as the cliche asks us, our species tells us everything. there is a season and a time to every purpose. under heaven to serve kentucky

in the sun has been the honor of my life. to lead my republican colleagues. such a man with a harsh privilege. but one of life's most underrated, appreciated talents is to know when it's time to move on to life's next chapter. senate republican leader mitch mcconnell announced in february 2024 that he would step down from the top leadership post at the end of the year after 17 years of guiding his gop colleagues. he has become the longest serving leader in senate history over the next hour or so, c-span will dig into our archives to look back at the career and legacy of senator mitch mcconnell. we'll start with what the senator had to say in 2010 about the role of the senate. then senator mitch mcconnell from 2016, about the job of majority leader.

the senate works at its best when it's unlimited debate and no rules are germane. i know that's hard for people to understand, but in the united states senate, if a bill is called up, you're going to offer any kind of amendment on any subject to that bill. and it has unlimited debate unless those senators want to end the debate. so we are free flowing and slow moving legislative body. in fact, washington was it was reported to have been i ask as he presided over the constitution convention, what do you think the senate is going to be like? and i'm told that washington replied, it's going to be like the saucer under the teacup. the tea is going to slosh out of the cup, down to the saucer and cool off. in other words, it was sort of going to be the the brakes of the american legislator process. the house they anticipated would be a place of great passion and quick reaction and that's the

way it's remained for all these years. the house can do things very quickly. typically does two things quickly. the majority can run the house and the senate. it takes a superman party of 60 to do almost everything. so rarely does either party. achieve a 60 vote threshold in the senate, which means that the minority party has some power. some power to insist on changing things occasionally, the power to stop something altogether. so things don't move quickly in the senate. it's the cooling off place as washington predicted. you know, senators are in here all the time in and out, because my job as the majority leader is to set the schedule to decide what we're going to debate. doesn't always guarantee the outcome because the senators are really unusual about it. it requires 60 votes to do most things and only rarely does one party have 60. so you have to talk to each other.

you can't do much in the senate on a strictly partizan basis. so this is a beehive of activity during the during the week. it is a very, very challenging job. you certainly can't make everybody happy. i mean, here's a way of looking at it through some process. you found yourself the leader of your party in the senate. you've got a bunch of class president types who all have sharp elbows and big egos and on any given day, they probably think they could do the job better than you. it's all carrot, no stick. and usually if you try to punish somebody, the next time you pay a heavy price for it. joining us to discuss the legacy and career of senator mitch mcconnell is michael tackett, the deputy washington bureau chief for the associate press and author of a new biography on senator mcconnell titled the price of power how mitch mcconnell mastered the senate, changed america and lost his party.

michael tackett you write in the book that senator mcconnell is the most impactful senate leader since lbj. why? well, i think he could draw a straight line between some of his decisions and the effect on the country by blocking merrick garland from the supreme court, then by engineering the confirmations of three supreme court justices. you can draw a straight line between that and the elimination of roe versus wade, the elimination of affirmative action, and the elimination of the chevron decision. those are three pretty sturdy legs of a stool that say he had a huge impact and changed america. as your title says. absolutely. i mean, you know, america is a different place because of his leadership. you also write in the book that since he came to the senate in 1985, it has been his life. the institute. what did you mean? he lives a rather hermetic world where he doesn't live very far from the capital and he has a security detail that takes him from his house to the office. so it's a short journey.

he spends a lot of time in the well of the senate talking to members, giving his speeches, and then he goes home frequently to louisville on the weekends. but those are like the three corners of his world, and he doesn't vary from that very often. so the decision to then leave this post, if it's your life, how did he come to it? well, i think he really he summed it up pretty nicely in his farewell address. i mean, there were competing things. one was the politics of the moment were shifting to was it was important to know when to step down. and the third thing was, as he said, was father time remains undefeated. and that was an acknowledgment of his age and his health. and let's talk about that. mitch mcconnell made major news for his health in july of 2023 when he appeared to freeze during a news conference on capitol hill. here's that moment. well, good afternoon, everyone. we're on a path to finishing the nda.

this week has been good, bipartisan cooperation and a string of. ambitious. emissions. anything else you want to say? i'm sure, scott, that you do. do you want to say anything else to the press about what will take place? let's go back to you. go ahead, john. michael, take it. what did his office say about that moment? what did he tell you when he sat with you for interviews for your book? well, initially he didn't want to talk very much about it, but the one thing he did say was he

said, i didn't really think i had a medical problem. i thought i had a public relations problem because he went back to the office. he felt pretty much okay and he wanted to go right back out there and eventually did go back out and answer questions. but then as things progressed, you know, we talked more about it and i interviewed him once in louisville shortly after that first episode, and he said, i think it was just simple dehydration. that's what we think it was. it was kind of interesting because we both had bottles of water there during the interview for about an hour. and i drank my whole bottle of water and he did not drink his. but he was convinced that it wasn't anything too serious. and then a short time later, he had a second episode. so clearly there were things he didn't tell me. despite my independent reporting on this, indicated that it was probably a consequence of his concussion when he had had a bad fall. and as you said, he did have another freezing episode. and then just most recently at the capitol, he had another fall. how much did his health factor into his decision to step down

as the leader of the party in the senate? i think it definitely was a healthy percentage of it, but it was also just the simple fact of age, you know, turning 82 years old, that's quite a milestone. he knows that it's he knows the demands of the job. unlike many others. and so he knew really that he had to kind of stipulate to the reality years of age, beyond his age and his health. what were the other reasons? well, there's shifting sands in the republican party, i think had a lot to do with it, too. i mean, there's a restive faction on the right within the senate, and he had to deal with them. and and he saw the politics changing because of the support for president trump. they have two very different views of what the republican party is. senator mcconnell's view is more of a classic reagan republican point of view. president elect trump's is more of a populist leaning rightward view of the republican party, and he has ample support for

that. now, in the senate. one key item of his legacy is, of course, the courts and you touched on that at the beginning. mitch mcconnell's legacy is tied in large part to the impact he's had on the courts and shaping the federal courts. major changes in the senate started happening, as you know, in late 2013. want to show our viewers, then, majority leader harry reid with his announcement on lowering the number of votes needed to advance lower court judicial nominees. and then we'll hear the reaction from then minority leader mitch mcconnell. the change we proposed today would ensure executive and judicial nominations. an up or down vote on confirmation? yes. no. the rule change will make cloture for all nominations other than the supreme court. a majority threshold vote yes or no. the senate is a living thing,

and to survive, it must change as it has over the history of this great country. to the average american. adapting the rules to make the senate work again is just common sense. this is not about democrats. first, republicans. this is about making washington work regardless of who's in the white house or who controls the senate. to remain relevant and effective as an institution, the senate must evolve to meet the challenges of this modern era. if you think this is in the best interests of the united states senate and the american people to make advise and consent, in effect mean nothing. obviously, you can break the rules to change the rules to achieve that. but but some of us have been around here long enough to know the shoe is sometimes on the other foot. the strategy of distract,

distract, distract. chuck is getting old. i don't think the american people are fooled about this. if our colleagues want to work with us to fill judicial vacancies like we've been doing all year, 99% of judges confirm obviously we're willing to do that if we want to play games set yet another precedent that you will no doubt come to regret. say to my friends on the other side of the aisle, you'll regret this and you may regret it a lot sooner than you think. let me be clear. the democratic playbook of broken promises, double standards and raw power. the same playbook that got us obama care has to end. it may take the american people to end it, but it has to end.

