The Georgia Congresswoman declared that she opposes U.S. aid of ATACMS to Ukraine, claiming it would “escalate” the war
Marjorie Taylor Greene Is Freaked Out over Ukraine War
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) got into a confrontation on the floor of the House Wednesday with her friend-turned-enemy Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO), but it was far from her only controversial statement of the week.
On Monday, Greene expressed opposition to a proposal to provide long-range missiles to Ukraine, including the 200-mile-range Army Tactical Missile System.
Bipartisan legislation has been introduced to provide Ukraine with those weapons as it ramps up its summer offensive against Russia.
“The bloodlust in Washington disgust me,” Greene said on Twitter earlier this week. “Washington is funding and waging the war in Ukraine against Russia instead of pushing for peace… Every day innocent people die. And they are draining our own weapons stockpile that should be for the national defense of our country.”
She also turned it toward her favorite issue, the border.
“None of these big bad brave defense hawks ever talk of using our military to defend our daily border against the Mexican cartels who make billions from human and drug trafficking,” she said. “No, it’s all about fighting Russia and defending Ukraine.” She concluded by accusing those in favor of the new aide as “moving us closer to WW3.”
The Ukraine issue illustrates an interesting dynamic at play when it comes to the Ukraine/Russia issue. A bipartisan majority in Congress supports continued aid, along with the Biden Administration, and they have continued to pass aid packages since the beginning of the war. However, some on both the right and left are opposed to that consensus.
As for the 2024 presidential candidates, Donald Trump has repeatedly promised to end the war on his first day back in office, although he’s been vague on details of exactly how he would do so. Prior to launching his candidacy, Gov. Ron DeSantis called the war a “territorial dispute,” before reversing himself. Most other candidates, including former Vice President Mike Pence, have packed continued support of Ukraine.
One exception? Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., the Democratic candidate who seems to have drawn much of his support from the political right.
In a recent appearance on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast, Kennedy claimed the United States has spent $8 trillion on the Ukraine war. That figure, as pointed out by Newsweek, is not accurate; the real figure is about $77 billion.
Kennedy also claimed that the United States spent $16 trillion on “lockdowns,” although in actuality the $16 trillion figure was an estimate from 2020 about how much the pandemic would cost the local economy, not anything having to do with the U.S. outlays.
“That’s $24 trillion that they had to print to pay for nothing,” Kennedy said on Rogan’s show, in reference to his erroneous figures as to the amounts of pandemic and Ukraine aid. But it is not, clearly, for “nothing”; the billions the government spent on COVID-19 aid, through the multiple packages passed in 2020 and 2021, helped to avoid a complete economic calamity.
“Total mandatory Congressional spending across all government departments last year only came to $4.1 trillion,” Newsweek said in the fact check. The entire cost of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars has been estimated at about $8 trillion, over a more than 20-year period.
In a speech in New Hampshire last weekend, Kennedy had spoken about the Ukraine war.
“I abhor Russia’s brutal and bloody invasion of that nation,” the candidate said. “But we must understand that our government has also contributed to its circumstances with repeated, deliberate provocations of Russia going back to the 1990s.”
“Democratic and Republican administrations have pushed NATO to Russia’s borders, violated our own solemn promise in the early nineties when we pledged that if Russia made this terrible concession of moving 400,000 troops out of East Germany and allowing the unification of Germany under a possible NATO army. And we would commit that after that not move NATO one inch to the east,” he added.
Expertise and Experience
Stephen Silver is a Senior Editor for 19FortyFive. He is an award-winning journalist, essayist and film critic, who is also a contributor to the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Broad Street Review and Splice Today. The co-founder of the Philadelphia Film Critics Circle, Stephen lives in suburban Philadelphia with his wife and two sons. Follow him on Twitter at @StephenSilver.
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