The Duran Podcast - McConnell pushes Ukraine aid, divide GOP and Trump

Episode Date: February 14, 2024

McConnell pushes Ukraine aid, divide GOP and Trump

All right, Alexander, let's talk about the Senate vote, which has stripped away the southern border and has just focused on financial military aid to Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan. Basically, a foreign aid is what the bill is about now. So nothing connected to the southern border, nothing connected to the United States, the American people, that is and everything now is about getting money to foreign countries, foreign entities, foreign leaders, the Olensky regime. That's what this is really all about. 60 billion to Alensky. What do you make of this? It's going to go to the House, by the way, and I imagine the House is going to shoot this down. They're not going to agree to this. But who knows?

Who knows what's going to happen? The Senate, I think they're, they've upset a lot of America. with this move that they've made. Anyway, what are your thoughts? Well, I think you're right. I mean, it is eventually going to go to the House. I think that Johnson has basically already made it all but inconceivable. I mean, logically inconceivable that Republicans in the House would support this thing. After all, it was Johnson who created the linkage with funding for the southern border in the first place. So it would be a complete U-turn on his part to support a package of this kind, which leaves the situation on the southern border unresolved.

And I think it would play disastrously. And I think Donald Trump, who is the candidate, would oppose it and strongly oppose it. The Senate has always had a strong neocon, pro-administration, pro-Ukraine, majority. And we had this long negotiation, which McConnell, who is a Nicarcon, and an anti-Trump person and a massive supporter of Ukraine and all that, a long negotiation between McConnell and Schumer to try to patch together something to deal with the problems of the southern border and at the same time get all this authorization funding for Ukraine.

And he came up with a bill, which was, I mean, even I could see that it was a ludicrous bill. I mean, I just don't understand it. I mean, as I understand it, the bill would have allowed 5,000 illegals to enter the United States each day. Which, how can you pass legislation that authorizes illegals to enter the United States each day? enter your country. I mean, it, I mean, I just, it passes my understanding. And what happened was that it enraged the Republican conference. They rejected it. The Senate rejected it on a 50 to 49 vote. Several Democrats voted against it, presumably because they think the board there should be more open, even more open than this bill would have allowed for, which is, which is, which is, which is, which is,

Anyway, I'm not going to get into that. I find that so bizarre and incomprehensible. I'm not going to talk about that. But McConnell enraged his conference by going along with this plan. He enraged it even more by hiding behind another man. It was obvious that it was he who negotiated it with Schumer, but he hid behind another senator, Senator Langford, who was supposed to be the person who negotiated this deal.

Ted Cruz has now openly saying that McConnell needs to step down. And Schumer, it seems to me, what he is doing now is he's acting to highlight, he's acting to highlight Republican divisions. Because the, well, let's call them the rhinos, still deeply committed to support for Ukraine. They were always going to vote for a package of funding. for Ukraine, 17 of them did support this package. 32 Republicans in the Senate opposed it.

If 32 Republicans in the Senate oppose it, I can't see how the caucus, the Republican caucus in the House, will support this. And I would have thought the Speaker Johnson will reject it. How could McConnell, whatever you may think, of him. I'm not a fan of McConnell. I'm putting it lightly. But whatever you may think of the guy, you know, he was always a very clever operator when it came to these types of deals and negotiations. How could he allow himself to be manipulated this much by sure? Because he must have known. He must know if his cognitive abilities are, are in fact, he must know that the House is going to

shoot this thing down. So why would he expose himself in this way by voting to push this bill forward? Because now you have Ted Cruz calling for him to resign. You have Rand Paul saying that this is madness. This doesn't serve the interest of the American people. All of the American people are upset with McConnell and Langford and all these guys. But everyone knows it's McConnell. like the day, everyone knows. This is McConnell. And everyone knows that it's him scheming with Schumer. Now, Schumer, as you said, get something out of this.

You said he can highlight the Republican divisions. He can score some political points. But McConnell gets nothing from this. Nothing. Because the House will turn this thing down. But what does he get out of this? Why would he allow himself to be manipulated like this? Well, I should say that I assume the House will turn this down.

