Senate Democrat Facing Court-Martial Over Video Encouraging Military Personnel to Defy Trump

For years, Americans on the right have used the word “swamp” to describe the entrenched ruling class that clings to power in Washington. And depending on whom you ask, that definition can shift — but for the MAGA movement, the label tends to fall squarely on a familiar group of neoconservative relics who have shaped GOP politics for decades.

That’s exactly why Vice President J.D. Vance didn’t hesitate to place Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell firmly in that category after McConnell publicly rebuked President Donald J. Trump’s handling of the ongoing Ukraine-Russia conflict.

McConnell, long known for safeguarding the foreign-policy interests of the Beltway establishment, generated headlines after accusing the President’s team of mishandling the crisis.

“Putin has spent the entire year trying to play President Trump for a fool,” McConnell had said. “If administration officials are more concerned with appeasing Putin than securing real peace, then the president ought to find new advisors.”

Vance, never one to let neocon posturing go unanswered, fired back immediately.

“This is a ridiculous attack on the president’s team, which has worked tirelessly to clean up the mess in Ukraine that Mitch — always eager to write blank checks to Biden’s foreign policy — left us,” Vance posted.

Then came the remark that sent a chill through McConnell’s home state political circles: “I wonder if the three candidates to replace McConnell in Kentucky share his views here.”

But the vice president was only getting started. Just hours later, Vance returned to X to highlight the actual work the Trump administration has undertaken to secure peace abroad while confronting the domestic crises that establishment Republicans seem inexplicably unwilling to address.

“After four years of house prices doubling (and in some areas, tripling) many young people feel priced out of the American Dream of homeownership,” Vance posted. “A welfare fraud scandal in Minnesota reveals that large numbers of new arrivals aren’t assimilating and are funneling our tax dollars to literal terrorist groups. An innocent woman was set on fire in Chicago as the mayor resists federal law enforcement resources to bring peace to one of our great cities. The Obamacare insurance system is buckling under its own weight. And the country is $38 trillion in debt.

“Our administration is working hard on addressing all of these problems. But you know what really fires up the beltway GOP? Not any of the above.

“Instead, the political class is really angry that the Trump administration may finally bring a four year conflict in Eastern Europe to a close.

“I’m not even talking about the substance of their views. Much of what these people have said about the Ukraine war has been proven wrong, but whatever. We can agree to disagree.

“But the level of passion over this one issue when your own country has serious problems is bonkers.

“It disgusts me. Show some passion for your own country.”

Vance’s comments underscore a growing fracture between the America First right and the aging foreign-policy establishment — a divide only widening as the Trump administration prioritizes domestic renewal and strategic restraint over endless overseas entanglements.