Tucker: This is how much money the US is spending on Ukraine
Fox News host voices his concerns about lawmakers prioritizing solving Ukraine's problems over America's on 'Tucker Carlson Tonight.
There is nothing in the world worse than finding out that your deepest fears are justified. That's the nightmare scenario, learning there really is a zombie in the closet. Let's say you're a kid and you've convinced yourself that your parents don't really love you. They claim they do. They say it all the time, usually without looking up from their iPhones, but you can tell they don't really mean it. They don't seem sincere.
And then one Christmas morning, confirmation. You discover they've forgotten to buy you presents, any presents. They were busy and it just slipped their mind. Instead, they spent all their time and all their money buying gifts for a kid down the street. All the things that you asked for, they gave to another nine-year-old you have never met. How would that make you feel?
Well, you would be crushed, but you would also be vindicated. You would know for a dead certain fact that your parents really didn't love you. They're not even very interested in you. That's how a lot of Americans felt last night watching the House of Representatives approve yet another massive aid package for Ukraine. Nothing against Ukraine, but we could probably use that money here right about now. After 100 years of virtually uninterrupted wealth generation, the American economy appears to be faltering in ways that are scary to anyone who's paying attention.
Even people who aren't paying attention can sense there's something really wrong. Lots of people are not working. Those who are working are getting poorer quickly, thanks to inflation. All of a sudden everything is wildly more expensive. Have you noticed? We literally have a shortage of baby formula right now. Did you think that would happen in America ever? And yet it is happening and so is the deadliest drug epidemic in our history.
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About 107,000 of your fellow Americans, most of them young people who should have had long, productive lives are instead dead. They've died from drug ODs over the past year. This is the saddest thing that has happened to our country in a very long time, and yet Congress, which claims to run the country, can't be bothered even to acknowledge it, much less do anything about it.
Instead, your representatives in Washington just voted to send yet another $40 billion to Ukrainian oligarchs who paid off the president's son. That's what happened, and it's just the latest check that Congress has cut them. You can add it to the approximately $14 billion they've already spent on Ukraine. That brings the total as of tonight to more than $54 billion.
How much is that? Well, for perspective, it is more than we spent per year on average on the war in Afghanistan, a war that began with a direct attack on the United States. $54 billion – that's about as much as Russia, the country, spends on its entire armed forces over the course of a full year. It is a ludicrous amount and yet Congress happily approved it. In fact, they allocated $7 billion more than Joe Biden asked for. That's how excited they were to do it.
Where is this money going? Oh, that's the best part.
Congress has decided to fix all of the pressing problems that need to be fixed except fix them in Ukraine, not here. The main course of all this funding from day one has been to secure Ukraine's borders because, you know, you can't have a country without borders. They have to be secure. Nancy Pelosi strongly believes that about Ukraine and so do her friends on the Republican side. Ukrainian border security is the main goal.
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Then there's the problem of "food insecurity." Not here, in Ukraine. Food is getting expensive in Ukraine, so we're going to spend $760 million to fix that just in this check and not just in Ukraine. Congress, who was feeling kind of sporty, also added $150 million for something called the Global Agriculture and Food Security Program because while we're feeding Ukraine, why not feed the rest of the world? We've got more food than we can use. And of course, that will obviously include baby formula, too, because kids in other countries need to eat.
Then there's another huge chunk of cash to "combat human trafficking." Now, not combat human trafficking in Texas, where it is now ubiquitous thanks to the open border with Mexico, but to combat human trafficking in Ukraine, because it's sad what's happening there. But not here, that's not sad. We're ignoring it. There's still more money to make sure Ukrainians have emergency shelter because apparently more than a million Americans aren't homeless tonight. There's $900 million to make sure Ukrainians have access to "entitlement programs" our entitlement programs. They'll need them when they arrive here, as many will.
In other words, you can't afford to fill your truck, but you now get to pay the living expenses of anyone who shows up in your country claiming to be from Ukraine and you will. And then because paying off your friends is always the real point of these exercises in Washington, there are billions more dollars for Lloyd Austin's former employers in the weapons business. That would include $72 million for something the bill describes as "research, development, test, and evaluation in Ukraine." Hmm.
Now, don't say biolabs because that's not a lab, but honestly, this is weird. Ukraine is a war zone and therefore probably not a great place for scientific research right now, but whatever. We're funding some kind of science experiments in Ukraine. No more questions from you. And the bill goes on like this and on and on.
