Much as Establishment GOP politicians like Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell demand that the more populist members of their party play nice, they often refuse to do so or show much goodwill. Such is what Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell made clear when he took potshots at former President Donald Trump and former Fox News Channel host Tucker Carlson on Tuesday, April 23.
He attacked the duo when asked about the situation in Ukraine and the aid that was appropriated for it, Israel, and Taiwan by the legislature. Many Republicans were furious that the aid bill provided, among much else, hundreds of millions for Ukrainian border defense while our borders lie open.
In any case, Sen. McConnell was asked about Ukraine by FNC’s Chad Pergram, who said that McConnell is “one of the most ardent backers of Ukraine in the Senate” and asked Sen. McConnell “what took so long” for other members of the GOP to provide yet more billions in aid for the Ukrainians, Israelis, and Taiwanese and their militaries.
Sen. McConnell, responding, chided Tucker for daring to interview Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin. He said, “Well, that’s a good question. You already know the answer. I think the demonization of Ukraine began by Tucker Carlson, who, in my opinion, ended up where he should have been all along, which is interviewing Vladimir Putin. And so he had an enormous audience which convinced a lot of rank-and-file Republicans that maybe this was a mistake.”
Sen. McConnell then attacked former President Trump not being all in on the foreign aid bill, snidely saying, “I think that the former president [Trump] had sort of mixed views on it.” That comment came as part of a long-term spat between McConnell and the former President, who has criticized McConnell for being unwilling to have a spine and stand up to the left, particularly on budget issues.
In any case, McConnell continued, bizarrely defending the horrible border “deal” struck by Sen. Lankford and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, one that many on the right said would give Democrats most of what they want while doing nothing to defend the border, particularly as it allowed up to five thousand illegal immigrants to cross per day.
Defending that terrible deal, Sen. McConnell said, “We all felt the border was a complete disaster, myself included. And Chad, you remember covering the phases we went through. First, it was an effort to make law, which requires you to deal with Democrats. And then a number of our members thought it wasn’t good enough. And then our nominee for president didn’t seem to want us to do anything at all. That took months to work our way through it.”
He then used that lack of GOP enthusiasm about the terrible Lankford deal to justify passing yet more foreign aid, telling Pergram, ” So we ended up doing the supplemental that was originally proposed, which dealt with not all problems. It didn’t solve the border problem, but certainly addressed the growing threats at the moment.”
Watch him here:
Featured image credit: screengrab from the embedded video
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