Longtime Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell says he'll be in attendance on Thursday as Senate Republicans meet in the nation's capital with former President Donald Trump.

It will be the first time Trump and McConnell will see each other in person in nearly four years.

Trump, the GOP's presumptive presidential nominee, is holding behind closed doors meetings Thursday morning with House Republicans and Thursday afternoon with Senate Republicans.

And McConnell told reporters on Wednesday that "I'll be at the meeting tomorrow."

The race to become next Senate Republican leader is heating up as GOP senators are divided over how to counter Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s (D-N.Y.) messaging offensive on women’s reproductive rights, a top issue in the 2024 election.

The debate over floor strategy has become an opportunity for the GOP senators running to replace Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) to showcase their leadership and strategic skills within the Republican conference.

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.), who has steadfastly refused to comment about the presidential race or his long-running feud with former President Trump, came to Trump’s defense Thursday night.

Hours after the jury rendered its guilty verdict, McConnell declared that the Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg should never have brought the case and predicted the conviction would be overturned.

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) views incumbency as a significant advantage for Democrats in the battle for the Senate, an acknowledgement that the quality of the veteran incumbents running for reelection is a problem for his party.

Former President Trump is leading President Biden in several battleground states, yet Senate GOP candidates are trailing Senate incumbents in some of the same states, including Sens. Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.), Bob Casey (D-Pa.) and Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.).

In late November of 2022, Sen. Rick Scott received a text from an aide to Mitch McConnell. In the new Congress, the terse message informed him, Scott would no longer be a member of the powerful Commerce Committee.

It had been a bad month for Senate Republicans, many of whom blamed their poor performance and Democratic gains on Scott, who was chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee. McConnell and his top aides questioned Scott’s fundraising prowess, his candidate recruitment, his policy agenda and even his decision to take a vacation in the middle of the campaign.

Senate Republicans are on a collision course with Democrats who are insisting that nondefense spending programs receive equal treatment with defense programs.

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) says he won’t accept Democrats’ demand to give nondefense programs the same increases — dollar for dollar — as defense programs, which he said should be considered a much higher priority.

“I can’t accept that at all,” McConnell said last week of dollar-for-dollar parity between defense and nondefense spending increases.

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) is on the way out. But he’s not going quietly.

A GOP free agent of sorts, McConnell helped convince Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) to back aid to Ukraine despite opposition from House Republicans. The effort led to another win in a long list of big legislative victories for the Kentuckian.

McConnell, who is nearing the end of his days as the Senate Republican leader, is speaking more freely, too.

Mitch McConnell, Chuck Schumer and Joe Biden might have been in lockstep on aiding Ukraine, but some things the Senate minority leader had to shoulder alone.

Like battling his own party for the better part of the year.

“I don’t want to take a bit away from Chuck. He didn’t have any Ukraine problems, I had all of them. But, we agreed on the overall goal,” McConnell said in an interview on Tuesday. “It was not possible for him to help me with my members. Nor was it possible for the president to help me with my members. It was a Republican family argument.”