WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014\u00a0When President Donald Trump was impeached\u00a0in late 2019 after pressuring\u00a0Ukraine\u2019s leader for \u201ca favor,\u201d\u00a0all while withholding $400 million in military aid to help confront Russian-backed separatists, even the staunchest defense hawks in the Republican Party stood virtually united by Trump\u2019s side.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But as\u00a0Russian President Vladimir Putin\u2019s military marched toward Kyiv\u00a0this February, threatening not only Ukraine but the rest of Europe, Republicans and Democrats in Congress cast aside impeachment politics, rallied to Ukraine\u2019s side and swiftly shipped\u00a0billions\u00a0to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy\u2019s defense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The question ahead, as Ukrainians battle\u00a0Russia\u2019s grinding invasion now past its 100th day, is whether the rare bipartisanship on Capitol Hill is resilient enough to withstand Trump\u2019s isolationist influences on his party or whether Republicans who yielded to Trump\u2019s \u201cAmerica First\u201d approach will do so again, putting military and humanitarian support for Ukraine at risk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cMaybe there is a recognition on both Republican side and Democratic side that this security assistance is very important,\u201d said Bill Taylor,\u00a0a former ambassador to Ukraine, in a recent interview with The Associated Press.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cAnd maybe neither side is eager to crack that coalition.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The fraught party politics comes at a pivotal moment as the Russian invasion drags on and the United States gets deeper into the conflict before the November elections, when lawmakers face voters with control of Congress at stake.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A recent AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll shows\u00a0public support in the U.S. for punishing Russia over the war\u00a0is wavering if it comes at the expense of the economy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
While Congress mustered rare and robust bipartisan support to approve a $40 billion Ukraine package, bringing total U.S. support to a staggering $53 billion since the start of the war, opposition on the latest round of aid came solely from the Republican side, including from Trump.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That is a warning sign over the sturdiness of the bipartisan coalition that the top Republican in Congress, Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, tried to shore up when he led a delegation of GOP senators to stand by Zelenskyy\u2019s side in\u00a0a surprise trip to Kyiv last month.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThere is some isolationist sentiment in my party that I think is wrongheaded, and I wanted to push back against it,\u201d McConnell told a Kentucky audience this past week, explaining his Ukraine visit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The divisions within the GOP over Ukraine are routinely stoked by Trump, who initially praised Putin\u2019s invasion of Ukraine as a \u201cgenius\u201d negotiating strategy. Trump has repeatedly lashed out against the U.S. aid to Ukraine, including last weekend at a rally in Wyoming. Before the Senate vote on the $40 billion in assistance, Trump decried the idea of spending abroad while America\u2019s \u201cparents are struggling.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As Trump considers whether to run for the White House in 2024, the persistence of his \u201cAmerica First\u201d foreign policy approach leaves open questions about the durability of his party\u2019s commitment to U.S. support for a democratic Ukraine. Senators are poised this summer to vote to expand NATO to include Sweden and Finland, but Trump has repeatedly criticized U.S. spending on Western military alliance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri, among 11 Republican senators who voted against the Ukraine package, called the tally an \u201castronomical number\u201d at a time when foreign policy should be focused elsewhere, including on China.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThat is nation-building kind of number,\u201d Hawley said in an interview. \u201cAnd I think it\u2019s a mistake.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It was nearly three years ago that Ukraine was at the center of U.S politics with the\u00a02019 Trump impeachment proceedings that rocked Washington.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Zelenskky, a comedian turned politician, had just been elected when he asked Trump during a July 25, 2019, phone call for a meeting to strengthen U.S.-Ukraine relations and ensure military aid, according to a transcript released by Trump\u2019s White House.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe are almost ready to buy more Javelins from the United States for defense purposes,\u201d Zelenskyy told Trump, referring to anti-tank weaponry Ukraine relies on from the West.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Trump replied:\u00a0\u201cI would like you to do us a favor, though.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Trump asked Zelenskyy to investigate Joe Biden, a chief Democratic rival to Trump at the time and now the American president, and Biden\u2019s son Hunter, who served on the board of a Ukrainian gas company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The impeachment investigation, sparked by a government whistleblower\u2019s complaint over Trump\u2019s call, swiftly became a milestone, the first in a generation since Democrat Bill Clinton faced charges over an affair with a White House intern.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
During weeks of impeachment proceedings over Ukraine, witnesses from across the national security and foreign service sphere testified under oath about the alarms that were going off in Washington and Kyiv about Trump\u2019s conversation with Zelenskyy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Complicated stories emerged about the scramble by\u00a0Trump allies to secure the investigations of the Bidens\u00a0\u2014 and of the civil servants pushing back against what they saw as a breach of protocol.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Yet American opinions over the gravity of the charges against Trump were mixed, polling at the time by the AP showed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Trump was impeached by the Democratic-led House and acquitted by the Senate, with just one Republican, Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah, joining Democrats to convict.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe allegations were all horse hockey,\u201d said Rep. Morgan Griffith, R-Va., recalling his decision not to impeach.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., brushed back questions about whether Trump\u2019s actions then played any role in Russia\u2019s decision to invade Ukraine this February.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt wasn\u2019t like Putin invaded right after. It\u2019s been almost two years,\u201d Rubio said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Republicans are quick to remind that Trump was, in fact, the first president to allow lethal arms shipments to Ukraine \u2014 something Barack Obama\u2019s administration, with Biden as vice president, declined to do over worries of provoking Putin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, the co-chair of the Senate\u2019s Ukrainian Caucus who persuaded Trump in a phone call to ultimately release the $400 million in aid, stood by his decision not to convict Trump over the delay of that assistance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cAs long as it was done,\u201d Portman said about the outcome.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But Romney said people need to remain \u201cclear-eyed\u201d about the threat Putin poses to the world order. \u201cI did the right thing at the time, and I haven\u2019t looked back,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Democrats are blistering in their criticism of Republicans over the impeachment verdict.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a shame,\u201d said Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cEvery single Republican who voted in support of Donald Trump\u2019s geopolitical shakedown and blackmail of Volodymyr Zelenskky and the Ukrainian people should be ashamed of themselves,\u201d said Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., \u201cbecause the consequences of Donald Trump\u2019s actions were understood to us then, and now the world understands.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014\u00a0When President Donald Trump was impea […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1533,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1532","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.viewworld.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1532","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.viewworld.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.viewworld.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.viewworld.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.viewworld.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1532"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.viewworld.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1532\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1534,"href":"https:\/\/www.viewworld.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1532\/revisions\/1534"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.viewworld.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1533"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.viewworld.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1532"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.viewworld.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1532"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.viewworld.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1532"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}