Several key Republican senators on Tuesday pushed back against Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ recent comments that US support for Ukraine is not a “vital” national interest, exposing a key intraparty fault line ahead of the 2024 election.
“To say this doesn’t matter is to say that war crimes don’t matter,” South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham told CNN, adding that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s aggression will “go beyond Ukraine” and that “if you don’t get that, you’re not listening to what he’s saying.”
On Monday, DeSantis, who has not yet announced a presidential bid, said in a statement responding to a questionnaire from Fox News’ Tucker Carlson that “while the US has many vital national interests … becoming further entangled in a territorial dispute between Ukraine and Russia is not one of them.”
“We cannot prioritize intervention in an escalating foreign war over the defense of our own homeland, especially as tens of thousands of Americans are dying every year from narcotics smuggled across our open border and our weapons arsenals critical for our own security are rapidly being depleted,” DeSantis wrote in response to Carlson’s request for 2024 GOP presidential candidates to provide their views on the war in Ukraine.
The comments put DeSantis ideologically closer in line with former President Donald Trump, the biggest name in the 2024 primary, and at odds with the more traditional GOP party positioning of former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley, who has already entered the race, and former Vice President Mike Pence, who is widely expected to. Trump and DeSantis led the potential GOP field in a new CNN poll of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents released Tuesday.
Sen. John Cornyn told CNN that he was “kind of surprised” to learn DeSantis’ position, noting that it “raises…
Read the full article here