from the senate floor in 2013. michael tackett housing difficult was this moment. i think it was a seminal moment and a change of the direction of the country in ways that harry reid, perhaps didn't envision. we just some background on this. senator mcconnell had worked on supreme court nominations back in the 1960s when he was a senate staffer and he's seen to of the president's nominees rejected. so he's really intimately familiar with the process. he had been through the robert bork hearings. he had been through the clarence thomas hearings. the supreme court was something that was very familiar territory to him. and i think he knew that's where this would lead eventually. it wasn't just district court judges or even appeals court judges or executive nominations, but it would eventually lead the supreme court. and he had a choice, though. he could have said, well, i'm not going to take that path. instead, he didn't. he took it as an opening and he remade the supreme court sort of

in a right leaning conservative image. let's go forward three years to 2016 after this. and the death of supreme court justice antonin scalia. mitch mcconnell had become majority leader by then and declared this about the vacancy. mr. president, the next justice could fundamentally alter the direction of the supreme court and have a profound impact on our country. so, of course, of course, the american people should have a say in the court's direction. it is a president's constitutional right to nominate a supreme court justice, and it is the senate's constitutional right to act as a check on a president and withhold its consent as chairman. grassley and i declared weeks ago and reiterated personally under president obama, the senate will continue to observe the biden rule. so that the american people have a voice in this momentous

decision. the american people may well elect a president who decides to nominate judge garland for senate consideration. the next president may also nominate somebody very different. either way, our view is this give the people a voice in filling this vacancy. michael tackett you hear mitch mcconnell there say the biden rule, what was it and what was he using it for? well, the first thing to note is it wasn't a rule. they call it a rule. biden, when he was on the judiciary committee, had suggested that, you know, it might not be a great idea to confirm a supreme court justice in a presidential election year if the president was of one party in the senate, was of another. it was never put to a test and it was never a rule. but this is a very good illustration of senator

mcconnell as a tactician. he tried to find rationales for his decision to block merrick garland. they talked up the biden rule. they talked up things that senator schumer had said. none of these are in the senate rulebook, none of them are real precedent. the only thing they could even come close to was back in the 1800s, and that wasn't a great precedent either. but he had something that mattered more. he had a majority, and he used that majority to change the rules and to eventually change the supreme court. what was the reaction to his decision there? hugely critical. people were very, you know, mindful of the idea that this was truly the nuclear option as they like to call it, their. i think people thought it was unfair that merrick garland was clearly a qualified nominee and the interesting thing was he didn't even want to put it to a vote. he didn't even want garland to have so much as a senate hearing. so for the talk about what the

american people decide, well, the people's representatives never really got to decide about merrick garland. and he made sure that happened. he was 100% response able for that happening. what did he tell you about his decision? he considers his work on the supreme court the most significant thing that he has done and the rest of the federal judiciary, the most significant thing he's done is senate leaders. so he did not look at that with regret. he did not look at it as an abuse of power, even though many of his critics did think it was an abuse of power. instead, he looked at it as something that one in the majority could do and he took advantage of it. let's continue this with his legacy on this. it's now early 2017 and president trump sends up the nomination of neil gorsuch to replace antonin scalia on the supreme court. it needs 60 votes to avoid a filibuster. and majority leader mcconnell warned democrats it's about their upcoming vote. it should be unsettling to

everyone that our colleagues across the aisle have brought the senate to this new low and on such an impressive nominee with such broad bipartisan support. judge gorsuch is independent. he's fair. we've got one of the most impressive resumes you'll ever see. and he's earned the highest possible rating from the group. the democratic leader call the gold standard for evaluating judicial nominations. no one seriously disputes his sterling credentials to serve on the court. and yet in the judiciary committee, democrats just withheld support from him on the floor. democrats say they launch a partizan filibuster against him. something republicans have never done. no one in the senate republican conference. no one has ever voted to filibuster a supreme court nominee.

not one republican has ever done that. the senate did then vote to block the gorsuch nomination. it needed 60 votes to advance. it got 55. and the majority leader returned to the floor to change the rule on supreme court nominees, also known as the nuclear option. our democratic colleagues have done something today that is unprecedented in the history of the senate. unfortunately, it has brought us to this point. we need to restore the norms and traditions of the senate and get past us. unprecedented partizan filibuster. therefore, i raised a point of order that the vote on cloture under the precedent set on november 21st, 2013, is a majority vote on all nominees. the precedent of november 21st, 2013 did not apply to nominees to the supreme court. those nominations are considered under the plain language rule

22. the point of order is not sustained appeal. the ruling of the chair, michael tackett, what was he doing there on the senate floor in 2017? he was setting us up for getting rid of the filibuster for supreme court judges, and he was, in effect, doing what he accused harry reid of doing, which was to change the rule, to break the rule and set the country on a different course, because you have this sort of ideological sort now that's happened with the two parties and it's playing out in the courts. and so what is what does that led to? it's led to a supreme court where people seem to have slightly less trust in their decisions and seem to think that their decisions are more politically motivated. so that's one of the consequences. does the senator acknowledge that? no, he doesn't. i mean, he he thinks that, again, that this was a fair minded thing to do, that the democrats started the fight and he ended it with his decision about gorsuch. how did it change the

institution of the senate? well, it set us up for a super majority on the court because, of course, as we know, there were two more vacancies during president trump's first term. so it altered the ideological balance of the court ultimately in in so doing, it changed. you know, in one case, 50 years of precedent in another case, 40 years of precedent. and another case, almost 40 years of precedent. chapter 22 of your book is titled the mcconnell court, who came up with that term and why that was justice samuel alito, who who decided that? and i think it's because justice alito, who was generous with me and i was able to interview him in his chambers. he thinks that mcconnell's had the guiding hand in shaping the federal judiciary from the district court to the appellate court to the supreme court. and he gave him credit by calling it the mcconnell court. he sees a lasting legacy there