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Russian President Vladimir Putin gestures while addresses a meeting of the Council of Legislators under the Russian Federal Assembly at the Tauride Palace, in St. Petersburg, Russia, Wednesday, April 27, 2022. (Alexander Demyanchuk, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP)
As Congressman Thomas Massie has pointed out, Congress has now spent more money on Ukraine in six months than the U.S. government spent on all roads and all bridges in the United States over all of last year. The $40 billion we're sending to Ukraine so they can secure their borders, by the way, is more than double (More than double!) what Joe Biden has asked to fund Customs and Border Security in the United States. One bill, more than double what we're spending this year on our borders and then in the middle of this historic drug emergency, and it is, the bill spends more than ten times the entire budget of the DEA (More than ten times!). Just in case you're wondering how your leaders feel about you, they're not fans at all, and now we know for sure.
You should know that every single Democrat in the House of Representatives voted for this bill. That would include even Barbara Lee of Berkeley. Now, if you remember her name, it may be because in 2001, Barbara Lee of Berkeley was the only member of Congress to oppose the war against the Taliban. But a war in Ukraine is a war that Barbara Lee can support. Why? Because there's no potential chance that war could help the United States. Here's her reasoning.
REP. BARBARA LEE: This war is not only about Ukraine. This war is about the rest of the world and Putin trying to establish autocratic governments throughout, throughout the world, and we know that this is taking place through disinformation campaigns, through all kinds of misinformation that's taking place.
So it's not really about Ukraine. It's about something bigger than Ukraine. Thanks, Barbara Lee, for being dim enough to tell us that, to say it out loud. This is a war on disinformation, which at some point in some way is dead certain to be a war on you. No question about it, because you're a font of disinformation, meaning you disagree. But we know for certain that wars against things you can't really identify, against people who don't exist, wars against concepts, one thing we know about those wars, like the war on terror, is they last forever.
So it's a little weird to see Tim Ryan of Ohio vote for this. Tim Ryan was supposed to be a working man's Democrat, a guy who cares about bread-and-butter issues. Tim Ryan represents Youngstown and Akron. Take a look at Akron some time. It's like a war zone itself. These are the cities that built America, crumbling and desperate now from total neglect. But don't you worry. Tim Ryan is totally committed to rebuilding Kyiv.
And so is Nancy Pelosi. For Pelosi, funding Ukraine at any cost is more than a foreign policy objective. It's a kind of religious observance.
HOUSE SPEAKER NANCY PELOSI: The brutality of Putin is not just what he's doing in Ukraine, but the impact that it is having on food for the world. So, when you're home thinking, what is this all about? Just think about, "When I was hungry, you fed me" in the Gospel of Matthew.
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., meets with reporters at the Capitol in Washington, Wednesday, Aug. 25, 2021. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
Oh, so Jesus wants to send more missiles to Ukraine and the more missiles we send to Ukraine, the less hungry people are going to be? Wait a second, wouldn't Jesus want to do everything possible to bring an end to the war in Ukraine, you irreligious little twit? How dare you quote that book.
By the way, there was a time when Nancy Pelosi didn't want to spend billions of dollars to secure a country's borders. She said it was wasteful and morally wrong. It wasn't that long ago, by the way, it was April of 2017. See if you notice the difference. She's for spending billions at borders now. She was opposed to it then. What changed? Watch.
PELOSI: The wall is, in my view, immoral, expensive, unwise and when the president says, "Well, I promised a wall during my campaign," I don't think he said he was going to pass billions of dollars of cost of the wall onto the taxpayer.
Oh, did you catch that? Border security in United States is immoral, but Jesus is strongly for border security and Ukraine and abortion, by the way. It's a sacrament.
As usual, Democrats, as ludicrous this may sound, are united on this point. They stand as one, but also, as usual, a sustained propaganda campaign in the American media has managed to divide the Republican Party. Now, why does this happen every single time? Here's why, because Republican officeholders, no matter how conservative they tell you they are, believe The New York Times. They care deeply what legacy media say. They read The New York Times every day. They don't want to be criticized by The New York Times. And that's how the left controls them every single time.
