskey. I thought that

(14:07):
was funny. That usually brings somelevity and easing of tensions. I thought
it was funny too. All right, onto basketball. The Louisville Cardinals have
grabbed a guy named Pat Kelsey outof a smaller school. It's College of
Charleston. Our old coach is headedto coach there. Little irony there too.

(14:28):
Have you had any contact with ournew basketball coach? Amazingly I have
because Josh Hurt has become a friend. And the phone rang Thursday and I
answered it. He handed it overto the new coach, so I had
an opportunity to actually speak with him. Think that Josh Hurd and I love

(14:50):
how he got started, and hopefullyhe can get some people back in the
seats and get the program headed backin the right direction. Yeah. I
mean there are some transfers that arethat are coming that he's got from there.
Obviously there's other work to do becausewe've had pretty much every It's kind
of like Junction Boys. Everybody's tookon and so this is a heck of

(15:11):
a rebuild with only a few thousandpeople showing up for the final few games.
I mean, it was in meltdownmode. And I know again we're
talking about bringing factions back together.We've got to get everybody back. Holding
for the team. We've been tenyears since we won a national championship seems
like an eternity. Yeah, itdoes. So I wish him well.
I think there's a great desire tohave a winning program again. Universe,

(15:37):
You'll be behind him. It's toughbeing coach these days with portals and transfers
and IL and IL on top ofit. In fact, a number of
the commissions of the Power five Conferenceshave been in to see me and others
about trying to get some kind offederal legislation to regularize this. Part of

(16:03):
the problem is all the universities don'tagree about exactly what you ought to be
done. But I think what theydo agree on is it would be nice
to have a single set of rulesall across America rather than the state's one
way and the state's a different way. But there's been a breakup of various
conferences or additions packing on here orthere. Whatever you want Louisville obviously in

(16:27):
a power conference, you want Kentucky, Western Kentucky, you want anybody you
can't. You mean you think it'sodd to have Stanford in that Atlantic Coast
Conference. People aren't as good atgeography as they used to be. Check
the standardives results. Yeah, Stanfordin the ACC. Wow. Yeah,

(16:47):
UCLA is coming to the Big ten. I mean whatever it is. None
of that makes sense. But isthe NCAA antiquated as it should just be?
Well it returned to dust. It'scertainly questionable. Certainly questionable. Look
at what Nick Saban had to sayabout he retired. He said, players

(17:12):
who weren't getting enough time going tolead, and it's a big, big
change in the way football and basketballhave handled in the past, and we'll
see where it all plays out.Saban said, no one even asked him
about football anymore, that just whatam I getting? How much time am
I going to get? But nothingabout the actual Alabama program. He was

(17:34):
fascinated by that and also disappointed.Yeah, I've got the Junior Center from
Alabama coming into town tomorrow, andI'm going to tell her I think we
need to get the Justice Department tobreak Alabama up because they ended up in
the top four football normal basketball neverhappened before. Too much power in one

(17:59):
school. Katie Britt. Yeah,she gave the response to the State of
the Union address. She's outstanding youngfemale senator and I think people will enjoy
her. Well. They lampooned heron Saturday Night Live. They got a
famous movie actress. I've had thatexperience as well. You love it,
surpriver of multiple appearances. You lovederision because you put it up on the

(18:26):
walls, your pictures, cartoons.You ought to be proud of it.
Yeah, they wouldn't be putting heron Saturday Night Live. Issue is not
important. Do you show people clipsof you being impersonated on Saturday Night Live?
Is that your ring tone or anything? I thought the guy that did
me did a pretty good job.Senator Mitch McConnell, Great talking to you

(18:48):
again. Next, Jerry, allright, great to see you, and
we're coming back in a few You'reon news radio waight forty wha s