David Corn Tells Joy Reid Mitch McConnell's Putin Warning Is 10 Years Late

Mitch McConnell's warning to Donald Trump about Vladimir Putin comes a decade late, David Corn, the Washington bureau chief of Mother Jones, said on The Joy Reid Show on Monday. Corn argued that the Kentucky Republican passed up a chance to confront Russia in 2016.

Corn, the author of the new book How Russia Won, was answering a question from host Joy Reid about McConnell's Wall Street Journal op-ed, published Sunday. In it the former Senate Republican leader told the president that his lame-duck agenda may depend on how he handles Russia.

"Well, Mitch McConnell is about exactly 10 years too late, because, as I described in the book, when it came out that Russia was trying to help Trump in the 2016 election," Corn said, before giving his account of what McConnell did at the time.

What McConnell Wrote in the Wall Street Journal

Under the headline "Coddling Putin Won't Bring Peace to Ukraine," McConnell wrote that "Mr. Trump has high hopes for a lame-duck legislative agenda" and that "passing this agenda will require working with Republicans who know the difference between the good guys and the bad guys. Ending the obeisance to Mr. Putin may be table stakes for the end-of-year legislation. The president should plan accordingly."

He also called the administration's approach "factually wrong, strategically naïve and morally bankrupt," and wrote that a Russian victory would do more damage to U.S. security "than temporarily high diesel prices," Spectrum News reported. This month McConnell signed a bipartisan letter opposing Trump's Russian diesel deal. A White House official told the outlet that Trump wants the war to end "so the senseless killing ends."

Reid said the op-ed "low-key threatens Donald Trump that his agenda in the Senate will be dead on arrival if he keeps up this pro-Russia talk."

David Corn's Account of the 2016 Meeting

Corn said that when the Obama administration asked Republican leaders to join a united front against Russian meddling, McConnell said no and accused the White House of "playing politics." He tied that refusal to Trump, who was by then the Republican nominee.

"Mitch McConnell didn't want to create this gigantic breach in the middle of an election between him and other Senate Republicans and Donald Trump," Corn said. "So he basically took a dive. He knew Russia was doing this. He's not an idiot, but he wouldn't come out and make this a bipartisan response to Russia's attack on an American election."

The basic outline matches what has been reported, but McConnell has disputed it. In September 2016, Obama administration officials asked congressional leaders for a bipartisan statement. McConnell reportedly said he would treat a public challenge to Russia as partisan politics, The Washington Post reported in 2017.

When former Vice President Joe Biden made a similar accusation in 2018, McConnell's office pushed back. It pointed to a September 2016 letter that all four congressional leaders signed urging state election officials to protect their systems, NPR reported. That letter did not mention Russia. The Senate Intelligence Committee's bipartisan report on the government's response also faulted the Obama administration's own handling of the threat as tentative.

Corn still gave McConnell some credit. "I agree with Mitch McConnell ... Better late than never, but it's really, really late," he said.

Has the GOP Moved Toward Putin?

Corn said Trump and his allies have "moved the party towards total appeasement of Putin and the war in Ukraine." He cited Tucker Carlson's praise of Russia as an example.

The polling is mixed. Republican skepticism of Ukraine aid has tended to follow Trump's lead. In December 2024, 67 percent of Republicans told Gallup the U.S. was doing too much for Ukraine. By March 2025, after Trump took office and took ownership of the war policy, that figure had dropped to 56 percent. A Pew Research Center survey conducted March 23-29 found 11 percent of Republicans saying the U.S. does not give Ukraine enough support, with a larger share saying it gives too much.

Views of Russia have not warmed. In the same Pew survey, 83 percent of adults viewed Russia unfavorably, with substantial majorities in both parties. Republican confidence in Trump's handling of the war fell to 60 percent, down 13 points from August 2025.

What Happens Next

McConnell, who is retiring, has pushed back on Trump's Russia policy after the death of Sen. Lindsey Graham, a leading Republican backer of Ukraine. Trump's overall approval stands at 37.6 percent in PolitiKool's polling average. Whether other Republican hawks will make good on McConnell's threat will become clear only after Election Day, when the lame-duck Congress returns.