Vice President JD Vance took aim at Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) for his vote against one of President Donald Trump‘s Pentagon nominees.
Elbridge Colby, Trump’s pick for undersecretary of defense for policy, was confirmed by the Senate on Tuesday in a 54-45 vote. McConnell was the only Republican to vote against Colby’s confirmation, while three Democrats, Sens. Jack Reed (D-RI), Elissa Slotkin (D-MI), and Mark Kelly (D-AZ), voted in favor of his confirmation.
Vance personally introduced Colby for his confirmation hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee last month. In response to a post on X, which included McConnell’s statement, the vice president called the Kentucky Republican’s vote “political pettiness.”
“Mitch’s vote today—like so much of the last few years of his career—is one of the great acts of political pettiness I’ve ever seen,” Vance said.
Mitch’s vote today—like so much of the last few years of his career—is one of the great acts of political pettiness I’ve ever seen. https://t.co/Qg6eAOqW4J
— JD Vance (@JDVance) April 8, 2025
McConnell issued a lengthy statement Tuesday explaining why he opposed Colby’s confirmation to the Pentagon position. He cited Colby’s isolationism and past statements on Iran and the Middle East.
“Elbridge Colby’s long public record suggests a willingness to discount the complexity of the challenges facing America, the critical value of our allies and partners, and the urgent need to invest in hard power to preserve American primacy. The prioritization that Mr. Colby argues is fresh, new, and urgently needed is, in fact, a return to an Obama-era conception of a la carte geostrategy,” McConnell said.
“Abandoning Ukraine and Europe and downplaying the Middle East to prioritize the Indo-Pacific is not a clever geopolitical chess move. It is geostrategic self-harm that emboldens our adversaries and drives wedges between America and our allies for them to exploit,” he added.
He concluded his lengthy statement by declaring, “Make no mistake: America will not be made great again by those who are content to manage our decline.”
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McConnell, 83, stepped down from Senate GOP leadership at the end of the last Congress and has said he will not seek another term in his Senate seat in 2026.
Since stepping down from leadership, he has voted against several key nominees pushed forward by the Trump administration.