Ousted Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. – who leaves behind a fractured Senate that is struggling to replicate the Democrats' unification on unilateral approval of President Joe Biden's Cabinet picks – is now lecturing on how to lead.
And, in doing so, he takes a swipe at President-elect Donald Trump's "America first" mantra that the American people resoundingly elected in a widespread mandate.
"Within the party Ronald Reagan once led so capably, it is increasingly fashionable to suggest that the sort of global leadership he modeled is no longer America's place," McConnell said in a Saturday night speech before the annual Reagan National Defense Forum at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, Politico reported.
"But let's be absolutely clear: America will not be made great again by those who are content to manage our decline."
Trump and anti-McConnell Republicans have long argued it was Biden and McConnell who were "content" to "manage" American decline, but it was the ousted McConnell invoking it on his way out the door for the change American voters elected.
McConnell warned of "influential voices" spreading "a dangerous fiction" and forgetting the Cold War lessons and the growing threats of Russia and China – even as Trump and his backers like former acting Director of National Intelligence Ric Grenell have long ripped the Biden administration for having the "cold" war-like, no-dialogue policy with Russia.
Coincidentally, McConnell was being feted at the "Peace Through Strength" ceremony alongside Biden's outgoing Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin.
Trump has reminded voters on the campaign trail under Biden, Austin, and McConnell-led Senate foreign-aid approvals there was no peace in Ukraine or the Middle East, and there was no "strength" on the global stage by American leaders, Trump and Grenell have frequently argued.
"At both ends of our politics, a dangerous fiction is taking hold — that America's primacy and the fruits of our leadership are self-sustaining," McConnell said in the speech. "Even as allies across NATO and the Indo-Pacific renew their own commitments to hard power, to interoperability, and to collective defense, some now question America's own role at the center of these force-multiplying institutions and partnerships."
McConnell now drifts into the periphery of the Senate GOP, but he will remain front and center in battling Trump's campaign vow to turn free foreign aid into loans, sitting with the gavel as the chair of the Senate Defense Appropriations committee.
McConnell's criticism of "anemic" defense budgets would be echoed and supported by Trump – albeit in bolstering the American military and not giving away the aid and weapons for free to warring nations that refuse to talk peace.
"The Pentagon is not equipped to meet the demands of protracted or multi-theater conflict – neither is our defense industrial base," McConnell said.
"Patriotic companies have more work to do to expand production capacity. And they need to do it today, rather than wait for contracts we all know are coming," he added. "We need to adopt new technologies more quickly and expand production capacity at the same time."
Notably, Trump has long criticized the Biden administration's depleting of American weapons and ammunition stockpiles with massive aid packages to Ukraine.
Trump has also hailed his forcing NATO to pick up its own tab for defense in Europe against Russian aggression and terrorist threats from the Middle East – a fact NATO leaders have acknowledged is a benefit to Trump's pressing of support.