
President Biden is criticizing Republicans who are threatening to cut off aid to Ukraine if they win control of the House in next month’s midterm elections, arguing that they are displaying a fundamental misunderstanding of U.S. foreign policy.
“They said that if they win they’re not likely to fund, to continue to fund, Ukraine,” the president said at a political fundraiser in Philadelphia on Thursday night. “These guys don’t get it.”
“It’s a lot bigger than Ukraine,” he added. “It’s Eastern Europe. It’s NATO. It’s really serious, serious consequential outcomes. … They have no sense of American foreign policy.”
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), who could become speaker in January, signaled earlier this week that the GOP is likely to oppose more aid to Ukraine in its war with Russia if it wins the House majority. The majority of congressional Republicans and Democrats have united in authorizing billions of dollars in U.S. military and humanitarian assistance to Kyiv as a geopolitical and moral stand against Russian President Vladimir Putin’s aggression, but McCarthy indicated that that could change next year.
“I think people are gonna be sitting in a recession, and they’re not going to write a blank check to Ukraine,” he recently told Punchbowl News. “They just won’t do it.”
Biden said Thursday that Republicans do not understand the relationship between Ukraine and the United States as well as the ramifications worldwide if the United States abandons a key ally.
“These guys on the other team don’t get it,” he said. “They don’t get it that how America does is going to determine how the rest of the world does.”
“They look to us as a leader,” the president added. “They look to us … because they’re not as big or as powerful.” At a stop earlier in the day in Pittsburgh, Biden had told reporters he was “worried” about Republicans’ threats to cut off aid.
Biden’s comments came hours after the White House confirmed that Iranian troops are directly engaged on the ground in Crimea helping Russia with its drone attacks on Ukraine, a development that raises the stakes for the United States and Europe as it tries to stop Russian aggression.–Online