House Speaker Kevin McCarthy speaks to reporters outside of his office in the US Capitol Building on March 7, 2023 in Washington, DC.
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McCarthy rejected an invitation from Zelenskyy to visit Kyiv.
Zelenskyy invited McCarthy to show him how US aid is being put to use in the war against Russia.
“I don’t have to go to Ukraine or Kyiv to see it,” McCarthy said.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy rejected Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s invitation for him to visit Kyiv amid growing concerns over GOP pushback to continued aid to Ukraine.
McCarthy also reiterated that he does not support providing Ukraine with “blank checks.”
“Let’s be very clear about what I said: no blank checks, OK? So, from that perspective, I don’t have to go to Ukraine to understand where there’s a blank check or not,” McCarthy told CNN on Wednesday. “I will continue to get my briefings and others, but I don’t have to go to Ukraine or Kyiv to see it. And my point has always been, I won’t provide a blank check for anything.”
President Joe Biden recently visited Kyiv, and McCarthy’s predecessor, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, went to the Ukrainian capital last May.
McCarthy’s comments came after Zelenskyy called for McCarthy to visit Ukraine in order to see how US aid is being used in the ongoing war against Russia.
“He has to come here to see how we work, what’s happening here, what war caused us, which people are fighting now, who are fighting now. And then after that, make your assumptions,” Zelenskyy said in an interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer.
Though congressional Republicans have generally been supportive of US security assistance to Ukraine, there is a vocal group of GOP lawmakers allied with former President Donald Trump who are fervently against providing more aid. This includes Republicans like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, who have made it no secret they want US aid to Kyiv to stop immediately.
“I think the US should be pushing for peace in Ukraine instead of funding and continuing a war that seems to be escalating and putting the entire world at risk of World War III,” Greene said at CPAC last Friday, per The Guardian.
—Aaron Rupar () March 3, 2023
Greene’s stance on the issue is linked to Trump’s “America First” foreign policy approach. Trump was highly critical of …read more
Source:: Business Insider