for mitch mcconnell. there's no question. i mean, he he knows that he and senator mcconnell sort of view the world the same way from a legal perspective on most issues. and so this was something, of course, that he embraced because it's the outcome he preferred. we're talking about the legacy and career of senator mitch mcconnell, who has said that he will step down as the majority leader at the end of 2024. and joining us for that conversation is michael tackett, who has written a new biography of the of the senate leader the price of power how mitch mcconnell mastered the senate, changed america and lost his party. what kind of access did you have to the senator? well, much more than i would have thought. i didn't really know senator mcconnell when i broached the idea of doing the biography. and i was quite surprised that in the first meeting i laid out what i wanted to do and i said, i don't want to do a screed from the left or a screed from the

right. i want to do an honest, objective account of your life and career. and i said and i would have to have total editorial control over it, because if i didn't, the book wouldn't be credible. and if it's not credible, it's not worth doing. and to senator mcconnell's credit, he recognized that and he said, okay, i'll cooperate with you. and he said, and i've got these archives. i suppose those will be interesting to you. and then he said, and i'll tell people, i know that it's okay with me if they talk to you. so that broke open what had otherwise been a bit of a vault in washington. you know, not that many people know that much about senator mcconnell. even some senators i interviewed had known him for 20 years, said i'm a friend of his, but i don't really know him. and so that set me off on about three and a half years of exploring this. and senator mcconnell was very generous with his time. how many hours? more than 50 hours of interviews. one on one. then he did open his archives to

me. and his archives are fascinating because the beauty for for my purposes were his parents were notorious pack rats and so was he. so they kept everything. so i'm looking at, you know, locks from a haircut when he was a baby. and, you know, childhood birthday cards and high school essays and letters, you know, that he wrote to his parents when he was a young man. a lot of them very revealing. and also then a lot of good historical records about his acts in the senate and what the rationales were behind that. so from that perspective, there was extraordinary access. you also discovered oral history that the senator had been doing year after year. describe what what he had been, how he had been keeping record of his own history. so i think that senator mcconnell at some point said, i hope my life is one day studied in 1990, he had won reelection

to the senate. so i think he felt confident at that point that he was on a path that he could stay in the senate for some time. and he started the mcconnell center at his alma mater, the university of louisville, and then in 1995, he started to do these annual oral histories. he started off with a kentucky historian, and they would have sort of a freewheeling conversation in those oral histories. started with his early life, his parents as growing up. eventually, he caught up to the point where they're basically debriefs on the entire previous year. so from my perspective, those were invaluable because his initial thought was that these would not be released until he was out of office. but they were in the archives and he agreed to let me see them. and so a lot of it was very candid. you know, i was surprised in some respects, like he would say, oh, you know, that was the dumbest thing i ever did, or that was a stupid thing to do or. and he was candid about individual people as well,

thinking, i think, you know, that, well, it'll be okay because i'll be out of office before anybody sees that. but you know, to my benefit, people could see it now. let's talk about his early life as a child. he did contract polio. how did that shape him and impact him as a senator and as the leader of the party in that chamber? i think it shaped him in a fundamental way. so just to set the scene for that, this is in the early 1940s in the united states. polio was striking fear in the hearts of american families because it affects primarily children. many of them were left in wheelchairs. you know, it spawns the march of dimes by franklin roosevelt, among other things. so it really is something that parents were terrified about. so when he was two years old, he comes to his mother and he's crying because his finger hurts and it's red and it looks like it's infected. she takes him to the small town doctor and he said, just an infection and he'll be fine.

so then as mothers started to notice, signs that said he was not at all fine, he was stiffening, feeling clammy, and she was really worried. so she took him to a doctor in a larger town, and he instantly diagnosed it as polio. now, the fortuitous thing was they were staying at her sister's home in five points alabama, five points. alabama's on the border with georgia. his father was deployed in world war two. so he was gone. and that's only an hour from warm springs, georgia, which is where franklin roosevelt had established the nation's premiere polio rehabilitation institute. so his mother gets an appointment, gets to have him seen and treated at warm springs. and they said it wasn't a severe enough case to be outpatient, but they gave her very precise instructions and wasn't severe enough to be in-patient, rather. so they gave him very clear instructions on outpatient treatment with one thing that just was astounding was they said he can't walk like tell him

not to walk because they thought that would impede his recovery. so she was left with this four times a day, 45 minutes a day, do manual, physical therapy on him and confine him to a bedroom and tell him not to walk. so from ages 2 to 4, that's his existence. so that was very life shaping. and i ended up doing a lot of research on sort of the psychological impacts of polio on people and it's interesting because it turns out that a lot of people had polio tended to be extreme strivers, highly successful, highly motivated people, people who were olympic athletes like, you know, johnny weissmuller or wilma rudolph, famous journalists like ben bradlee, the former editor of the washington post. and so there was a very striving nature. there also some traits that were less admirable, maybe a real fear of failure being brittle

about criticism and all those things. i think you see in senator mcconnell throughout his life. but paramount among them is just this incredible drive and striving nature. and why does he choose then politics to to, you know, dedicate his energy to. well, like many young kids, he wanted to be an athlete. and the first thing he wanted to do was to be a baseball player. and he was terrible at it by his own admission. but there was a man who lived the next door who was a really great athlete and a coach, and he kind of taught him how to play. and so he practiced and practiced and practice. and that's a recurring theme with senator mcconnell. and he got better at it, but he eventually got to the point where by high school he wasn't good enough to make his high school team. so he channeled all that kind of competitiveness that one has in sports into politics. and it never left him. i want to show our viewers what senator mcconnell had to say in a conversation in 2016 with a good friend of his senator, his

senate colleague, lamar alexander. they sat down for a conversation here on c-span about his book, and he talked about his first election in the senate in 1984. you were you were. well. well, i think all of us in the united states senate are political accident. not all of us will admit it, but we all are. and you surely were. yeah, it was 30 points behind in july and july. election year. so the bloodhound ad, what was that? well, it was a desperate situation. roger ailes, who's now pretty well known of it, could you find roger ailes that? well, he in those days, he was doing a political consulting, doing commercials. so he was willing to take on somebody in a democratic state who was 30 points behind. well, he had a couple of clients he thought were going to win that year. and me and me and i appreciated the fact he was willing to take me on. but i mean, this is a tough competitor. you can see how he started cnbc

