Welcome to POLITICO’s West Wing Playbook, your guide to the preparations, personnel decisions and policy deliberations of Donald Trump’s transition. POLITICO Pro subscribers receive a version of this newsletter first. Send tips | Subscribe here | Email Eli | Email Lauren | Email Lisa | Email Megan PROGRAMMING NOTE: We’ll be off Thursday and Friday for the Thanksgiving holiday but back to our normal schedule on Monday, Dec. 2. We hope absence makes the heart grow fonder. President-elect DONALD TRUMP may soon face a new twist on an old problem on Capitol Hill. Its name: MITCH McCONNELL. The outgoing Senate GOP leader helped shepherd Trump’s biggest policy accomplishments of his first term before breaking with him over the Jan. 6 Capitol attack. Now, as Trump prepares to return to Washington with a more sweeping agenda and plans to push through controversial nominees, McConnell — freed from the constraints of leadership — could soon become an influential swing vote on some issues. McConnell won’t have the gravitas of the Senate majority leader title but, as a senator, he’ll hold a powerful vote in a closely divided chamber and a mission to rid his party of its isolationist tendencies that Trump has driven to the fore. The question is: How will he use it? The tight-lipped Kentucky Republican has so far had little to say about Trump’s most polarizing moves during the transition. But many on Capitol Hill see him as a potential check on the president-elect, who he called a “despicable human being” in oral histories following the 2020 election. McConnell has signaled that he plans to use his post-leadership perch to focus in part on foreign policy issues — an area where he differs sharply from Trump. His allies say he is likely to become more vocal once he hands the Republican leadership reins to Sen. JOHN THUNE (R-S.D.) in January. “This kind of liberates him a little bit,” said Sen. MIKE ROUNDS (R-S.D.). “After the first of the year, he will not be accountable for speaking on behalf of the entire conference. That frees him up to say what he thinks as simply another member.” The new dynamic with McConnell illustrates the challenge Trump will face in navigating the ideological differences within his party as he seeks to enact an array of drastic reforms during his second term, from immigration to trade policy. Republicans are set to control both chambers of Congress and the White House, but parts of Trump’s agenda remain polarizing with segments of his own party. In the Senate, the GOP will be able to lose no more than three votes, assuming Democrats are united in opposition, allowing Vice President JD VANCE to break a tie. Rounds and other Republicans say McConnell is broadly expected to back Trump’s domestic agenda, such as extending the expiring tax cuts that McConnell championed in 2017. He said in a press conference after the election that he is “going to do everything [he] can to help the new administration be successful.” But Trump’s allies on the populist right are skeptical — and they’re already sharpening their knives for McConnell and Senate moderates. “You’ve got to get more aggressive about calling out Mitch McConnell as the problem,” STEVE BANNON, a Trump ally who served as White House chief strategist during the president-elect’s last term, told West Wing Playbook. He said McConnell “opposes MAGA and opposes Trump on every key part of the populist, nationalist agenda.” Bannon, a longtime critic of establishment Republicans, blames McConnell for the downfall of MATT GAETZ, Trump’s first attorney general pick, who dropped his embattled bid for the job amid concerns from some Senate Republicans. McConnell hasn’t publicly weighed in on any of Trump’s selections, but he said Gaetz pulling out “was appropriate.” Other controversial selections — like TULSI GABBARD for director of national intelligence, ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR. for Health and Human Services secretary and PETE HEGSETH for Defense secretary — will be early tests of McConnell’s willingness to defy Trump. All three of those picks have embraced isolationist visions for U.S. foreign policy, including in Ukraine — a view McConnell has vowed to fight after stepping down as leader. “He has a vision about America’s role in the world that is different than the isolationist wing in our party,” said retiring Sen. MITT ROMNEY (R-Utah), a longtime Trump critic. “I think Sen. McConnell will continue to promote that view, but I think you’ll see he overwhelmingly supports President Trump’s policy objectives, with a few differences here and there.” Another potential test is Trump’s idea of using recess appointments to approve nominees while the Senate is out of session. Any breaks from Trump won’t be taken kindly on the right. Bannon says Trump supporters should be prepared to oust Republicans in primaries who defy the president-elect. “People that are sitting there going, ‘this ought to be a moment of unity’ miss the point about the moment of urgency of the Trump revolution,” Bannon said. “You have to seize the institutions now, and the institution we have to seize — one of them — is the Senate. And you’re not going to do that by playing patty-cake with Mitch McConnell.” MESSAGE US — Are you MITCH McCONNELL? We want to hear from you. And we’ll keep you anonymous! Email us at westwingtips@politico.com. Did someone forward this email to you? Subscribe here!
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