But one should be very careful because this is congressional politics, which is so Byzantine and complicated that it's never easy to be absolutely sure what will happen. But I would have thought, if they have any degree of political consistency and any understanding of the true feelings of Republicans and Americans outside the Beltway, then they will turn this down. Well, why is McConnell doing this? Well, there are two explanations. as one explanation, which is that he's old and ill, and that his abilities, his skills

have left him, and that he's starting to make mistakes, and that could be the explanation. I think McConnell is somebody never to underestimate, and I'm going to say this. I think that the fundamental reason he's doing this is because, on the one hand, he is a neocon, And he does want to see funding for Ukraine, because that's what neocons want. But there is another reason. And that is that at some level, he actually wants to highlight divisions within the Republican Conference because he doesn't want Donald Trump to win the election in November. I think it is as simple as that.

I think that is what he wants. If he loses his control of the Republican Conference, in the Senate will so be it. He's probably going to retire when his term ends, but his donors will be happy with him, and he does not want to see Donald Trump re-elected, President of the United States. And I have to say, I think that is what this is about.

So he wants to create problems within the Republican Party and tensions within the Republican Party between himself, between some Republicans and Donald Trump. So I think probably this is his calculation. I'm not sure he's right, by the way. I think this is more likely to exasperate most Republicans and unite them behind Trump and will expose the extent to which the McConnell wing

is essentially a court faction that really has very little traction outside Washington, outside the Beltway. But I wouldn't be surprised if that is his calculation. It could be a combination of both. I mean, it could be that he does want to. This is about Trump and he does want to expose the fractures in the Republican Party in order to kneecap Trump.

But it could also be that he is, you know, just not altogether up there anymore. So do you, a final question. Do you think this is McConnell's way of making it difficult for Johnson in the House as well? Yeah, it is. To put them in a bind with this vote. And, yeah. Yeah, go ahead. Except, of course, that, you know,

with 32 Republicans in the Senate voting against it, you know, which is two-thirds of the Republican conference in the Senate, voting against this package, I would have thought what that would be more likely to signal to Johnson is that there is strong, opposition in amongst Republicans to funding Ukraine. I mean, Johnson knows the Democrats are going to support funding for Ukraine when it is proposed by a Democrat president.

So, I mean, he's not going to be worried about the fact that, what, you get, 50 Democrat senators voted for this package. He's going to look at the way in which the Republican votes have divided. and he sees that more Republicans, twice as many Republicans, voted against this package, has voted for it. And that's in the Senate, where, you know, neocon, pro-establishment, McConnellite policies have historically been in the ascendant. And Johnson knows that sentiment in the House is different.

And he's going to say to himself, if so many Republicans in the Senate are opposed, opposition in the House amongst my caucus is going to be even greater. So I'm not going to put this forward to the House. A final question. I wonder what would happen, hypothetical. I doubt it's going to happen, but I wonder what would happen if Johnson did decide to push this through this bill.

Well, that's a very good question. I mean, it would be, it would possibly, open another challenge. I mean, we might have another attempt to remove him as speaker, another attempt to change the speaker. But of course, the problem is we're coming close to the election now. And, you know, people in the House might be reluctant to start engaging in more political games of that kind in the House and the run-up to the election.

I don't know is the answer. I don't think he will do it. I don't think he will want to. create problems for himself, unnecessary problems for himself in the house. Besides, he must know that authorising funding for Ukraine when the problems of the southern border are unresolved, especially given that it was he who created that linkage in the first place is going to play very, very badly with Republicans.

And I don't get the impression that he wants Trump to lose. I think on the contrary, Johnson has a reasonably good relationship with Trump and wants to support the man he knows is going to be the Republican candidate for the election in November. So I don't see myself why Johnson would do that. to say it straightforwardly. But you know, American politics is so complicated, so much goes on behind the scenes,

so much pressure is applied. There's all the lobbyists, all the phone calls that you can imagine, the donors are going to be expressing their views through various back channels. All kinds of pressures are going to be brought. We won't know that this thing is over until it is over,

and that's probably going to take some weeks before this is finally decided. weeks, by the way, which Ukraine doesn't have. Exactly. I was going to say the same thing. All right. We'll end it there. The durand.com. We are on Rumble Odyssey, but shoot, telegram, rock, fin, and TwitterX. And go to the Duran shop.

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