The Biden administration has been “too slow” in giving more money to Ukraine, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said on Wednesday, in his first press conference since his second freeze in front of the press.
“The President has, I think, been too slow to keep the commitments that he’s made publicly, but at least he’s supporting the effort,” McConnell said of the Biden administration giving aid to Ukraine.
“I think he could have done it more skillfully. But he is supporting the effort, and I intend to continue to support it,” he went on. “I hope the majority of my colleagues will feel the same way”:
McConnell made similar remarks on the Senate floor, proclaiming that Biden has not been aggressive enough in delivering aid to the country.
“Since Putin’s escalation in Ukraine, President Biden has not been as decisive as many of us would have preferred,” McConnell said. “But this is no excuse for Congress to compound his administration’s failures with failures of our own.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky (L) meets with U.S. President Joe Biden in the Oval Office at the White House on September 1, 2021, in Washington, DC. This was the two leaders’ first face-to-face meeting and the first by a Ukrainian leader in more than four years (Doug Mills-Pool/Getty Images).
“It’s certainly not the time to go wobbly,” McConnell continued, urging his colleagues to support further aid to Ukraine.
U.S. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) (L) greets President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky as he arrives to address a joint meeting of Congress in the House Chamber of the U.S. Capitol on December 21, 2022, in Washington, DC. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
“Now, with Ukraine bravely defending its sovereignty and eroding Russia’s capacity to threaten NATO, it is not the time to ease up. … Helping Ukraine retake its territory means weakening one of America’s biggest strategic adversaries without firing a shot,” he continued.
The Biden administration last month requested $40 billion in supplemental funding, which includes $24 million to Ukraine. The U.S. has already given $113 billion to the effort, costing American taxpayers $900 per American household, according to an estimate from the Heritage Foundation.
Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) has maintained that he does not support Congress giving a “blank check” to Ukraine.
U.S. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) wears a Ukrainian flag before the State of the Union address by President Joe Biden during a joint session of Congress in the U.S. Capitol’s House Chamber on March 1, 2022, in Washington, DC. (Photo by Jim Lo Scalzo-Pool/Getty Images)
“A Republican-led House will not rubber-stamp any blank-check funding requests; rather, the administration’s emergency funding requests must be reviewed and scrutinized on their merits consistent with the practice and principles of our majority,” a spokesperson for the speaker said in a statement.
These were among the first remarks McConnell made following his second freeze-up in front of the press. The first episode occurred in July, and it required his colleagues to pull him aside.
WATCH: Mitch McConnell Freezes Mid-Speech, Led Away from Podium
McConnell, 81, experienced another freezing episode in late August. However, the Capitol’s attending physician said the senator did not experience a stroke or seizure and medically cleared him to continue with his schedule.
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Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) is among those who have expressed concern, noting that the dehydration explanation is simply “inadequate.”
“I think it’s an inadequate explanation to say this is dehydration. I’ve practiced medicine for 25 years, and it doesn’t look like dehydration to me,” Paul, an ophthalmologist, said.
“It looks like a focal neurologic event,” Paul added.
Despite that, McConnell is remaining defiant, asserting this week that he has no plans to step down or retire until his term officially ends in 2027. At that point, he will be 84 years old.
Former President Donald Trump told Breitbart News that McConnell’s health issues are “sad” but blasted him for advancing the Biden agenda, adding that Republicans need a new leader.
He said:
I thought it was sad. At the same time, I think it’s a shame he went so far out to give Green New Deal money to Biden and Democrats. He got ten people to vote because they needed ten people, and he got ten people to vote on numerous occasions for trillions of dollars. I think that’s a shame. But that was too bad. That was a sad thing to see. He had a bad fall, I guess, and probably an after-effect of that. But it was also sad that he gave trillions and trillions and trillions of dollars to the Democrats to waste on the Green New Deal, destroying our oceans and destroying our great, beautiful vistas and plains all over our country with windmills that are very expensive energy. So that’s a very sad thing also.
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