WASHINGTON — When former President Donald J. Trump came out against the $40 billion military and humanitarian aid package for Ukraine, casting it as a misguided act of charity, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky feared the Republican votes against the bill could pile up.So Mr. McConnell, the Republican leader, intensified his efforts to tamp down on the anti-interventionist strain in his party and to make the case that it was in the United States’ security interest to aid a young democracy standing between Russian aggression and the West.He made his most forceful appeal during stops last weekend in Ukraine, Sweden and Finland, in a secretly arranged trip that he said was aimed at showing the Europeans that Mr. Trump’s “America First” views on military aid and alliances did not hold sway over Senate Republicans.Mr. McConnell has made a point of pushing back against isolationist voices in his party, including during Mr. Trump’s presidency, when the senator broke sharply with him on drawing down troops from Syria and plans to withdraw American forces from Afghanistan.But the Kentucky Republican also spent four years enabling and protecting Mr. Trump, clearing the way for him to install three conservative justices on the Supreme Court, engineering Mr. Trump’s acquittal in his first impeachment trial and indulging his refusal to concede the 2020 election until the last possible moment.Now that Mr. Trump is gone, Mr. McConnell’s drive to rally sustained support in Congress for investing huge sums of American money in Ukraine’s war effort has become a kind of proxy fight with the former president over where the party will land on foreign policy.The Senate leader emerged from a major skirmish on Thursday feeling vindicated: Only 11 Republicans voted to oppose the $40 billion aid measure, even in the face of opposition from right-wing organizations.Mr. McConnell pointed to that vote as evidence that the isolationist impulse in his party had waned. He even praised Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, with whom he has frequently clashed, for having the “courage” to speak in favor of the bill. But polling has shown that Republicans continue to be drawn to Mr. Trump’s “America First” doctrine, and it is an open question whether the energy behind it will subside.Mr. McConnell spoke to The New York Times after the vote about the strength and staying power of “America First” in his party, why the Senate should quickly ratify Finland’s and Sweden’s accession to NATO, and the definition of victory in Ukraine.This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.Why did you decide to make the trip to Europe last weekend?One was to try to convey to the Europeans that skepticism about NATO itself, expressed by the previous president, was not the view of Republicans in the Senate. And I also was trying to minimize the vote against the package in my own party.We have sort of an isolationist wing, and I think some of the Trump supporters are sort of linked up with the isolationists — a lot of talk out in the primaries about this sort of thing. And I felt this would help diminish the number of votes against the package. I think that worked out well.I’d had a private dinner with the president of Finland back in March, right after the invasion, so we’d sort of developed a relationship. So we decided to head up to Stockholm and Helsinki. These are incredibly important admissions to NATO. They both have great militaries. They’re both independent of Russian energy. If anybody’s ready to be a part of NATO, these two countries are, so it was exciting to be there.I think the trip helped convince Europeans that Republicans are the way we used to be on NATO.Did you personally lobby individual senators to try to allay some of their concerns about the aid bill?I certainly was talking about it for the last two weeks to my own colleagues. I said, No. 1, this is a pittance compared to the $2 trillion the Democrats dumped on the economy last year, producing 40-year-high inflation. If ever there were a reason where for an expenditure of this amount, this is it. And if the Russians succeeded, it would cost us a lot more. So yes, I was arguing for support for the package.Live Updates: Russia-Ukraine War
Updated May 20, 2022, 3:02 p.m. ETForced from Kharkiv, Russian troops regroup and dig in.Tennis tours penalize Wimbledon over a ban on Russian players.The Azov battalion releases another video amid questions over how many fighters remain in Mariupol.There are not many things we agree with this administration on. And that’s been pretty widely on display the last year and a half. I thought they were a little bit slow to get started, a little bit too intimidated by the thought of provoking the Russians, and we did criticize theBy: Catie Edmondson
Title: On Ukraine, McConnell Tries to Show the World This Isn’t Trump’s G.O.P.
Sourced From: www.nytimes.com/2022/05/20/us/politics/mitch-mcconnell-ukraine.html
Published Date: Fri, 20 May 2022 19:27:49 +0000
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