And National Security Is In Jeopardy Because Of His Weakness
Biden asked Congress to allocate funds to continue aid to Ukraine and Israel. The Republicans, seeing an opportunity to advance some of their otherwise dead-in-the-water agenda, said they wouldn’t agree unless the Senate and White House agreed to a whole laundry list of bigoted bullshit. Eventually a deal got cut that would give the Republicans a lot of what they wanted on border security. Then along came Trump who threw a wrench into the works. He doesn’t want to see any aid to Ukraine and he doesn’t want to see any kind of border security.
So now, MAGA Mike is saying that Ukraine aid and border security will be split, exactly what the White House wanted in the first place. The GOP was barely a governing party to begin with but now, dominated by a MAGA cult serving the interests of one man, rather than the interests of any set of values, let alone the American people, the House GOP in particular, is the polar opposite of a governing party.
Yesterday, Morgan Chalfant reported that MAGA Mike told his parliamentary counterparts from Latvia (Daiga Mieriņa), Estonia (Lauri Hussar) and Lithuania (Viktorija Čmilytė-Nielsen) that “the national security proposal combining aid for Ukraine with border policy reforms would likely be split up… Johnson acknowledged that the path forward couldn’t be certain until the text of a forthcoming border security deal is released, the person said… [T]he remarks are the latest sign that Johnson believes the broader package— which would include changes to border security policy negotiated by the Senate— to be dead on arrival in the House and is charting the path forward under that assumption. It’s unclear whether splitting up the package would mean the House takes a separate vote on all of the pieces, including aid for Ukraine. Holding a standalone vote on military assistance for Kyiv could open up Johnson to criticism from lawmakers on the right who oppose further aid.”
Keep in mind that Marjorie Traitor Greene has been loudly threatening that if MAGA Mike puts aid to Ukraine onto the floor for a vote she will introduce a privileged motion to vacate the chair (fire him as speaker). MM— along with Mike Waltz (R-FL) and Tom Kean (R-NJ)— met with the 3 Baltic parliamentary speakers on Tuesday and “According to a readout from the speaker’s office, they discussed support for Ukraine, the situation in the Middle East, and the Biden administration’s recent decision to pause new permits for liquefied natural gas projects. Johnson ‘heard from the group their views on the importance of decisive action when it comes to addressing Russian aggression, including on weaponized migration aimed to destabilize national sovereignty,’ the readout said.”
On Monday, Jordain Carney and Burgess Everett reported that MAGA Mike and McConnell “are about to find out whether they can extract immigration concessions from President Joe Biden— or whether Donald Trump and his allies will pull them apart. As a bipartisan group of senators labor to deliver a deal that would tie stricter border policies to Ukraine aid, with text expected as early as this week, McConnell and Johnson are facing a unity test that will define their party during the 2024 election cycle. If McConnell can get a majority of his 49 members on board, while keeping Johnson’s conservatives from strangling the deal, the GOP can crow that it forced Democrats to swallow an immigration deal that would amount to remarkably right-leaning concessions from Biden. If the border-Ukraine agreement implodes, Trump will have cemented his return to control over the entire party... As the Biden administration warns Ukraine is effectively out of money, Trump is influencing Johnson’s resistance to bipartisan Senate negotiations and mucking up McConnell’s plans.”
And keep in mind, that has somewhat senile Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) reminded everyone yesterday, he's opposing legislation not because he disagrees with it but because it might make Biden "look good" by benefitting his own constituents.