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If you don't believe it, think back the last two years. You saw the same dynamic in the early days of both the BLM riots and the COVID lockdowns. Nancy Pelosi was out there first taking the most extreme possible position and then a lot of Republican leaders agreed with her. Do you remember that two years ago this month, Nikki Haley, former governor of South Carolina, running for president (she's conservative) told Americans in the first days of the riots that they deserved to suffer after George Floyd died?
"In order to heal, it needs to be personal and painful for everyone," she wrote. In the end, it was personal and painful. A lot of people died and that was good because your racism killed George Floyd. That was Nikki Haley's first reaction. She read it inThe New York Times, and she believed it. They all do.
o it shouldn't shock you that Nikki Haley's first reaction to the Russia invasion and Mitch McConnell's first reaction too and the first reaction of so many other Republican leaders was that protecting Ukraine is way more important to protecting you, than protecting America. Mitch McConnell hasn't, to his credit, moved from that. He still thinks it. Here he was yesterday.
SENATE MINORITY LEADER MITCH MCCONNELL: I think we all agree the most important thing going on in the world right now is the war in Ukraine. I had a chance to call the president last week and request that the Ukraine package move by itself and quickly. He said, let me think it over. He called back in about 15 minutes and agreed that we need to do this Ukraine only and quickly. I think we're on the path to getting that done.
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Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Republican from Kentucky, walks to the Senate floor at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, on Tuesday, Jan. 18, 2022. (Eric Lee/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
You got to hope that there's some sincere billionaire out there who's going to fund a primary challenge against every single one of those Republican state senators standing by Mitch McConnell, as he said, and we'll quote again, "I think we all agree the most important thing going on in the world right now is the war in Ukraine." No, the most important thing going on in the world right now is the state of your country, the one you're supposed to run, the people you're supposed to represent, whose lives are supposed to care about, the ones who can't buy food or gas, the people ODing on fentanyl, 107,000 in a year dead, young people, Americans.
"But that's nothing compared to Ukraine. We all agree Ukraine is the most important thing." Really? If you agree with that, you should not be sitting in the United States Senate as a Republican and yet that's their position. Of course, it's Lindsey Graham's position. Just to give you yet another example.
SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM: And if Putin's still standing after all this, then the world is going to be a very dark place. China is going to get the wrong signal and we'll have a mess on our hands in Europe for decades to come. So, let's take out Putin by helping Ukraine.
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BRET BAIER, "SPECIAL REPORT" ANCHOR: Alright, so you're saying that that's how this ends, that Putin is removed? Is there any way?
GRAHAM: There's no off-ramp.
BAIER: There is no off-ramp?
GRAHAM: No, off-ramp.
"Let's take out Putin." It's weird to see a guy live out his strange little fantasy life on TV live. Lindsey Graham won't come on the show. He's afraid. We could spend the next hour playing clips of Lindsey Graham going back 20 years, making predictions that didn't come true and resulted only in the death of American servicemen and the impoverishment of the United States. He's gotten wrong every single time and he's still out there.
Let's just take out Putin. Really? What would happen then? The country has 6,000 nuclear weapons. Would they be unsecured? You thought we had a mess on our hands when Saddam's arsenals fell into the hands of lunatics and extremists. What would happen to those 6,000 nuclear weapons if we just take out Putin? They don't even think about it. They don't care. They're high on their own supply.
Representative Dan Crenshaw, a Republican from Texas, listens during a House Homeland Security Committee hearing in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Wednesday, June 26, 2019. (Photographer: Anna Moneymaker/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Dan Crenshaw of Texas, for example, not a stupid guy, just announced that we're, "investing in the destruction of our adversaries' military" when we spend $40 billion on Ukraine. Investing in the destruction of our adversaries' military? Since when do we declare war on Russia? Did anybody vote for that? Our adversaries' military? That's what you do in war. Since when are we fighting Russia? Well, since Putin stole the election from Hillary Clinton.
Glad to see that Dan Crenshaw has signed up for this new campaign, but you got to wonder at what cost? Not just the peril, the real peril, that this could escalate into something crushing for the West, but what immediate cost to the United States and our own ability to defend ourselves? All these people who love the military, do they ever ask that question?
Right now, Joe Biden and the U.S. Congress have sent so much military aid to Ukraine that our country, the United States, is running out of weapons. According to Bloomberg, "Pentagon officials say that Kyiv is blowing through a week's worth of deliveries of anti-tank munitions every day. It's also running short of usable aircraft as Russian airstrikes and combat losses take their toll. Ammunition has become scarce in Mariupol and other areas in Ukraine. This is presenting Western countries with a stark choice between pouring more supplies into Ukraine or husbanding finite capabilities they may need for their own defense."
