The war in Ukraine has raged for two years and has reached an impasse. It has also become a political lightning rod back home between those who believe funding is essential to keep Vladimir Putin contained and those who refuse to give Volodymyr Zelensky a blank check. In this series, Costs of War, the Washington Examiner will investigate the state of the war itself, the corruption involved, the U.S. states that benefit from spending, and how it’ll shape the 2024 election.
A congressional fight over the future of support for Ukraine has become hopelessly caught up in presidential politics as Donald Trump threatens President Joe Biden’s request for additional foreign aid.
The former president, who has trounced his primary opponents on his way to a 2024 rematch against Biden, has been skeptical of the war since it began two years ago. He accuses Biden of “inviting” the conflict with his perceived weakness on the world stage and boasts he could end it in 24 hours, presumably with a settlement that cedes territory to Russia.
That view, at odds with Biden’s pledge to support Ukraine for “as long as it takes,” has not gone unanswered. The president says Trump has “emboldened” Russian President Vladimir Putin with his apparent ambivalence toward NATO.
The debate offers a stark choice to voters in November. Biden has cast the conflict as a struggle between democracy and authoritarianism. Trump’s allies, meanwhile, question the wisdom of funding a war, now entering its third year, that has largely settled into a stalemate.
However, Trump has opened a legislative front in that debate months before a single ballot has been cast. The former president, aided by conservatives aligned with his “America First” agenda in Congress, has spent months undermining Biden’s request for more than $60 billion in additional funding for Ukraine.
The aid has the support of congressional leaders, particularly in the Senate, and even a bipartisan majority in each chamber. The Senate demonstrated that earlier this month when 70 senators voted for $95 billion in assistance for Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan.
But the victory was hard-fought, and its fate remains uncertain in the House, where Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) is reluctant to cross the Ukraine skeptics in his conference. He has yet to commit to bringing the legislation up for a vote.
Ushering the aid through the House was always going to be a challenge, as Johnson controls a two-seat majority and is at constant risk of being deposed. He denies his decision is dictated by Trump and, indeed, has long been a skeptic of the aid himself even as he urges Western leaders to use “every means available” to oppose Putin.
But the former president’s influence has become plainly apparent as he’s dominated the primary field.
Even defense hawks, showing fresh deference to the presumptive nominee, have begun to adopt what was once a marginalized view in the Republican Party. Unswerving commitments to defend Ukraine’s sovereignty have become calls for fiscal austerity and an end to “blank checks.”
Ukrainian military setbacks are one factor in that debate. The country failed to make meaningful progress in a long-anticipated summer counteroffensive, and over the weekend, the Ukrainian city of Avdiivka fell to the Russians, its first major defeat since May.
Gripes about what victory, or at least an exit strategy, looks like for America have become pervasive. But ultimately, that skepticism is limited to a party influenced by Trump’s brand of “America First” populism.
Even in public polling, Democrats have maintained their support for the war effort. Virtually the same percentage think the United States is doing “too much” to help Ukraine, according to Gallup, while that share among Republicans has risen from 43% in the first months of the war to 62% in the fall of 2023.
“I don’t think anybody believes that Mike Johnson wouldn’t bring that Senate bill to a vote if Trump wasn’t opposed to it,” said GOP strategist Alex Conant.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), one of the most vocal defenders of Ukraine aid, believed he could overcome the resistance by meeting, at least in some form, a conservative demand for border security.
He drew a red line that forced the White House to sit down and negotiate.
That calculation was, in part, due to the sense that Trump had lost his sway after his 2020 defeat to Biden, plus the blame assigned to him for endorsing failed candidates two years later in the midterm elections.
But Trump demonstrated in no uncertain terms his continued hold over the party when he came out against the agreement reached between Biden and Senate negotiators. He demanded a “perfect” deal or nothing at all.
Most of McConnell’s conference followed Trump’s lead and blocked the “Ukraine for border” deal, forcing Senate leadership to pass the aid without a border component.
Republicans complained the border compromise was a “fig leaf” to conservatives that would not actually stem the record influx of immigrants. It tightened asylum and parole loopholes but left out Trump-era policies such as “Remain in Mexico.”
However, it also opened Republicans up to the accusation that they were rejecting the deal to deny Biden a win ahead of the November election.
Even Sen. James Lankford (R-OK), the lead Republican negotiator in border talks, blamed the political climate for the bill’s GOP critics.
For months, defenders of Ukraine had tried to inject a sense of urgency into getting the aid passed, with the White House warning it had exhausted its existing funding. But as the first presidential primaries got underway in January without a deal in hand, it became equally clear that part of the urgency was the 2024 calendar.
Trump’s opposition has not stopped there. On the eve of the Senate passing its border-free Ukraine bill, he floated the idea of converting the assistance into a loan.
“I did the same thing with NATO,” Trump said at a rally in South Carolina. “I got them to pay up. NATO was busted until I came along. I said everybody is going to pay.”
The suggestion did not tank the deal, but it was viewed as a demand nonetheless. Republicans such as Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-ND), who voted for the aid, argued the House should consider incorporating language to that effect when it takes up the measure.
Trump’s meddling on Ukraine has created a strange dynamic. In some sense, Trump holds Biden’s foreign policy legacy in his hands, in control of the votes he needs to get the aid passed. That may mean the president accepting a pared-down bill that drops Democratic imperatives such as humanitarian assistance to Gaza.
Biden has even shown fresh openness to sitting down with Johnson, who is demanding a more conservative border deal in exchange for the aid.
“To the extent he can’t get more aid funded and Ukraine falls or faces severe setbacks, that’s going to reflect poorly on Biden,” Conant said. “I mean, I don’t think anybody wants to be the president that lost Ukraine to Russia.”
But Trump’s opposition has also been a gift to Biden. Tanking the border deal may have kept immigration as a live issue heading into November, but it also allowed the president to turn criticism of his border policies back on Republicans.
Yes, he is overseeing the worst border crisis in recorded history, Democrats argue, but Republicans blocked a good-faith effort to address it.
“Every day between now and November, the American people are going to know that the only reason the border is not secure is Donald Trump and his MAGA Republican friends,” Biden said in a speech from the White House.
The political ramifications are not limited to the presidential race. The episode also fits neatly into Democrats’ claims that “MAGA extremists” are running Congress at the behest of Trump. Biden chided Republicans to “stand up” to the former president in early February as the Senate border deal was falling apart.
“It looks like they’re caving. Frankly, they owe it to the American people to show some spine and do what they know to be right,” he said.
The message appeared to resonate with voters in the midterm elections when a predicted red wave failed to materialize. Democrats have signaled that will be the foundation of their 2024 message, too, as they look to flip a handful of seats and reclaim the lower chamber.
The dispute is also catnip for Democrats who want to reprise the idea that Republicans are in league with Putin, a narrative that began with the yearslong investigation into since-discredited allegations that Trump colluded with Russia to win the 2016 election.
Of course, Trump has prepared his own lines of attack. He’s repeatedly pointed out that Russia did not invade another country on his watch, like it did under George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and now Biden, to argue that Biden projects weakness on the world stage.
The idea of a quick settlement to the Ukraine conflict also plays into his own perceived strength as a negotiator.
Republicans have not shied away in the face of Democratic attacks. In fact, candidates have leaned in harder to Trump’s Ukraine skepticism in GOP primaries.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
That’s not entirely surprising from some Republicans, such as Kari Lake, a vocal Trump ally running for Senate in Arizona.
But even longtime defense hawks such as Mike Rogers, a candidate for Senate in Michigan, have soured on the conflict in campaign speeches, calling for the U.S. to be “engaged but not entangled” in foreign affairs.
