With a long history in the Senate, Democrat Joe Biden and GOP Majority leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., might be able to draw on their familiarity to make progress in a divided government, Yahoo! News reported.
"There are going to probably be some hard punches," a former aide to Senate Republican leadership told NBC News. "But I think both of them are also very equipped to throw the punch and then move on. And I think part of it is they're both legislators at heart and they understand the game."
The Biden-McConnell relationship "can work for the benefit of our country," according to former Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., who served as a defense secretary under former President Barack Obama.
"They both know how to compromise," Hagel told NBC News. "They both know how to get things done. And I start with the fact that they trust each other, they like each other, and boy, that's important. And if you start there as the baseline, then you can work together. They're not going to agree on everything, of course not, but they can make things work and move this country forward."
McConnell attended the funeral of Beau Biden in 2015 and has called Biden "a real friend" and "a trusted partner."
"If you know anything about Sen. McConnell, he is not a particularly verbose individual," a former senior McConnell aide told NBC News. "He's very good at listening and, as he has said repeatedly, allows himself the luxury of the unexpressed thought. And so, he's pretty quiet in these conversations. A lot of listening, interjecting where he feels like he needs to interject, but otherwise, kind of taking it all in.
"But President-elect Biden — or, at the time, Vice President Biden — is quite opposite. He is very talkative. He's a gregarious person by nature. And that was a useful kind of yin and yang relationship because his inclination to talk is how we found places of potential compromise."
McConnell had noted Biden was more agreeable to negotiate with versus Obama.
"What was clear at a senior level among congressional leadership is, and I can't tell you why, because it's nothing President Obama did — he was always gracious and inclusive with them — but there were some people who could not accept the fact he was president," Phil Schiliro, White House director of legislative affairs under Obama, told NBC News. "And that chilliness was always apparent. That didn't exist with Vice President Biden."
Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
© 2026 Newsmax. All rights reserved.