Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said Republicans became more focused on the foreign aid package after seeing no solutions for the border.
McConnell recounted on CBS’s “Face the Nation” how some Republicans changed their minds about the foreign aid package that was signed by President Biden after it passed through Congress last week. CBS host Margaret Brennan asked him what he believed changed his colleagues’ minds about aid to Ukraine.
“The real facts. Once we realized we weren’t going to get a borderline result, I think our members really started to focus on the – the package. It was… it was clear that it wasn’t going to have a border provision attached to it. And there are almost no good arguments against it,” McConnell said, adding that “every argument” put forward by opponents of the package “is demonstrably wrong.”
“And the facts, I think, were convincing to a number of our members and they changed their minds,” he added.
McConnell celebrated the passage of the foreign aid package shortly after it was approved by the Senate last week, but warned that the delay may have harmed Ukraine’s chances of defeating Russia.
He also said in his interview that he apologized to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky for any role Congress may have played in delaying aid to the embattled country.
“I apologized for the time it took Congress to do its part, but we finally did. And he was also impressed by the fact that Republican support in the Senate grew substantially, substantially,” he told Zelensky.
Biden signed the aid package last Wednesday, which includes about $61 billion for Ukraine, $26 billion for Israel and global humanitarian aid, and $8 billion for Taiwan and other U.S. allies in the Indo-Pacific.
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