An unfortunate group of Republicans were a little too quick to complain yesterday about President Joe Biden’s surprise visit to Kyiv. While many U.S. allies saw a triumphant moment for American leadership, some GOP voices saw a partisan opportunity to take cheap and unnecessary shots at their own country’s president.
Take Gov. Ron DeSantis, for example.
As a governor, the Florida Republican generally doesn’t have to focus much of his attention on foreign policy and international affairs. For the most part, that’s the purview of federal policymakers, not state chief executives.
But as Fox News reported, as DeSantis moves closer to a presidential campaign, the public is starting to get a better sense of how the far-right governor sees the world.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) called out President Biden for his “blank-check policy” on Ukraine after the president traveled to Kyiv for an unannounced visit shortly before the one-year mark of Putin’s assault. DeSantis joined “Fox & Friends” Monday to discuss Biden’s first visit to the war zone since the conflict started a year ago, and why the newly allocated half-billion dollars in Ukrainian aid is unacceptable without clearly defined goals.
Echoing his party’s reactionary wing, DeSantis said condemned the status quo as an “open-ended blank check,” which the governor said is “not acceptable.”
In the same interview, the Florida Republican suggested his own country deserves part of the blame for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — DeSantis apparently thinks the withdrawal of U.S troops from Afghanistan laid the groundwork for Putin’s war, which is a familiar claim that has never made any sense — before dismissing Russia’s potency as “a third-rate military power” that isn’t “on the same level as a China.”
Of course, what DeSantis neglected to mention is that Russia’s military ineptitude has been exposed by Ukrainian forces that have benefited greatly from U.S. support — the same…
Read the full article here