for nbc and started fox for rupert murdoch. here's the situation. and it was it was july of the election. i was down 1984, 1984. i was down 34 points. we had a meeting in louisville and i said, roger, is this race over? and here's what he said. he said, i've never known anybody come from this far behind, this late to win, but i don't think it's over. a very competitive guy. i was running against a pretty smart democratic incumbent who didn't have a lot of obvious vulnerability as we were looking for some kind of issue that a needle in the haystack, if you will. and it turned out this was back in the honorary days, which i didn't have any problem. people making speeches for money. but he had been making speeches for money while he was missing votes on the senate floor. so ailes turned that into a couple of ads featuring a

kentucky hunter type person with bloodhounds out looking for huddleston to get him back to work. and it electrified the campaign, got people interested, and it got people talking about it. and then there was a sequel later in which we had a guy who looked like huddleston, an actor who was being chased by the dogs and who literally ended up up in a tree. and we and the key line there was we got you now, dee huddleston, they had treat him right at the end. not exactly a landslide. one vote, a precinct. yeah, 4/10 of 1%. yeah, but the other way of looking at it, even though reagan carried 49 out of 50 states, we lost two seats in the senate, and he was the only democratic incumbent senator in the whole country that year to lose. so thank you. your democratic opponents the next five times to say that probably the find your method of campaigning which is to smash smash them in the mouth before they get started. yeah. senator mitch mcconnell talking about his first run in 1984.

what were his first years in the senate like? i think he felt a bit of imposter syndrome when he got there. so he comes into the senate and you have people like ted kennedy, daniel patrick moynihan, bob dole, bill bradley, all sorts of people, john glenn, people who had really made their mark in american life in all sorts of different ways, including in the senate. so he took a seat in the far rear of the chamber where the newest members had to sit, but he immediately looked down and saw where dole was. and in his mind, he thought ahead and he thought, that's what i want to do. always had his eye on leadership then. and one of the reasons i think he eventually got there was unlike 99 out of 100 senators, he didn't want to be president. he had no desire to do that. he was fixated on that. and i think it made his strategic maneuvering easier within the senate, and it also made his path easier because he could take jobs that other people didn't want because it wasn't going to cost him in any

kind of national campaign. you heard lamar alexander say you're smash him in the mouth strategy. explain what that is. and how did he apply that strategy not just to his own races? well, it's interesting that he referenced that in the 84 race because in some respects that ad was effective because it was funny. it was funny. and it packed a punch at the same time, which is something that senator mcconnell did in his first race in kentucky when he won the race to be county judge executive. he ended up having farmer throw manure at the camera. and, you know, everybody laughed at it and thought it was great. and at that point, senator mcconnell said, you know, if you're if they're laughing at your opponent, you know, you've got them in subsequent campaign wins. he did sort of do the smash mouth approach. and his idea there was, as he told me, you know, there is no

perfect opponent. everybody has a record. you just have to find out what that record is and let people know about it. and so he's relentless. he uses negative campaigning to great effect and as you noted later in his career, he creates the senate leadership fund, which is a super pac aligned with him, not directly involved, but certainly aligned and sympathetic. and he recruited candidates for that. he gave them strategic and tactical advice. and then you see millions and millions of dollars in largely negative ads run by the senate leadership fund. so the pac certainly followed the mcconnell campaign playbook in its approach. how else is it that he is able to his goal, which is to lead the institution for his party? he knows how to to deal with his members and he knows how to do that by catering to them, by knowing that what they're really interested in is how will they get reelected. and so he studies everything

about their state. he studies everything about the politics. and then he gives them a roadmap and says, here's how you could do it. and so many senators who i interviewed talked about how he gave them really terrific tactical advice in some respects, he's like a political consultant who's also a senator. so he did that. and he also was able to take a lot of slings and arrows for his members. and he would tell them some of them, i don't care if you criticize me, if you need to criticize me, if that helps you, go ahead. and that's that's a special skill because, you know not everybody has the thickest skin on capitol hill. michael tackett is here with us talking about the legacy and career of mitch mcconnell. we're talking about what, who and why shaped the senator to become the longest serving leader in senate history. want to go back to more video from our archives of senator mitch speaking about his admiration and for an earlier political giant from kentucky,

henry. here's what senator mcconnell had to say about the former house speaker. clay was the most famous politician in kentucky. what like what about clay inspired you most? well, i mean, the fact that he, you know, not terribly significant states, i would argue, had become a major statesman, was why in kentucky, people focused on clay. so i wanted to learn more about him. and so but he was known for crafting compromises, which is a dirty word today with some people, it is but absolutely essential. that's what the constitution is full of compromises. and you and i and our daily lives do it every single day in order to make the senate function. so i did my senior thesis on henry clay in the compromise of 1850 and continued to follow him as a lot of aspiring kentucky

politician do. michael compare. mitch mcconnell and henry clay. well, i'm not sure anybody would call senator mcconnell the great compromiser, which is what people called henry clay. that said, senator mcconnell has reached a lot of compromise over time. i interviewed senator angus king of maine and. he said the problem for mitch is, is that his obstructions are notorious and people don't really see his compromises. but even lately in the biden administration, you could see that. you could see that in the infrastructure bill, you could see that in the chips act. you could see that in the gun safety bill. those are all the products of compromise that he put together when he needed to obstruct. what was his mindset when he thought he needed to obstruct? well, that he when after president obama was elected, the republicans were really on their backs. you know, they for a while, the

democrats had 60 votes. and so senator mcconnell told his conference, you know, we still have a lot of power here. really, the power they had is the power of no, because it gets back to the filibuster and the 60 votes. and if you don't have those 60 votes, you can stop a lot of things. and he he took no, uh, there was problem for him in doing that. he didn't look at that as obstructing. he looked at that as stopping something that he didn't think it was a good idea. we've talked about his impact on the courts. let's move to other policy areas. in 1987, mitch mcconnell joined c-span for a call in program and talked about one of his signature issues campaign finance. well, it's it's rather interesting. the senate, some would argue, has been engaged in and extensive debate. and i have been leading that extensive debate and opposition to public funded senate races and spending limits in senate races on as to i've been watching the senate proceedings and i find it interesting that

nobody has mentioned or made any comment about lobbyists whom many americans perceive as the real influence peddlers in the country. and i'd like to know the senator's thoughts on that. well, there certainly are a large core of lobbyist in this town. and i'd say in the defense of some of them, they do provide a pretty useful service if you know how to use a lobbyist. and by that i mean if you just simply allow them to make their argument, many times they are very useful part of the process. provided you use them as information. sources and don't allow them to have special influence with you. so the lobbyists per se are not necessarily bad and of course they are required to register. and here's mitch mcconnell on the senate floor in 2002 arguing against what was called the mccain-feingold act, which regulated the financing of political campaigns. mr. president, regretfully, this

