The party’s Senate leader, Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), is being exposed by a prominent Republican senator regarding the latest foreign aid funding bill in the Senate. This bill aims to allocate tens of billions more in U.S. tax dollars to Ukraine. During a Twitter Spaces session, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) revealed that McConnell and over a dozen other Republican senators supported a $95 billion “foreign aid” package, with $60.1 billion designated for Ukraine. This decision comes at a time when a growing majority of Americans, as indicated by national polling, have expressed their opposition to sending additional tax dollars to the war-torn country. This sentiment is particularly strong considering the ongoing domestic issues, such as the chaotic southwestern border situation.
“When we entered this thing, McConnell said his top priority was funding for Ukraine. But public opinion and the very strong political rhetoric that we ought to secure our own border before we spend $60 billion to secure Ukraine’s was effective. And so McConnell finally switched and said, ‘OK, we’ve got to let Democrats know that we are serious. We are going to defeat closure on this bill, and we are going to demand that border security is going to be attached to funding for Ukraine,’” Johnson explained.
“Then secret negotiations occurred on an issue the public supports Republicans on, and we end up with this monstrosity of a bill. It is an immigration bill. It’s not a border security bill. But during that time frame, we repeatedly talked about making Ukraine funding contingent on border metrics,” he added.
“We had it all laid out. We had a proposal. We had a great deal of support in our conference, but what [Sen.] Mike [Lee] (R-Utah) pointed out is unbeknownst to us at the time, McConnell told [Sen. James] Lankford (R-Okla.) that that’s not even on the table,” the Wisconsin Republican continued.
“He, on his own … using his own authority without telling the conference even though he knew that the conference supported tying border security or Ukraine funding to actually securing the border, McConnell just took that off the table,” he said.
“And that moment of leverage we had where we could use Biden’s desire for Ukraine funding to actually force him to use his executive authority to secure the border has been lost, and that is why so many of us are speaking out against McConnell. It was such a breach of his leadership position and such a, just a horrible thing to do to Americans who want a secure border,” Johnson added.
Listen to his explanation below:
Sen. Ron Johnson explains how GOP Senate Leader Mitch McConnell tried to betray America and Americans with a fake 'border security' bill that was always designed to fund Ukraine first.
McConnell and his ilk need to GO. pic.twitter.com/DoD9VDmYpV
— USA Features Media (@UsaFeatures) February 15, 2024