On Tuesday’s broadcast of the Fox News Channel’s “Fox & Friends,” House Minority Leader Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) stated that the Biden administration could have done things like arming the Ukrainians, handling Afghanistan better, and not fighting Congress to keep the Nord Stream 2 pipeline to ensure Ukraine wasn’t invaded instead of trying to arm Ukraine after the invasion. McCarthy also wondered how long getting arms to the Ukrainians will take given how long it took to get the free coronavirus tests the administration promised to deliver to Americans.
McCarthy said, “[T]he challenge that we have is, it’s the actions that we could have done before from this administration to make sure today wasn’t happening. We could have supplied the weapons to Ukraine. … And we could have been the individuals that could have deterred this from ever happening.”
He added, “I think there are a number of things, if you watch history, that we could have done. How we pulled out of Afghanistan gave Putin the wrong impression. Having a meeting with President Biden and giving him Nord Stream 2 right off the bat was the wrong impression to go. … If we had supplied weaponry early, had the administration not fought Ted Cruz’s amendment to block Nord Stream 2 in the Senate, that probably would have been a deterrent to Putin. To think that he had the Biden administration fighting to keep his Nord Stream 2 against — inside Congress and the Senate was a wrong approach to take. And now, after he has entered Ukraine, killing innocent people, now we want to try to supply weapons. It’s very difficult to get there. And how long does it take? When President Biden promised America he’d give them a free COVID test, two months later, it will arrive at your door. Well, in two months, can President Zelensky still be holding court and still fighting back if he doesn’t have the weapons to fight himself?”
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