bill is going to pass and in all likelihood, be signed by the by the president. i say regretfully, because for those who wanted to reduce the amount of money in politics, this certainly won't do that. it will dramatically take away from the parties money and then shifted to outside groups. the reason we know how much soft money the parties raise is because it's disclosed. we won't know what's given to outside groups because it's not disclosed. we could have dealt with the issue of corruption or the appearance of corruption, and i'd have to say appearance of corruption, because there's been no evidence whatsoever of actual corruption. so we're talking about an appearance problem. we could have dealt with the appearance by capping soft money, just like we kept hard money 25 years ago. and allowed the six national party committees to still be federal committees to still be able to support state and local

candidates in nonfederal dollars. but no, we decided to completely eliminate a non federal money. a step certainly not required to deal with the appearance of corruption. so this will greatly weaken the parties, mr. president, and shift those resources to outside groups who will continue to engage in issue advocacy as they have a constituted right to do with unlimited and undisclosed soft money. and ironically, the bill allows members of congress to raise that unlimited, soft money for outside groups, but not political parties. so we we're now able to more for outside groups than we are for our own political parties. michael tackett, how does this issue of campaign finance shape the career of senator mitch mcconnell? well, the first thing i would say was he ended up being right about that. there's no question that the political parties have been

weakened by these kind of laws. but there's an interesting journey for him on finance in the early 1970s, when he's an aspiring candidate and doesn't have a lot of resources and doesn't have a lot of money. he writes an op ed for the louisville courier-journal where he argues that money is sort of a cancer on the system and there really need to be strict limits on how much people can raise and spend. and that's a view that people would find kind of quaint. now given his journey. but the journey ends up being that early on in his career, he says that, campaign contributions need to be defined as speech and his free speech and to abridge a contribution is to abridge free speech. so he goes and he uses this clause and it really it's not a popular cause to oppose campaign finance reform because it always has a nice ring to it. that's one of the reasons he was able to also gain some the admiration of his colleagues because he was willing to take it on. and they didn't have to.

then he gets into these fights with russ feingold and john mccain in the senate over the mccain feingold legislation and takes it all the way to the supreme court and is the name plaintiff in a case that he loses. but it's a great example of losing the battle. but winning the war, because a few years later, in the citizens united case, the actual you know, the floodgates opened to both parties for unlimited money. it's interesting, though, because at first i think republicans thought this is going to really favor us and it's turned out to be kind of a zero sum game where both parties have extraordinary amounts of money. and in some cycles, democrats spend more on dark money than republicans as said, this issue of campaign finance put him at odds with senator john mccain. he was also opposing the senators, senator john mccain, on first amendment issue. i want to show our viewers back into the archives what mitch mcconnell had to say from 2016

on his relationship with the late senator john mccain. you and he had a big brawl over the over the first amendment. i think most people may not know that your first amendment view had to do with basically no limits on campaign finance disclosure. and you voted against the constitution amendment that would have banned desecration of the american flag. so you're pretty far out there on the first amendment. but john mccain disagreed with you. mccain feingold was the law that passed. you fought at the supreme court. you lost. that was a pretty acrimonious battle. what's your relationship with john mccain today? very close. i mean, that's a good example of being to have, you know, a knockdown, drag out fight over issues that went over about ten years. it was really pretty stressful between us at various points, but, you know, i've called him up the day after he won in the supreme court.

actually, one of the worst days of my life actually was watching a republican house or republican senate and a republican president pass a bill that i was opposed to. and i deeply opposed to. and i was the plain open lost in the supreme court, called him up the day after and i said, congratulations, john. you won. i lost. and we found that there were a lot of other things we could work on together and we've become fast friends and allies on a whole variety of different things. and that's the way the senate ought to work. and frequently does. i'm not sure many people in the public know that. do you consider john mccain an american hero? absolutely. senator mitch mcconnell talking about his relationship with the late senator john mccain in 2016. in 2017, 18, john mccain and mitch mcconnell did battle then again over the affordable care act, also known as there was a major senate vote in july on to repeal the law, repeal dickens get to this point where it's on

the senate floor and they have a vote to repeal it. what is happening leading up to the vote? well, there's a lot vote counting. and one of the things that senator is as is most people call a legendary skill, his ability to count votes. but this one really came down to the wire and it was one of the few times where he miscounted. he miscounted. he thought, what? i think he wasn't sure what john was going to do. and then when he finds out what he's going to do, republicans lose. but i'd like to go back a little bit, though, with the mccain relationship, because it's very interesting early on, they fought over campaign finance legislation and then in is oral histories. senator mcconnell was not very charitable towards senator mccain, particularly about him being president. he thought he was particularly ill suited to be president. so there was definitely friction and acrimony between them. but later in life, they did

become really good friends. and when senator mccain was very ill, senator mcconnell flew to sedona, arizona, to be with him. and the two men sat there with each other. and according to someone know senator mccain very well, the two men kind of cried and had a moment of, you know, real closure and friendship. what did senator mcconnell tell you about his relationship with john mccain? that it was rocky for a while, but it ended very well. and one of those moments between the two played out as we were talking about on the senate floor when the repeal of so-called obamacare came up. want to show our viewers, this is a vote in the wee hours of a friday morning. senator mccain came to the floor and here's how it played out, right? yes. thank you. mr.

no. no. senator mitch mcconnell there on the floor when the senate votes on repealing of obamacare, arms crossed as he watches then senator john mccain vote it down. here's mitch mcconnell later that night reacting to senator john mccain's vote against repeal of obamacare. so, yes, this is a disappointment. a disappointment indeed, our friends over in the house, we thank them as well. i regret that our efforts were simply not enough this time. now, imagine many of our colleagues on the other side are celebrating. probably pretty happy about all

this. but the american people are hurting and they need relief. our friends on the other side decided early on they didn't want to engage with us and in a serious way, in a serious way to help those suffering under obamacare. they did everything they could to prevent the senate from providing a better way forward, including such things as reading amendments for analysts amounts of time. such things as holding up nominations for key positions and the administration because they were unhappy that we were trying. to find a way to something better than obamacare. so i expect that they are pretty

satisfied tonight. i regret to say that they succeeded in that effort. so now i think it's appropriate to ask one of their ideas. it'll be interesting to see. what they suggest as the way forward. senator mitch mcconnell, in 2017, we are talking about the legacy and career of senator mitch mcconnell joining us for this conversation is michael tackett. he wrote a recent biography of the senate leader the price of power how mitch mcconnell mastered the senate, changed america and lost his party. michael, let's look at some other issues, policy issues that are key to understanding the legacy career of the senator. elaine chao, his wife and her family who came to the united states from taiwan. he tks about immigration in

this debate over immigration in a clip when he about her family. it's key to understanding his view on immigration policy. let's take a look here. her mom, her mom and dad. born in mainland china when they were young, they were dodging the japanese invasion of china. then when they got to be little bit older, there was the communist revolution. they separately managed to get out of mainland china and go to taiwan and they had met briefly on the mainland. and my father in law had taken a liking to her. so he searched in taiwan for two years to find her. they got married, had three daughters over there. my wife, elaine, is the oldest, but he was an ambitious young man. he wanted to do better. so he came to america. for three years by himself, worked multiple jobs, trying to get a start in the shipping business.

