How Trump Flipped GOP On Ukraine Aid

"FORT WASHINGTON, Md. -- Billions in potential American aid to Ukraine is stuck in monthslong limbo on Capitol Hill, and to the Trump-loving partisans at this year's Conservative Political Action Conference, that is as it should be.

"We need to take care of ourselves first," said Sue Errera, a 70-year-old retired jeweler from Seneca, Pa. "I don't agree with Putin, but I don't think he's causing all the problems."

Mark Weyermuller, a 63-year-old Chicagoan retired from the real-estate business, offered a similar assessment. "I don't want to fund the conflict in Ukraine. The whole thing seems shady," he said, adding an unsupported charge: "We don't even know who the good guys and bad guys are, and we know Joe Biden's getting paid off by Ukraine."

It was a message echoed from the conference stage. "Decide, Joe Biden, which country matters more to you: the border of the United States or the border of Ukraine," said Rep. Byron Donalds, a Florida Republican whom former President Donald Trump recently said he was considering as a running mate.

"I haven't voted for any money to go to Ukraine because I know they can't win," said Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R., Ala.), one of 26 Republicans to vote against the aid package that passed the Senate on Feb. 13. "Donald Trump'll stop it when he first gets in. He knows there's no winning for Ukraine. He can work a deal with Putin."

This year's CPAC vividly displayed a GOP base that has embraced Trump's stance toward Russia -- and led congressional Republicans to move away from support for military assistance to a beleaguered American ally. Prospects for the Ukraine aid package, which also includes military assistance to Israel and Taiwan and humanitarian aid for Gaza, look shaky in the Republican-led House, out of session until the end of the month.

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R., La.) has said the chamber won't take up the Senate bill. 

He acknowledges it would likely pass the House because most Democrats and many Republicans support it. But opposition from Trump and a growing share of the grassroots GOP base has made the issue toxic and divisive within the party. House Democrats are working to force the bill to the floor through a rarely used procedural gambit, The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday.

A group called Republicans for Ukraine this week launched a six-figure digital ad campaign in the districts of 10 House Republicans it hopes would support the gambit. A 60-second ad features rank and file GOP voters who argue that not doing so puts American national security at risk.

"Trump's always been in love with Putin, but now a big chunk of the Republican Party is as well," anti-Trump GOP consultant Sarah Longwell, the group's executive director, lamented in an interview. "If you grew up with the Cold War as a backdrop, to watch what's happening to the Republican Party right now is absolutely staggering. Ronald Reagan would be spinning in his grave."

In recent weeks, Trump has said he wouldn't defend NATO countries that don't meet their financial commitments to the alliance but would instead encourage Russia "to do whatever the hell they want." In a CNN town hall in May, he refused to say which side he hoped wins the conflict in Ukraine.

Haley has yet to win a primary and is polling about 30 points behind Trump in her home state, South Carolina, holding its primary Saturday -- demonstrating that her views are in the minority in today's GOP, skeptical of foreign aid and unmoved by warnings that Western democracy is at stake.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who once held his GOP flock in near-unanimity, now finds himself similarly outnumbered on an issue he has championed as crucial to his political legacy. "We don't wield American strength frivolously," he said on the Senate floor. "We do it because it is in our own interest."

Younger Republican senators led by J.D. Vance of Ohio, who was scheduled to speak at CPAC on Friday, reject that argument and instead embrace Trump's America First views. Once-hawkish senators such as Lindsey Graham and Marco Rubio followed Vance's lead rather than joining McConnell on the foreign-aid vote.

A pair of Wall Street Journal polls, one taken last December and one in March 2022, shortly after the conflict began, illustrate the shift. The portion of Republicans saying the U.S. was doing "too much" to help Ukraine rose to 56% from 6%, while the portion saying it wasn't doing enough fell to 11% from 61%.

Trump's relationship with Russia and its autocratic leader has long been controversial. U.S. intelligence agencies concluded he benefited from Russian election interference in the 2016 election. In Helsinki in 2018, he stood beside Putin and declared that he trusted the Russian leader's word over that of the American intelligence community.

In 2019, Trump was impeached for the first time for allegedly threatening to withhold military assistance from Ukraine unless it provided evidence of what he insisted were President Biden's corrupt activities there. House Republicans have continued to pursue those corruption allegations in an impeachment inquiry that suffered a severe blow when a key witness was accused of fabricating his claims on behalf of Russian intelligence.

Now, as events in Ukraine near their second anniversary, the conflict is mired in a bitter stalemate, and President Volodymyr Zelensky says further aid is desperately needed. The Ukrainian city of Avdiivka. Ukrainian front-line soldiers have reportedly been spotted scrolling American political news on their phones, tracking the congressional debate.

"There's only one country in the world that can provide the military aid the Ukrainians desperately need right now, and that's the United States of America," said former U.S. Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul, who added, in contrast to claims that allies haven't done their share, that European nations have provided more assistance per capita. "It's about American national-security interests."

At CPAC, numerous attendees said they had watched and been impressed by former Fox News host Tucker Carlson's recent friendly interview with Putin, which prompted North Carolina GOP Sen. Thom Tillis to call Carlson a "useful idiot."

"We got to hear his side, his motives -- he's like a teacher," Kristin Bocanegra of Ashburn, Va., said of Putin. The 35-year-old staffer for a long-shot GOP Senate candidate added, "We're told by the media that Russia is really bad, but young people today are doing our own research, not just believing what we're being told. I know Trump had good relations with him. This administration, it's like, what happened?"

Many attendees argued that Putin was provoked by NATO's push to add Ukraine to the alliance. "Mitch McConnell is not a real Republican. He needs to go. He's too old, he's compromised, he does not represent the ideology of most Republicans," said Pat O'Brien of Fairfax, Va., a 67-year-old retiree. "We have no business encouraging Ukraine to join NATO."

The conference's slogan this year is "Where Globalism Goes to Die," yet it had an unusually global flavor, with main-stage speeches by Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, Argentine President Javier Milei, former U.K. Prime Minister Liz Truss and the leader of Spain's right-wing Vox party. Addressing the crowd Thursday evening, Bukele -- a bitcoin enthusiast re-elected this month on a tough anti-gang platform -- decried George Soros and the media and boasted of "defying the global elites."

CPAC has held conferences in recent years in Hungary, Australia, Japan, South Korea, Mexico and Brazil. The gathering kicked off Wednesday with its first-ever "international summit," in which CPAC Chairman Matt Schlapp introduced a resolution condemning "the police state tactics" of Chinese leader Xi Jinping, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and Biden.

Schlapp sat at a table flanked by Richard Grenell, Trump's former acting director of national intelligence, whom he touted as a potential secretary of state; and the former presidential adviser Steve Bannon, who has traveled the world stoking a "global populist nationalist movement."

On Russian state television earlier this month, Putin said -- sincerely or not -- that he would prefer that Biden win this year's election, calling him "more experienced, predictable, an old-school politician." As the international summit concluded, Grenell emphasized that assessment.

"Remember," he said, "Vladimir Putin wants Joe Biden to win."" [1]

1. U.S. News: How Trump Flipped GOP On Ukraine Aid. Ball, Molly.  Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 24 Feb 2024: A.6.