Sorry, Adam Schiff, you’re no John McCain. Unlike McCain, you sat on your hands when Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014.
This truth bears pointing out in light of Rep. Schiff’s reference Friday to the late Republican senator’s comments on Ukraine. Speaking at President Trump’s impeachment trial, Schiff played a video of McCain in which the former GOP presidential candidate explained why Vladimir Putin wanted to undermine Ukrainian sovereignty.
“Suppose Ukraine finally, after failing in 2004, gets it right, democracy, gets rid of corruption, economy’s really improving, and it’s right there on the border of Russia,” McCain said, “I think it makes [Putin] very nervous if there were a success in Ukraine in bringing about a free and open society and economic success, which is not the case in Russia.”
Schiff then capped off McCain’s excerpt by taking credit for it. “Achieving the Ukrainian success that Sen. McCain and so many of us hoped for proved to be a daunting task,” Schiff said. Rightly saluting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s election as a cause for anti-corruption efforts, Schiff argued that his, Zelensky’s, and McCain’s efforts in Ukraine have been catastrophically undermined by Trump.
This is a very creative retelling of history.
Yes, McCain was right to argue that the United States has a moral and material national interest in consolidating the democratic rule of law in Ukraine. But for Schiff to present himself as McCain’s ally on this issue is simply absurd. Where McCain responded to Russia’s 2014 invasion of Ukraine by calling on a “feckless” President Barack Obama to support Ukraine with lethal weapons and robust sanctions, Schiff’s response was quite different.
When Russia first invaded Ukraine in March 2014, Schiff tried to deflect blame away from the Obama administration and onto the intelligence community. That same month, the California congressman cautioned against a tough response to Russia’s aggression, warning, “The challenge is, we do need to have some kind of working relationship with Russia? And while we can impose these costs and take these steps, we’ve got to be mindful of the fact that they can impose their own costs on us.”
A few months later, in July 2014, Russia-directed rebels used a Russian-provided missile system to down Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 passenger airliner. How did Schiff respond to Obama’s refusal to do anything about it?
Well, the 2020 impeachment McCain-Schiff was certainly nowhere to be seen. Things didn’t improve much from there. A year later, Schiff was telling the New York Times only that “there has been a strong bipartisan well of support” for providing Ukraine with lethal arms.
The juxtaposition of Schiff 2020 and Schiff 2014-15 is thus pretty stunning. Where Schiff 2014-15 was happy to let Obama give Ukraine to a Russian invasion force and happy to restrain his own support for lethal weapons supplies to polite requests, Schiff 2020 pretends that he was the glorious ally to McCain’s relentless opposition to Putin’s aggression.
Schiff talks a lot about American leadership and his support for Ukrainian democracy. But, judged by his record before impeachment, from that point when the Russian guns first started firing, he has very little credibility.
The truth is clear. Sorry, Schiff, when it comes to Ukraine, you’re no John McCain.