he had been a ship's captain and in taiwan he wanted to be more than that. and so he he for three years worked multiple jobs to get a start. he called for my late mother in law. and the three daughters to come over. they didn't have enough money for an airline ticket. they came over on a freighter. they were the only people a and the bulk commodity on a big freighter. finally ended up in a small apartment in queens. and he kept working and kept having to kids. they ended up with six daughters, four of whom have gone to harvard business school on armadillo, sponsored only a lawyer and he built a very successful shipping business. and, you know, that is the kind of story that you see all across america, which is another reason why even in moments when we're frustrated about our attitudes about illegal immigration, to

remember that we were all, virtually all of us, unless we were african-americans who were brought here against our will, the sons and daughters of risk takers. and so this constant renewal process that we have through the people who come here legally with ambition and want to accomplish, you know, tend to be the best americans. and so i think elaine and her family, a classic example of that. michael, check out how does he approach the debate over immigration in his years in the senate? well, i think he sets the people who are undocumented from those who are documented. if you come here legally through the process, he's extremely pro-immigration. if you try to do it another way, he is not. and so in the senate, you know, you'll notice that he tried to fashion a compromise on immigration. and the way he did that was he talked to president biden. they have a good cordial, working relationship. and he said, look, you've got a terrible political problem on immigration. and so they a bill together, you

know, things that the president could agree on and he could agree on. and senator mcconnell got senator jim lankford from oklahoma to lead the effort. and the reason for that was he had great credibility with house conservatives and they came up with a pretty important immigration package and one that, frankly, was very favorable to republicans. and senator mcconnell tried to sell it to his members as we're not going to get a better deal in this. but then then candidate donald trump said, don't do it. no deal. and the deal fell apart. so he's senator mcconnell has been involved in immigration issues for a long time. another major debate, negotiation that he was part of, of course, as senate leader was in 2017. the massive tax overhaul that came along. republicans are in charge president trump is in the white house. it became law. how big of an issue was this for the leader? mcconnell? it's a really important issue because it's an important issue for the republican party.

part of their orthodoxy. it's an important issue for the republican donor base. and it was an important issue for then-speaker paul ryan. paul ryan was an expert on these issues. senator mcconnell really wasn't. but he and paul ryan had a very good working relationship. and they also had a relationship where they worked as a team to try to work president. trump and it wasn't always easy. one onday one would handle it, one day the other would handle it. but they knew the one thing they could do is if they said, we'll call it the trump tax cut. and they thought that that would work, and it was an effective strategy to get the president on board. and of course, once it was signed, he was happy to take the credit for. what role did senator mcconnell play, the leader play in getting? it passed so he wasn't part of the fine green detail that was really paul ryan and that was really done in the house. but it was just getting those votes lined up in a really wasn't that hard to sell among republicans. did he get credit from president trump for his efforts? i think president trump did his own sort of victory lap on that.

and i'm not sure he held a parade for senator mcconnell. here is senator mcconnell reacting to the passage of that tax legislation. well, this is a this is a great day for the country. it's been 31 years since we've done comprehensive tax reform. we have an opportunity now to make america more competitive and to keep jobs from being shipped offshore to and provide substantial relief to the middle class. there are a lot of people to thank chairman hatch, chairman murkowski, all the folks you see behind us. we've all worked together as a team. and as you notice at the end, there was not a single democrat who thought this was a good idea. senator mitch mcconnell reacting to passage of that 2017 tax legislation. michael, check another debate that has come up over his years in leadership is looming. government shutdowns. i want to show our viewers, in 2016, what then senator mitch

mcconnell had to say on government shutdowns in his thoughts on those who support them. you talk in your book quite a bit about that, about. the politics of futile, futile gesture. yeah. what do you mean by that? well, it would be something like, why don't we shut down the government to defund obamacare? that's futile gesture. obama's in the white house. obviously, obama is not going to knock on or sign such a bill. the politics of fear, of gesture is a way of describing. tactical maneuvers that have no chance of success, that only divide the party. and that has been a challenge. i think it's been a bigger challenge in the house representatives than it has been in the senate. there are only a couple of people in the senate who have that kind of approach, but it's been a challenge and on an on the outside, you saw it with the actions of the senate conservatives on the way. we've dealt with that on the

outside is to beat them. you just simply defeat them in the primaries and then you don't have a nominee who comes into the senate, who, first of all, who wins and second, who comes into the senate with that kind of mentality, thinking that our job is only to throw stones every day and don't ever achieve anything. well, of course, one of the disadvantages of it is that the message that you'd like to deliver, which is that the republican majority is accomplishing a lot, gets diluted because you have some republicans going around say it's not. and even presidential candidates saying it's not. which makes it harder to elect a republican president and to keep a republican majority. and it's not just about messaging. i mean, we are you know, we all want to do things for our country. i mean, no matter what our backgrounds are, i think virtually every not everybody, but virtually everybody comes here wanting to actually accomplish things for our country. and you have to deal with it with the government. you have. you know, barack obama, whether i like it or not, got elected.

it's been there for eight years. and to suggest that we ought to spend 100% of our time simply fighting with him rather than trying to look for some of the things that we can agree on. it would make progress for the country. always struck me as absurd. michael tackett, listening there to senator mcconnell talk about far right republicans, the factions of his party, what are you thinking? what did he tell you for your book? well, i mean, he's an institutionalist in that regard. he thinks nobody wins a government shutdown. and usually the republicans get blamed for a government shutdown because it's not the democrats who want to do that. and he's noticed this sort of faction within the republican party starting with the tea party in 2010, then through the freedom caucus and then through the trump era. and even since that interview with senator alexander, he's noticed that more people within the republican conference, frankly don't want government to do anything they don't they

don't particularly like government, even though they're serving in government. so that's an area where he has been very ideological, consistent, that he thinks the government should remain open. another significant piece of legislation, john, comes in november of 2021. and pick it picks up on what you just heard the senator say there. you have to deal with the government that you have in that moment. so it's november of 2021. mitch mcconnell's back in the minority and was able to get 19 republican senators to join democrats to pass a major infrastructure bill. here's what he had to say at an event in kentucky. this is a day i think many people in northern kentucky. so might never have. for those of us who've run for public office in kentucky over the years, every time you came to northern kentucky, the issue was, how are we going to get the bridge built? and as all the kentucky politicians can tell you, the issue of possibly tolling the

