GOP Senator: Trump May Be 'Handcuffed' to Ukraine Funding During First 2 Years of His Presidency
Ohio Republican Sen. J.D. Vance recently joined Tucker Carlson to warn voters of a concerning provision hidden deep inside the U.S. Senate’s new foreign aid bill, a provision that could hamstring Donald Trump if he wins the 2024 contest for the White House.
Former Fox News star Tucker Carlson invited the Ohioan onto his streaming show Monday to talk about the Ukraine aid package that the U.S. Senate was debating at the time.
Many Republicans have begun to shy away from constantly pumping billions of U.S. tax dollars into the war between the invading Russians and the defending Ukrainians. And Sen. Vance is one of them. He kicked off his visit with Tucker urging voters to call their senators to tell them to vote against the $60 billion in aid for Ukraine.
Vance pointed out that there were 17 Republicans who had sided with the Democrats in the upper chamber to vote in favor of the bill and said that at the time the opposition needed eight Republicans to vote no to kill the bill.
Ep. 74 The Ukrainian government canceled elections and killed an American journalist. Congress is about send them another $60 billion. J.D. Vance is trying to stop it. pic.twitter.com/x6mQFfuZFL
— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) February 12, 2024
Vance went on to blast the bill as a “terrible” piece of legislation. But he then warned that there is something even more worrisome in the bill: It contains a certain timeline.
“The second thing I want to say, Tucker, though, is that it doesn’t just fund Ukraine in 2024. And this is the most important point. It actually funds Ukraine in ’25 and ’26. Now, what’s the problem with that?” Vance asked.
“Say, for example, that we have a new president in 2025, that president would be handcuffed by the promises that we are making in law to Ukraine today. If you go back to 2019, Tucker — to give you a sense of why this matters — in 2019, the U.S. House impeached then President Donald Trump on the theory that they had appropriated money to Ukraine, and Donald Trump refused to send it to Ukraine,” Vance explained.
“So if Trump is elected president again and becomes president on January of 2025, he will conduct diplomacy,” the senator said. “And if that diplomacy does not include sending additional billions to Ukraine, there is a theoretical argument, a predicate, if you will, for impeaching Donald Trump because they have tried to tie his hands.”
Vance added that this is no accident.
“The final point I’ll make on this, Tucker, is that the Washington Post has already said, based on leaks from inside the intel community, the purpose of this legislation is to tie a future President Trump’s hands,” he said.
“We’re not just sending billions to Ukraine in 2024. We’re trying to make it impossible for the next president to conduct diplomacy on his terms. It’s antidemocratic, and it will lead to endless war all over the world,” Vance said.
Tucker then jumped in to say that the “political calculation behind this seems incredibly dark” and also pointed to the “humanitarian effect” on the huge number of “about 400,000” Ukrainians who have died in this war.
“So how do senators, Republican senators, get away with saying, ‘We’re doing this on behalf of the Ukrainian people, on behalf of democracy,’ when it’s destroying an entire generation and it’s not a democracy? What’s the thinking here?” Carlson asked.
“Well, Tucker,” Vance replied, “they bought into the propaganda that what is in the best interest of Ukraine is to prolong this war. And so Zelenskyy comes to Washington. He’s tougher than a lot of them are, and I think they get a little bit of excitement from that. And Zelenskyy tells them a story that his war is in the best interests of the whole of Ukraine.
“Now, never mind that there are people within Ukraine protesting the draft, never mind that the average age of a soldier there is pushing 45 years old, and never mind that the 650,000 wealthiest Ukrainians left the country at the beginning of the war. They didn’t stay and fight,” Vance exclaimed.
“So the idea that this is unanimously supported by the Ukrainian population is, of course, preposterous and absurd. No one believes it,” he continued. “But here’s the really crazy, and I think ultimately the very cynical thing that’s going on, Tucker, is that everyone knows that this war will lead to the destruction of Ukraine. I’ve had conversations with Democratic colleagues where they get this sort of dark look in their eyes, and they say effectively that they want to fight Russia to the last Ukrainian drop of blood.”
“I think if you really ask these guys, they recognize that this is not in the best interest of Ukraine. This is fundamentally in the interests of military contractors and people who think that America’s most pressing challenge is to defeat the Russians. Of course, that’s not a preoccupation that I share. I don’t think Russia should have invaded, Tucker, but I also think that we got to be much more focused on more pressing problems like the demographic collapse of the United States, like the open borders, and like what’s going on in East Asia, so it’s a massive campaign, Tucker, to distract people from the real problems in the world and the real problems that exist in this country.”
Ultimately, the Senate’s version of the aid bill — which also includes aid to Israel — did pass in a vote early on Tuesday in a 70 to 29 vote with 22 Republicans voting in favor, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, CNN reported.
However, despite the bill sailing through the Senate, Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson quickly put the brakes on the bill and told the upper chamber that he will not allow the aid package to be rushed through the House of Representatives, according to The Hill.
Johnson’s chief complaint is that the bill lacks any border security measures, even as it sends billions for foreign countries.
“[In] the absence of having received any single border policy change from the Senate, the House will have to continue to work its own will on these important matters,” Johnson said on Monday ahead of the Senate’s vote on the bill. “America deserves better than the Senate’s status quo.”
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