By Alexander Bolton and Al Weaver | THE HILL

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) on Wednesday floated the possibility to Senate Republicans of splitting Ukraine funding from border security reforms that are coming under heavy criticism from Senate conservatives.

McConnell acknowledged to GOP senators at a Wednesday afternoon meeting that the politics of U.S. border security have turned out to be a lot more complicated than he and other Senate Republicans anticipated when they insisted months ago on linking Ukraine funding to border security, according to Senate GOP sources familiar with his comments. 

“I think the border portion is dead,” said one Republican senator, who cited McConnell’s remarks to the GOP conference at the meeting. 

The lawmaker said McConnell told GOP senators, “This has gotten to be a lot more politically difficult than he thought it would be.” 

“That sounded to me like the first step toward saying, ‘We just can’t get this done,’” the source said. “I predict the border part falls off.”

Ukraine funding has long been a priority for McConnell, however, and he didn’t back down from his push to provide tens of billions of more dollars in military aid to Kyiv.

A second Senate GOP source familiar with McConnell’s comments said he was “laying out the options” to Republican senators now that it’s become clear that Senate conservatives strongly oppose the border security reforms that were negotiated with Democrats to go along with Ukraine funding.

While McConnell and other Senate Republicans believe the concessions extracted from Democrats would be “huge wins,” the source said, it appears that former President Trump, the party’s likely presidential nominee, will oppose the package. ##