bridges was very, very toxic. and so today we said in this wonderful, clear day with sunshine down on literally a legislative miracle, how did it come together? well, senator portman, from moving had a chance to hear, was active, urging on our side. several democratic senators on the other side came together and began to talk about how we might be able to work together to get an outcome. we all know these are really partizan times, but i always feel no matter who gets elected, once it's all over, we ought to look for things we can agree on and try to do those. even while we have big differences on other things. and this bridge, i think, symbolizes the coming together of both sides on something that

both sides thought was important to try to get an outcome. michael tackett why give senator excuse me, give president joe biden a win? well, the brant spence bridge, i believe, is what we were showing. there is a win for mitch mcconnell and it's a win for his state of kentucky. so it's interesting when you talk about infrastructure and in the trump administration and remember there was infrastructure week and that into infrastructure month and then infrastructure a year and it became kind of a running joke. and most republicans or democrats agree that we all have bridges. we all have airports, we all have infrastructure. and so and it's crumbling in many places. so why not get the money to fix it? how effective was senator mcconnell in bringing money home to his state of kentucky? he was extremely effective in doing that. and again, it cuts against some of the other strains in the party where people want to cut government spending is the joke, he told me, said, you know, i consider pork a project in indiana and if it comes back to

kentucky, it's wisely spent taxpayer dollars. moving on to foreign policy, the ukraine war remains a huge issue on capitol hill and here's what mitch mcconnell told reporters about passage of an aid bill for ukraine earlier this year leader mcconnell. how important is this to you that personally passage of this before you step down from leadership? this is not about me. this is about our country and the free world. as you all know, been around a while and we've been dealing with the russians off and on since i was born. my dad was fighting the germans in world war two and the war came to an end when he met the russian and pilsen witches in the czech republic. and i have some letters he wrote, my mother pointing out the russians were going to be a big problem. there's a regular soldier and boy, have they been for a long

time. and as we all know, there was some hope after the berlin wall came and we expanded. now to go all the way over to russia. that maybe the russians are going to be a normal country. bush 43 should not try to create him like a normal president. so did president obama. but it's clear this is just like the soviet union in terms of their ambition for their country. they only respect one thing, and that's strength. and that we learned from ronald reagan peace through strength works pretending enemies don't hate you does not work. you can hide out at they're still going to hate you. michael talk at his party. not all of republicans in his party agree with his mindset. i think there's a growing number

who don't agree with it and one of them is going to be sworn in as the vice president, j.d. vance, who is a harsh critic of ukraine. ukraine's an issue that i think really stands out in senator mcconnell's career because it was a time when he put himself at risk. he put the politics of it at risk, in favor of an issue that he really cared about. it would have been easy to reject ukraine aid. instead, he worked to build a package to make sure ukraine had its aid. and it's a great example of something i think he looks at as a signature part of his legacy when it comes to foreign policy. he is stepping down as leader, but he is not stepping down from the senate. what role he play on this issue over the next two years? well, as you told me, he said, i'm going to make john mccain look like a dove. oh, what does that mean? that means very hawkish on defense spending, very much a multilateralist for the united states. and we'll see we'll see how big the megaphone ends up being, but that's definitely what he plans to do. let's talk more about the

senator's relationships with key figures during his career. taking a look at his relationship with barack obama, the president. mcconnell had this to say in 2016. the president is a very smart guy. i think he knows a lot about a lot of things. i think he would do a better job of dealing with others if he would spend less time trying to acquaint whoever he's talking to at the moment with his brilliance and more time listening. just to draw a contrast between the president, the vice president. i've been in a number of major deals with the vice president that were important and worth doing for the country. he doesn't spend any time trying to convince me of things he knows i don't believe. and i don't spend any time trying to convince him of things that he doesn't believe. in other words, don't waste any time or all of that. we get down to trying to figure out what we can do together. because he knows how far i can

go and i know how far he can go. i think the president would be better off. he's a brilliant guy. he's been successful in his political career and rising quickly to the to the top in american politics. but i don't think there's sort of incessant lectures or very helpful in getting an outcome if you're in some of negotiation. well, let's talk about divide in government for a minute. i've heard you talk about that a lot and say express your disappoint that you and the president haven't been able to accomplish more together, because i've heard you say that divided government is the time when you do hard things because you spread the response ability around. now, the democrat aides say about you that you early on that your main was to make president obama a one term president. i've heard you say that you made a speech early on. it's time to go to work on entitlements and offer offer a

hand to to do that. and you never heard back from anybody. so whose fault is it that we haven't taken advantage of this seven years of divided government to do more together. well, obviously, i have a point of view on that. obama one term president. i do admire bob woodward, who is the only major reporter in town who reported the rest of what i said right after that. which was which was that in the meantime, we had plenty of work to do and we had to look for ways we could work together. michael tackett, author of the price of power. mitch mcconnell on his relationship with president barack obama. in word frosty never really thought he was celebrated obama's election like he mentioned that his private oral histories that he thought it was a wonderful thing for the country. but it was also a political battle. and he was going try to wage that political battle and the one term president comment gets so much attention and what's

interesting is that in addition to what he just said, what he actually said in the rest of the quote was, i don't want to fail. i want him to change. and of course, only the one term president part gets quoted. so i ask him about that. and it was interesting because he didn't deny what he meant by the first part of it. first of all, he said it's sort of obvious i'm a republican, he's a democrat, and i wanted him to serve one term. but he also that strategically he had he crafted that answer this way. the first part of the quote was for the republican base, the hardcore conservatives. the second part of the quote, i don't want him to fail. i want him to change his for the independent minded person. so he's always thinking about what he's going to say. and he often counsels his colleagues that just because there's microphone in front of you doesn't mean you have to speak. during those years of the obama years. senator mitch mcconnell becomes sort of the foil for, the

democratic party. he gets darth vader, old crow, the grim reaper. these are names given to him by democrats over the years. does he care? he has a way of embracing that. when it was actually russ feingold who used to refer to him first as darth vader and, mcconnell wrote him a note and said, you know, hear your old pal darth vader still be around for a while and president trump tried to him as the old crow and mcconnell's political operation had a fundraiser that the senator attended and on everybody's table was a bottle of old crow the whiskey but it had a picture of senator mcconnell on it instead. so what he ends up doing is he jujitsu as the criticism and he makes it sort of his own. let's move on to his relationship with president trump. how does this start out? how does it evolve? it started out with trepidation. then it went through a period of accommodation and then it went through pretty much a total

