Matt Bush, FISM News
House Foreign Affairs Committee chair Rep. Mike McCaul (R-Texas) led a small delegation of GOP lawmakers to Ukraine on Tuesday to meet with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy just one day after President Biden’s made a surprise trip of his own.
During the trip, Zelenskyy laid out a list of military items he believes Ukraine needs to continue fighting off the Russian offensive and eventually end the war. According to Breitbart, McCaul said that the meeting with Zelenskyy was “very productive.”
“We talked primarily about what [Zelenskyy’s] needs are when it comes to winning this war,” McCaul said. “Primarily, he needs the longer-range artillery, also known as ATACMS, that can go all the way into Crimea to take out the Iranian drones that are causing so many problems throughout Ukraine – [hitting] power [infrastructure] and killing innocent civilians.”
The trips to Kyiv took place just days before the one-year anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which happened on February 24, 2022.
President Biden has been largely criticized by Republicans for both the timing of and lack of production during his trip. McCaul called Biden’s trip nothing more than a photo-op.
“It’s good President Biden visited Ukraine, but a photo-op isn’t enough. He needs to get Ukraine the weapons they need to win now, especially [Army Tactical Missile Systems], instead of slow-rolling them,” McCaul told Fox News.
McCaul and many other Republicans believe that aiding Ukraine in the war efforts is important, but that there should be oversight and urgency in the way that the U.S. sends aid, and Biden is not delivering.
PUTTING UKRAINE BEFORE THE US
While McCaul claims that there is broad bipartisan support for aid to Ukraine, there is a faction within the Republican party that has expressed opposition to continued support. This group of Republicans has criticized Biden, not for being too slow in his response, but for putting Ukraine first and “America last.”
Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), for example, led a group of 11 GOP lawmakers in introducing the “Ukraine Fatigue” resolution to congress last month. The resolution calls on Biden to suspend all forms of military and financial support to Ukraine and to instead work on securing a peace agreement between all those involved.
“America is in a state of managed decline, and it will exacerbate if we continue to hemorrhage taxpayer dollars toward a foreign war,” Gaetz said. This opinion is starting to make its way to the American public as well.
A recent poll from the Pew Research Center shows that there is a clear shift in opinion by Americans on the U.S. response to the war. In March 2022, only 9% of Republicans believed that the U.S. was giving “too much” to Ukraine. That number jumped to 40% in January 2023. Even Democrats moved from 5% believing the U.S. was giving too much in March 2022 to 15% in January 2023.
Prior to the midterm elections, now Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said, “I think people are gonna be sitting in a recession and they’re not going to write a blank check to Ukraine. They just won’t do it … It’s not a free blank check.”