Vice President JD Vance spoke out against Sen. Mitch McConnell’s, R-Ky., vote against confirming Elbridge Colby to serve as undersecretary of defense for policy.

‘Mitch’s vote today—like so much of the last few years of his career—is one of the great acts of political pettiness I’ve ever seen,’ Vance declared in a post on X.

Colby was confirmed in a 54-45 vote on Tuesday. McConnell was the only Senate Republican to vote against confirmation, while three Democrats voted in Colby’s favor.

President Donald Trump announced Colby as his pick for the Pentagon post when he was the president-elect.

‘Elbridge Colby’s long public record suggests a willingness to discount the complexity of the challenges facing America, the critical value of our allies and partners, and the urgent need to invest in hard power to preserve American primacy,’ McConnell said in a statement.

‘The prioritization that Mr. Colby argues is fresh, new, and urgently needed is, in fact, a return to an Obama-era conception of a la carte geostrategy. Abandoning Ukraine and Europe and downplaying the Middle East to prioritize the Indo-Pacific is not a clever geopolitical chess move. It is geostrategic self-harm that emboldens our adversaries and drives wedges between America and our allies for them to exploit,’ the senator asserted.

McConnell has voted against multiple Trump nominees this year.

‘Mr. Colby’s confirmation leaves open the door for the less-polished standard-bearers of restraint and retrenchment at the Pentagon to do irreparable damage to the system of alliances and partnerships which serve as force multipliers to U.S. leadership. It encourages isolationist perversions of peace through strength to continue apace at the highest levels of Administration policymaking,’ McConnell said.

Vance spoke out in support of Colby last month at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on Colby’s nomination.

President Donald Trump on Tuesday blasted some Republican members of Congress for trying to limit his presidential powers on instituting tariffs so that Congress could retake control.

Trump delivered a speech to the National Republican Congressional Committee, calling out ‘rebel’ Republicans while speaking about his trade policies.

‘And then I see some rebel Republican, some guy who wants to grandstand, say, ‘I think that Congress should take over negotiations.’ Let me tell you, you don’t negotiate like I negotiate,’ Trump said.

Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., is leading a bipartisan bill to block Trump from instituting tariffs and retake that power for Congress. Bacon told reporters earlier on Tuesday that he didn’t like ‘the thought of waging a trade war with the entire world.’ 

In the Senate, a bipartisan group led by Sens. Rand Paul, R-Ky., and Ron Wyden, D-Ore., is also introducing a resolution to repeal Trump’s global tariffs. 

Sens. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., have already introduced a bipartisan bill that would require the president to notify Congress about any new tariffs within 48 hours of imposition and require Congress to approve new tariffs within 60 days or allow them to expire.

Trump chewed out the Republicans over the proposed bills.

‘I just saw it today, a couple of your congressmen,’ Trump said before launching into an impression of a lawmaker. ”Sir, I think we should get involved in the negotiation of the tariffs.’ Oh, that’s what I need, I need some guy telling me how to negotiate.’

Trump said that should Congress take over tariff negotiations, China would be ‘the happiest people in the world.’

‘They wouldn’t be paying 104%,’ Trump said of China. ‘I’d say they’d be paying no percent — we’d be paying them 104%.’

Trump said that even the talk around Capitol Hill about limiting his tariff powers ‘hurts your negotiation,’ adding, ‘And then the fake news wants to build it up, and it has no chance anyway.’

‘We have to remain united as I defend workers from unfair trade,’ Trump said.

House Republicans are divided over how to proceed on a massive piece of legislation aimed at advancing President Donald Trump’s agenda as a possible vote on the measure looms Wednesday afternoon.

The House Rules Committee, the final gatekeeper for legislation before a chamber-wide vote, is expected to consider the measure on Wednesday morning beginning at 8:45 a.m. ET.

Fiscal hawks are rebelling against GOP leaders over plans to pass the Senate’s version of a sweeping framework that sets the stage for a Trump policy overhaul on the border, energy, defense and taxes.

Their main concern has been the difference between the Senate and House’s required spending cuts, which conservatives want to offset the cost of the new policies and as an attempt to reduce the national deficit. The Senate’s plan calls for a minimum of $4 billion in cuts, while the House’s floor is much higher at $1.5 trillion.

Trump himself worked to sway critics twice on Tuesday – first with a smaller group of House GOP holdouts at the White House, then in a more public message during House Republicans’ campaign arm’s national fundraising dinner.

‘Close your eyes and get there. It’s a phenomenal bill. Stop grandstanding,’ the president said at the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) event.

But it’s still unclear how many people that swayed.

‘The problem is, I think a lot of people don’t trust the Senate and what their intentions are, and that they’ll mislead the president and that we won’t get done what we need to get done,’ Rep. Rich McCormick, R-Ga., told reporters on Tuesday. ‘I’m a ‘no’ until we figure out how to get enough votes to pass it.’

McCormick said there were as many as 40 GOP lawmakers who were undecided or opposed to the measure.

A meeting with a select group of holdouts at the White House on Tuesday appeared to budge a few people, but many conservatives signaled they were largely unmoved.

‘I wouldn’t put it on the floor,’ Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, told reporters after the White House meeting. ‘I’ve got a bill in front of me, and it’s a budget, and that budget, in my opinion, will increase the deficit, and I didn’t come here to do that.’

Senate GOP leaders praised the bill as a victory for Trump’s agenda when it passed the upper chamber in the early hours of Saturday morning.

Trump urged all House Republicans to support it in a Truth Social post on Monday evening.

Meanwhile, House Republican leaders like Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., have appealed to conservatives by arguing that passing the Senate version does not in any way impede the House from moving ahead with its steeper cuts.

