Meet McConnell

Dear Mr. President, I don't think a lot of people know about Mitch McConnell. I thought I would share a basic synopsis about him. Addison Mitchell McConnell Jr. (born February 20, 1942) is an American politician serving as Kentucky's senior United States senator and as Senate Majority Leader. McConnell is the second Kentuckian to lead his party in the Senate, the longest-serving U.S. senator for Kentucky in history, and the longest-serving Republican U.S. Senate leader in history. McConnell was first elected to the Senate in 1984 and has been re-elected five times since. During the 1998 and 2000 election cycles, he was chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee. McConnell was elected as Majority Whip in the 108th Congress and was re-elected to the post in 2004. In November 2006, he was elected Senate Minority Leader; he held that post until 2015, when Republicans took control of the Senate and he became Senate Majority Leader. McConnell was known as a pragmatist and a moderate Republican early in his political career, but shifted to the right over time. He led opposition to stricter campaign finance laws, culminating in the Supreme Court ruling that partially overturned the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (McCain-Feingold) in 2009. During the Obama administration, McConnell worked to withhold Republican support for major presidential initiatives, made frequent use of the filibuster, and blocked many of Obama's judicial nominees, including Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland. McConnell later described his decision to block the Garland nomination as "the most consequential decision I've made in my entire public career". Under McConnell's leadership of the Senate, Obama saw the fewest judicial nominees confirmed in the final two years of a presidency since 1951–52. McConnell was included in the Time 100 list of the most influential people in the world in 2015. McConnell endorsed Rand Paul in the 2016 Republican primaries before ultimately supporting then-presumptive nominee Donald Trump. In 2016, after being approached by U.S. intelligence community officials, McConnell declined to give a bipartisan statement with President Obama warning Russia not to interfere in the upcoming election. During the Trump administration, Senate Republicans, under McConnell's leadership, broke records on the number of judicial nominees confirmed; among those nominees were Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh who were confirmed to the Supreme Court. He's definitely the guy to be in your corner. Forever and always.