Update: The Senate passed the measure, 70-29, early Tuesday morning with the help of 22 Republicans.
JUST IN - U.S. Senate passes a $95 billion aid package for Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan without border security provisions while most Americans are still asleep. pic.twitter.com/9iNJTFkEWt
— Disclose.tv (@disclosetv) February 13, 2024
Original Post:
Republican Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio has been sounding the alarm about the Senate’s foreign aid package for Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan, warning the measure is not only bad policy, it's also “anti-democratic.”
Speaking to Tucker Carlson in an interview published Monday evening, the Ohio Republican said he hopes that even if the legislation passes the Senate, that it dies in the House, listing three major problems with it.
First, the bill sends $61 billion to Ukraine to fund a “hopeless war” that will “decimate the Ukrainian population” even more than it has already done.
“It's a terrible, terrible piece of legislation on the policy,” he said.
Secondly, the measure does not just fund the war-torn country in 2024, Vance emphasized.
“It actually funds Ukraine in ‘25 and ’26,” he said. “Now, what's the problem with that? 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 sort of give you a sense of why this matters. In 2019, the US 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. So if Trump is elected president again and becomes president on January of 2025, he will conduct diplomacy. 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.”
Finally, pointing to leaks from the intelligence community, the entire purpose of the bill “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 anti-democratic, and it will lead to endless war in all over the world,” Vance argued.
The senator on Monday sent a memo detailing these points to his colleagues, urging Republicans to vote against the legislation.
House Speaker Mike Johnson has issued warnings of his own, emphasizing the need to address the border.