The House passed its framework in late February.

Congressional Republicans are working on a massive piece of legislation that Trump has dubbed ‘one big, beautiful bill’ to advance his agenda on border security, defense, energy and taxes.

Such a measure is largely only possible via the budget reconciliation process. Traditionally used when one party controls all three branches of government, reconciliation lowers the Senate’s threshold for passage of certain fiscal measures from 60 votes to 51. As a result, it has been used to pass broad policy changes in one or two massive pieces of legislation.

Passing frameworks in the House and Senate, which largely only include numbers indicating increases or decreases in funding, allows each chamber’s committees to then craft policy in line with those numbers under their specific jurisdictions. 

Members of the conservative House Freedom Caucus have pushed for Johnson to allow the House GOP to simply begin crafting its bill without passing the Senate version, though both chambers will need to eventually pass identical bills to send to Trump’s desk.

‘Trump wants to reduce the interest rates. Trump wants to lower the deficits. The only way to accomplish those is to reduce spending. And $4 billion is not – that’s … anemic. That is really a joke,’ Rep. Eric Burlison, R-Mo., told reporters.

He said ‘there’s no way’ the legislation would pass the House this week.

The legislation could still get a House-wide vote late on Wednesday if the House Rules Committee advances the bill Wednesday morning.

As for the House speaker, he was optimistic returning from the White House meeting on Tuesday afternoon.

‘Great meeting. The president was very helpful and engaged, and we had a lot of members whose questions were answered,’ Johnson told reporters. ‘I think we’ll be moving forward this week.’

Fox News’ Ryan Schmelz and Aishah Hasnie contributed to this report.

Biden administration State Department officials held private talks with Beijing counterparts about the Chinese spy balloon that intercepted U.S. airspace in 2023, and discussed the implications the balloon’s publicity would have on the relationship between the U.S. and China, according to Trump administration officials. 

U.S. officials identified the spy balloon infiltrating U.S. airspace on Jan. 28, 2023, and an Air Force fighter jet shot down the Chinese spy balloon off the coast of South Carolina Feb. 4, 2023, two days after the Pentagon issued a statement on the matter.  

Biden officials held discussions with Beijing Feb. 1, 2023, about the balloon, and discussed the impact disclosing the balloon to the public could have on the relationship with China, internal State Department documents show, two Trump administration officials told Fox News Digital.  

An internal State Department readout of the talks between Blinken and a top Chinese diplomat said Blinken stated that if the presence of the balloon were revealed publicly, it could have ‘profound implications for our relationship’ with China, particularly amid efforts to stabilize the bilateral relationship with Beijing, two Trump administration officials familiar with the documents told Fox News Digital. 

The readout said that the incident could also have complicated Blinken’s travel plans to China in early February 2023, if not quickly resolved. Blinken ultimately postponed the trip until June 2023. 

A former Biden administration official told Fox News Digital that the State Department summoned senior Chinese diplomat Zhu Haiquan Feb. 1, 2023, so that the U.S. could notify China to remove the balloon, and issue a warning that the U.S. could take action to eliminate the balloon. 

‘Former Secretary Blinken advocated strongly to tell the American people about China’s rogue balloon, which is exactly what happened,’ a spokesperson for the former secretary of state said in a Tuesday statement to Fox News Digital. ‘He has a long history of being tough on China while actually delivering results.’

Likewise, another senior State Department official also held private talks on Feb. 1, 2023, with Chinese counterparts. A readout from that discussion says that the official claimed the longer it took to mitigate the issuewould only increase the likelihood that news of the balloon would become public, posing greater challenges managing the situation, the Trump administration officials said. 

Ultimately, the Pentagon issued a statement Feb. 2, 2023, claiming that the U.S. government had detected a ‘high-altitude surveillance balloon.’ 

While then-White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters that Biden received a briefing on the balloon on Jan. 31, 2023, she did not provide details regarding why his administration didn’t issue a statement on the matter until Feb. 2, 2023. 

Secretary of State Marco Rubio, then a U.S. senator from Florida, repeatedly criticized the Biden administration for how it handled disclosing information to the public about the balloon — and how long it took the administration to shoot it down. 

Biden’s failure to address the situation sooner was the ‘beginning of dereliction of duty,’ Rubio said during an appearance on CNN with Jake Tapper. 

‘Why didn’t the president go on television?’ Rubio told Tapper. ‘He has the ability to convene the country in cameras and basically explain what we’re dealing with here.’ 

On Feb. 4, 2023, an Air Force F-22 Raptor fighter jet from Virginia’s Langley Air Force Base shot down the balloon off the coast of South Carolina with an AIM-9X Sidewinder missile. 

At the time, the Pentagon said that while the balloon was not a military or physical threat, its presence in U.S. airspace did violate U.S. sovereignty. The Pentagon also shut down China’s initial claims that the balloon was a weather balloon blown off course and labeled such statements false. 

‘This was a PRC surveillance balloon,’ a senior defense official told reporters at the time. ‘This surveillance balloon purposely traversed the United States and Canada, and we are confident it was seeking to monitor sensitive military sites.’

The Pentagon also said after shooting down the balloon that similar balloons from China transited continental U.S. airspace in at least three instances during Trump’s first administration. 

Additionally, Biden ‘gave his authorization to take down the Chinese surveillance balloon as soon as the mission could be accomplished without undue risk to us civilians under the balloon’s path,’ the senior defense official said, noting that there was concern debris could harm civilians. 

The Pentagon later said in June 2023 that it did not believe that the balloon gathered information as it traveled across the U.S.

Blinken is now a speaker with CAA Speakers, which represents high-profile celebrities.

A spokesperson for Biden did not immediately provide comment to Fox News Digital.