That's the line "they may need for their own defense." It's a scary world and if you blow it all on Ukraine with finite resources, which we have, sorry, where does that leave you? Undefended.
Now this is happening because senior leaders of the Republican Party instantly bought the New York Times' position on Ukraine, as they instantly bought the New York Times’ position on the BLM riots, as they instantly bought the position of the New York Times on the COVID lockdown. They didn't question what they read. And the consequences - now, we are short on weapons to defend our own country.
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Now, no Democrat ever goes against his own herd, ever. The first reaction of every Democrat is always to read whatever talking points Nancy Pelosi provides. They never listen to the other side. They always go farther in one direction and the Republican Party is always led by people who join them.
Here, for example, is how Congressman Jamie Raskin of Maryland responded when Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia raised an objection with "Oh, wait, what about our country?" she said. Here's what he said back.
REP. MARJORIE TAYLOR GREENE: $40 billion, but there's no baby formula for American mothers and babies. An unknown amount of money to the CIA in the Ukraine supplemental bill, but there's no formula for American babies and mothers. We should be paying attention to our country right now. I yield back. Thank you.
REP. SHEILA JACKSON LEE: Gentlelady, yield back. The gentleman, gentlewoman from Minnesota reserve, gentleman from Maryland is recognized.
REP. JAMIE RASKIN: Thank you, Madam Speaker. Here's a formula for the destruction of democracy – repeating Putin's propaganda and disinformation and appeasing imperialist assaults on sovereign nations.
So, you can't buy baby formula in the United States and maybe you think you can do both at once. You can fund Ukraine and get baby formula for American babies. Maybe you can fix inflation and also fund Ukraine. Speak slowly and tell us how that works. Maybe there's an answer to the question, but notice they don't answer.
They just accuse the person asking the question of working for Putin. "You're working for Putin. You're against democracy." They don't tell us how Ukraine is a democracy. They banned the opposition party. That's a democracy? But maybe there's an answer. What is it? Stop name-calling and answer the question, but Jamie Raskin won't do that. None of them will. He screams about Putin.
Now, 57 Republicans did vote against last night's bill and God bless them for doing it, but many more voted for it. Of course, there was Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger and their friend Elise Stefanik. But there was also Republican leadership, top leadership, McCarthy and Scalise. Shameful. And the worst part is this bill will almost certainly pass in the Senate, which is way more left wing even than the House on the Republican side. Chuck Schumer is promising a swift vote on it. That means as soon as tomorrow.
We reached out to every Republican in the Senate to find out what they plan to do. Most of them didn't bother to reply. None of them will come on the show. That would include Mitch McConnell, the minority leader, Ted Cruz, Mike Lee, Chuck Grassley, Mitt Romney also did not respond. We're hoping they'll vote the right way.
But a handful of senators did respond and we want to let you know where they stand. Voting "no" will be Mike Braun, Roger Marshall, Marsha Blackburn, Bill Hagerty and Josh Hawley. Rand Paul has also indicated he's opposed the bill. He wouldn't say so, but of course he's against it.
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Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., the ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee, waits to speak to reporters following bi-partisan passage of the Ending Forced Arbitration of Sexual Assault and Sexual Harassment Act, at the Capitol in Washington, Feb. 10, 2022. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)
Lindsey Graham, needless to say, is a yes. He's thrilled. As his office put it, "Senator Graham has made it clear he supports additional military aid to Ukraine" because it makes him feel so good inside. Oh, he didn't say that, but that's the truth. Rob Portman of Ohio is leaving, thank heaven. He's also a yes.
So, is Steve Daines of Montana, "The senator is leaning yes," his office said. They also told us that Daines thinks Russian oligarchs somehow will pay the $40 billion, "He wants to make Russia cover the costs. He wants to use the seized assets of oligarchs to cover the costs." Right, okay. A few senators dodged. Pat Toomey, Tim Scott, Cindy Hyde-Smith all refused to give us a direct answer.
We want to invite any Republican senator who plans on voting for this to come on this show and explain why. Please tell us. We'll let you talk as much as you want. We're not going to sandbag you. We want to know why this is in America's interest, why this is more important than the pressing crises all around us that the rest of us notice and apparently you don't.
So, tell us. You're always welcome.