As recently as last week, congressional leaders attended a security conference in Germany in the hopes of conveying to the world that the United States’ support for Ukraine remains steadfast. The delegation included both the top Democrat in the Senate, New York’s Chuck Schumer, and the chamber’s top Republican, Kentucky’s Mitch McConnell, signaling a united, bipartisan front.
McConnell seemed to acknowledge the chatter about his party moving away from aid to Ukraine, but he did his best to dismiss it.
“My party’s leaders overwhelmingly support a strong, involved America and a robust trans-Atlantic alliance. Don’t look at Twitter, look at people in power,” the GOP leader said during a speech at the Munich Security Conference. He added, “Reports about the death of Republican support for strong American leadership in the world have been greatly exaggerated.”
To be sure, he has plenty of partisan company. Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, for example, co-authored a new Wall Street Journal op-ed stressing the same points, and Texas Rep. Michael McCaul, the Republican chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, traveled to Kyiv this week and stressed U.S. backing for our Ukrainian allies.
There is, however, another GOP contingent, and its members have a very different kind of message. Take Donald Trump, for example, who traveled yesterday to East Palestine, Ohio, where he had a few pointed comments about support for Ukraine. The Washington Post reported:
In short remarks given during his visit, Trump chided the aid the United States has sent Ukraine to defend itself against Russia’s invasion, saying he hopes that the U.S. government will have “some money left over” to help rebuild East Palestine after the derailment. “I sincerely hope that when your representatives and all of the politicians get here — including Biden — they get back from touring Ukraine, that he’s got some money left over,” Trump said, noting that the country has provided billions more in aid to Ukraine than Europe.
As the former president probably knows, the United States is the world’s wealthiest country, and we have the resources to help an Ohio community dealing with a derailment disaster and our international allies. It’s not an either/or dynamic — which made it all the more notable that the Republican gratuitously criticized Ukrainian aid to locals in East Palestine. It came the same week in which Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, appeared on Fox News and criticized the Biden administration’s policy as an “open-ended blank check,” which the governor said is “not acceptable.” Some high-profile far-right GOP lawmakers — including Florida’s Matt Gaetz and Arizona’s Paul Gosar, among others — have also spent this week reiterating their opposition to U.S. support for Ukraine. As the world recognizes the one-year anniversary of Russia launching an unprovoked invasion of its neighbor, it’s fair to say the Republican Party’s divisions are becoming more pronounced — and Trump isn’t exactly reading from the same script as GOP leaders.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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