The Leading Republican Presidential Candidates Are Running (Way) to Biden’s Left on Ukraine
Come and listen to the “plans” that leading Republicans have for dealing with Russia’s war on Ukraine.
1. Left-Wing Republicans
A common sentiment you hear from many anti-anti-Trump types is that Trump becoming president again would be a disaster, but also that Biden being re-elected would be a disaster.
This is an interesting take, since nearly all of the anti-anti-Trumpers are foreign policy hawks. And on foreign policy, we have a very clear contrast between Joe Biden and the leading Republican presidential candidates—most of whom are to Biden’s left on the most important foreign policy issue of the day.
Let’s start in Congress yesterday, where Matt Gaetz put forward an amendment to cut off U.S. military aid to Ukraine.
This amendment—which could just as easily have come from Code Pink—failed. Even a majority of Republican members voted against it.
Yet most of the leading Republican presidential candidates are closer to Gaetz on Ukraine than they are to even the main body of the GOP in the House.
Trump has said that he will end the Ukraine war in 24 hours:
If I were president, I [would] end that war in one day. It’ll take 24 hours. I will get that ended. It would be easy.
Spoiler: He would not end the war by giving Ukraine more resources.
The guy in (a distant) second place, Ron DeSantis, keeps going out of his way to say that there will be no “blank check” for Ukraine and that he won’t do “ANYTHING” to “escalate” the “territorial dispute.”
And then there’s Vivek Ramaswamy, who unveiled his Ukraine plan to Politico a couple of weeks ago:
Ramaswamy said he would meet with Putin “early” in his presidency and give him only 72 hours to agree to terms. “I’m not going to let him use time as a way of changing the underlying game,” he said. While they interact, Ramaswamy will freeze military and economic assistance to Ukraine so Moscow trusts Washington’s intentions. Once everything is agreed to, Kyiv can continue fighting Russia — which it most likely will do — but the U.S. will cease its support.
That’s the plan!
Actually, there’s more and you would not believe how crazy it is. Vivek goes on to say that if Russia reneges on its deal with him, then he will grant Ukraine “instant admission” to NATO.
How does that work? Where is the “instant admission” clause in the NATO charter? Details! And in the unlikely event that President Vivek is not able to convince all of the NATO member states to go along with “instant admission,” his plan is to then have America withdraw from NATO. How’s that for 10-dimensional chess!
Between them, Trump, DeSantis, and Vivek currently own 75 percent of the support in the Republican primary.
Whoever he is, the Republican presidential nominee is likely to be far to Biden’s left on Ukraine.
I wonder if that will give any of the Republican hawks pause. Or, heaven forbid, lead them to vote for [gasp] the Democrat!
2. Twitter Stuff
Yesterday, Twitter announced that it had begun sharing ad revenue with creators, and some of the numbers were wild. For instance, mouth-breather Benny Johnson earned almost $10,000! Musk cut five-figure checks to many of the right-wing cranks you most despise on social media!