This whole thing feels like a trap for Biden. Republicans blocked much needed Ukraine Aid and said they wouldn't support it unless Democrats came to the table on border policy changes. Biden came to the table, and there is currently a deal Senate Republicans and Democrats are making, but there's no guarantee that if something passes the Senate, it will pass in the House because many Republicans would rather see Biden embarrassed than actually pass legislation. If this deal fell apart and the lack of Ukraine Aid caused something bad to happen to Ukraine, Biden would look bad on the international stage in an election year. Not the Republicans who blocked it.
Plus, it's important to remember that Republicans have had multiple chances to actually pass actual immigration reform in Congress. Most Republicans in the Senate voted against Bush's immigration reform bill in 2007 for not being conservative enough, in 2013 the Republican Speaker of the House wouldn't even put Obama's immigration reform bill that had passed the US Senate with bi-partisan support on the floor for a vote, and nothing ever came of Biden's reform plans that were sent to Congress right after he was sworn in, in 2021. Because they would rather use border/immigration issues as something to fear monger to white people, and to campaign on to win votes and achieve power rather than help fix the problem.
Fiona Hill, longtime Russia intelligence analyst that worked in Bush, Obama, Trump administrations. (She was a witness in Trump's 1st Impeachment)
“Ukraine has become a battlefield now for America and America’s own future — whether we see it or not — for our own defensive posture and preparedness, for our reputation and our leadership,” she told me. “For Putin, Ukraine is a proxy war against the United States, to remove the United States from the world stage.”
She’s been talking to some lawmakers about Ukraine, and she’s worried that their partisanship has blinded them to the dangers the country faces if Putin gets his way.
“The problem is that many members of Congress don’t want to see President Biden win on any front,” she said. “People are incapable now of separating off ‘giving Biden a win’ from actually allowing Ukraine to win. They are thinking less about U.S. national security, European security, international security and foreign policy, and much more about how they can humiliate Biden.”
“In that regard,” she continued, “whether they like it or not, members of Congress are doing exactly the same thing as Vladimir Putin. They hate that. They want to refute that. But Vladimir Putin wants Biden to lose, and they want Biden to be seen to lose as well.”
The veteran Russia watcher is deeply alarmed as Washington reaches an inflection point on the war in Ukraine.
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