Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky wanted to talk about the need to confront Ukraine and Russian aggression in an interview Wednesday before answering questions from The Hill.
A day after the Senate passed aid to Ukraine and Israel, which he considered a significant victory, the veteran Senate Republican leader said showing his determination to stop foreign aggression is “an important step forward that we’ve had for a long time.” “This is the single biggest challenge.” time. “
The Senate bill, which was approved on a 70-29 vote on Tuesday, has an uncertain future in the House after Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) issued a scathing statement hours before passage.
And Mr. McConnell himself faces real questions about his future as the party increasingly embraces the America-first isolationism advocated by former President Donald Trump, the front-runner for the Republican nomination.
But on Wednesday, Mr. McConnell, who turns 82 next week, expressed confidence about his future, the foreign policy he supports and his political leadership in a divided Republican Party.
Given President Trump’s opposition to the bill and the former president’s lobbying of Republican senators to oppose it, McConnell received 22 Republican votes in favor of the bill. He said this was a great achievement.
“We got about five more votes than we expected,” he said of the vote.
“Mr. Trump was making some calls. It’s weird to be happy when you get 22 points, but I came up short on some other things and 22 points seemed like a landslide,” McConnell said. he added.
Before taking questions, McConnell wanted to explain in very personal terms why he was so passionate about getting Ukraine policy through the Senate from within the chamber.
He spoke of his long history of fighting invaders and how his father, an “infantryman” in General George Patton’s army, came face to face with the Soviet Red Army in Czechoslovakia after World War II.
“I have a letter he wrote to my mother at the time saying he thought the Russians were going to be a big problem. And of course, right after the war, it was clear that they were.” McConnell told The Hill during an interview in his Capitol office.
An avid student of history, the veteran Kentucky congressman today and one of the most prominent Republicans of the time, Sen. Robert Taft (Ohio), gave President Franklin Roosevelt a wide range of policies. I see parallels with the 1940s opposition to the Lend-Lease Act. Authority to send tanks, planes, food, and weapons to European allies fighting Nazi Germany.
McConnell believes the United States made the right decision 80 years ago by supporting its allies in World War II and creating NATO after the war to contain Joseph Stalin’s expansionist ambitions.
“Interestingly, Republicans were divided on this issue. Robert Taft, the most important figure at the time, was an isolationist in the ’30s. Sixty-seven Senate Republicans opposed Lend-Lease. “There have been different views at different times because of the votes, but I think they primarily reflect the views of the most prominent Republicans,” he said.
He points out that General Dwight Eisenhower’s victory over Taft in the 1952 Republican presidential primary set the course of the Republican Party for decades to come and ultimately contributed to the fall of the Soviet Union and the Berlin Wall. did.
“NATO worked. We won the Cold War,” he said. President Trump worries allies with story at rally where he told former leader that as president he would not support “delinquent” North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) nations against Russian aggression That was a few days later.
Mr. McConnell, dressed casually in a yellow-and-blue plaid button-down shirt under a blue blazer, said Mr. Trump is clearly the most prominent Republican in politics today and his America First policy. He acknowledged that policy views shape the broader party as a whole.
But sometimes it is necessary to stand up to such forces, he said.
“I’m not surprised at all that it influenced the views of Republican voters, but we regularly run into issues like raising the debt ceiling where we just have to get the job done,” he said, and public opinion is similar. I observed that. “I’m very influenced by things like FOX News shows that lash out on this issue.”
He likened funding to Ukraine to issues like raising the debt ceiling and keeping the government open.
“Ninety percent of Republicans wouldn’t want to raise the debt ceiling, but we do. Fund the government — many Republicans think shutting down the government is a great idea. But we are not,” he said.
More Republican senators want to support the bill as sound policy, but not because they don’t want to risk a political backlash by voting against Trump and parts of the Republican base. When asked if he would, McConnell simply smiled and replied, “Of course.”
Mr. McConnell appeared comfortable and relaxed after the bitter battle over Ukraine prompted renewed calls for him to resign from some critics in his caucus. Opponents kept the Senate in session overnight from Monday to Tuesday, delaying passage of a $95 billion emergency defense package that includes $60 billion for Ukraine.
McConnell sipped from a glass of iced Coke on an antique coffee table after the Senate vigil. He had a fall a year ago that kept him away from the Capitol for several weeks with a concussion and broken ribs, but no physical signs were found.
He ignored media reports that he had suffered political damage from Republican infighting over Ukraine and a bipartisan border security deal.
He laughed and said those who say his influence is waning have “forgotten about raising the debt ceiling and opening up the government,” adding that a majority of Republican senators also voted against him. He said there was also.
He said the border deal negotiated by his nominee, Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.), was “a huge success by any objective standard,” according to the National Border Council and the Wall Street Journal. , The Washington Post.
But he didn’t want the entire bill to drag on when his Republican colleagues opposed it because they didn’t think it went far enough, didn’t pass the House, or because of President Trump’s opposition.
“The question at that point was, ‘Are we going to waste the entire bill because we can’t agree on the border issue?’ I think the answer is clearly no,” he said. Ta.
Mr. McConnell suggested that he did not think Mr. Johnson’s insistence on trying again to add border security and immigration reform to the package was a viable idea.
“There’s a reason why we haven’t been able to pass any major immigration legislation in recent years,” he said with a sigh. “The only advice I would give publicly to the Speaker is to hold a vote in the House on Ukraine. Just let them vote. No one knows exactly who is where, so if he does I hope you find a way to find out.”
On the walls of Mr. McConnell’s office are paintings of Republican presidents who shared his vision of the need for a strong America to project power and influence abroad: Teddy Roosevelt, Reagan, George H.W. Bush, George W. A portrait of former President Bush is displayed. Trump’s portrait is nowhere to be found.
McConnell believes recent presidents, including former Presidents Obama and George W. Bush, were a little naive in treating Russia like a “normal country” after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Never one to let his guard down, even before he joined the Senate leadership, he sought to expand NATO as a safeguard against Russia’s re-emergence as a threat.
“In recent years, it has become clear that [Russian President Vladimir] “President Putin has said before that the collapse of the Soviet Union was the greatest disaster of the last century, and that’s what he really meant.”
In the turbulent weeks ahead of Tuesday morning’s vote, McConnell believes the United States faces the most serious threat to national security since the Cold War, with Russia and China now the main adversaries. He repeatedly made this claim to his colleagues.
He said President Biden had emboldened Russia and China by withdrawing from Afghanistan in the summer of 2021.
“It is noteworthy that shortly after that Putin entered Ukraine. So this is not a normal problem. It is a big, big problem,” he said.
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