collapse after the after the election in 2020. and then particularly after january the sixth. let's show the events of january 6th. after that, mitch mcconnell, the senators react to the violence on capitol hill. here's what he had to say on the senate floor. january six was a disgrace. american citizen attacked their own government. they used terrorism to try to stop a specific piece of domestic business. they did not like fellow americans, beat, bloodied our own police. they stormed the senate floor. they tried to hunt down the speaker of the house. they built a gallows, chatted about murdering the vice president. they this because they had been fed wild falsehoods by the most

powerful man on earth because he was angry. he lost an election. former president trump's actions preceded the riot or a disgraceful, disgraceful dereliction of duty. the house accused the former of, quote, incitement. that is a specific term from the criminal law. let me just put that aside for a moment and something i said weeks ago. there's no question no. that president trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of the day. no question it. the people who stormed this

building believed they were acting on the wishes and instructions of their president and and having that belief was they foresee liable consequence of the growing crescendo of false statements and conspiracy theories and reckless. which the defeated president kept shouting into the largest megaphone on planet earth. but after reflection, i believe the best constitutional reading shows that article two, section four, exam was the set of persons who can legitimately be tried or convicted. it's the president. it's the vice president and

civil officers. we have no power to convict and disqualify a former officeholder who is now a private citizen, michael there is senator mitch mcconnell on the floor. some responsibility for january at the feet of then president, the former president at that point. but then he does not vote to convict him when impeachment brought up for his role. yeah, i think that's a thing that a lot of people have trouble with. but rationale is pretty clear as. rationale is you can't do that to somebody no longer in office. now, in point of fact, that propositions never been tested. maybe you could, maybe you couldn't, but certainly it had never been done before. and one reading of the constitution is to say that it can't be done. but there were two things at work. there. i mean, he had that strategic, legal. and there was also a political reason. political reason was he wanted

to maintain the energy of the trump base. and if they went after the former president at that time in that way, you would lose that energy. you talk about the collapse of their relationship in chapter 21 of the book. mcconnell said that after the 2020 election that the president trump was stupid as well as ill a despicable human being and a narcissist. what was the context here. your book made some news for these remarks. yeah. the there was actually that was before january the sixth. and it was he was looking at the special elections coming up in georgia and he was looking at the president holding up some much needed pandemic aid. senator mcconnell had had a clear eyed view from his perspective of president trump early on. and i saw that in comments that he would made in his oral histories, as you know, going back to 2018, 2019, about his

decision, about his temperament, about it, the ability to deal with him on any level. but it certainly escalated. he knew the election settled. senator mcconnell did. he knew that it was a fiction. they're trying to overturn it. and it wasn't going to work. and he thought that the constitution's pretty clear about once the electoral college speaks. that's it. he's critical of donald trump. what about the movement behind? donald trump? the maga movement. he thinks the maga movement is a really misguided force. he thinks it's counterproductive. it has a narrow view of the world. it has a narrow of the united states role in the world. but it's also a movement that he deny. he knows that it is hardly a spent force in this country. most recently, senator mcconnell was at the reagan library and spoke about america's role in the world. this is what he had to say with the party reagan once led.

so capably. it is increasingly fashionable to suggest that the sort of global leadership he modeled is no longer american flourish. but be absolutely clear. america will not be made great again by those who are content to manage our decline. michael tackett, who was he talking about? he was talking, of course, about president trump, but i think he was giving a preview of how he plans to spend his next two years in the senate when these issues up. that's what you'll hear him say. and which is what? how will he spend the next two years, do you think? i think he'll spin it in two ways. one, he strategically picked a defense appropriations subcommittee. so that signals that he will do what he can to have a robust defense budget, but also to preserve, as of ukraine aid as he can. also took a slot on the rules committee, which means he'll do

everything to protect the institution of the filibuster. let's listen to what the senator had to say. reporters about his plans as a senator and not the leader of the party. i'm going to concentrate on defense and foreign policy. i think this is the most dangerous time since right before world war two. our adversaries in north chinese russians, iran and around proxies are all talking to each other. they have one thing in common. they hate us and they want to diminish our role in the world. it may seem old fashioned to some, but i'm a reagan republican who thinks that america's role in the world is absolutely indispensable. even if you're concerned. cost. be interesting to know that at the height of world war two, 37%

of our gross domestic product was being spent on the war. 37%. and we lost over 400,000 americans. the reagan buildup without a shot being fired was about 6% of gdp. we're currently spending 2.7. we need to ramp up defense spending in order to prevent. a direct conflict with our adversaries. it's a lot cheaper to prevent war and it is to have one. and so that's the focus i'm going to have for the next couple of years years. senator mitch mcconnell talking about his next couple of years as a senator, not a leader. the party as he enters this final stage of his career.

he talks here about what the institution itself means to him. well, i think the senate has been the indispensable legislative body, because that's the place where things are sorted out. a place where only rarely does the majority get things exactly their own way. the place where stability can occur and. must. people obviously don't think that. and in in an era in which everybody wants instant gratification, if you're looking for instant gratification or perfection. the senate would not be a good place. you michael tackett, what did you hear there from senator mcconnell? some advice, i think, to his colleagues to remember the role of, the senate to remember why

in the constitution and to remember how it can put the brakes on things that maybe a less deliberative body puts for them. so i think he's saying let's let's be mindful of why we're here and where we. what will be his legacy in the senate? that's a complicated question. i mean, i think it will be as one who was guided by institutional principles, didn't always follow them. but on balance. given the times in which he's governed will be figure of history. what will be his legacy on the republican party? i think that chapter hasn't written yet. i mean, clearly the current legacy would be that he lost that trumpism, one that trump won, and his view of the world did not prevail. on the other hand, within the

senate, when they chose his successor, they chose john thune. john thune is very much in the camp of somebody like mitch mcconnell when it comes to the senate. you wrote the title of your book, lost his party. did you mean. well, that there was a rightward drift on his party and a populist drift from his party. people who are in the senate now, even people who he tried to help support, you know, have voted against him time and again. he and president trump have no love lost for one another. and he doesn't deny that this is president party. now, who was or what was he more loyal to? the institution or the party? that's a terrific question. and in some it depends on the issue because. there are issues where you could say he was beholden to his party. shaping the courts was probably would probably be one of those. are issues where you would say he was beholden to the

institution and aid for ukraine might be an example of that. michael tackett the book is the price of power how mcconnell mastered the senate, changed america and lost party. thank you very much for the conversation. thank you. it's been my