Trump Follows Rand Paul's Lead: Pauses Ukraine Aid After Both Parties Gave Billions for 3 Years

Sending this money with no accountability or oversight was always a bad idea. Just ask Rand Paul. #16

Nancy Pelosi X/Public Domain

After a disastrous meeting with

Volodymyr Zelensky on Friday, President Donald Trump has now decided to cut off all American aid to Ukraine due to its president’s arrogant behavior.

Zelensky went into last week’s meeting seeming to think Ukraine’s relationship with the U.S. would be the same now as it was under President Joe Biden, with an infinite flow of American dollars to his country, and even allowing the three year Ukraine-Russia war to continue.

The exact opposite of what Trump has vowed to do. Trump now says no more aid until Ukraine and its president are serious about wanting peace.

Sen. Rand Paul thinks this is a good idea.

Zelensky is already buckling and saying he is ready to return to the negotiating table.

This still doesn’t change the fact that the United States has sent $174 billion to Ukraine and Zelensky himself can’t account for where $100 billion of that went.

No wonder Rand Paul wants an audit of where Ukraine aid went.

Time and again, the senator has tried to block American taxpayer dollars from being sent to Ukraine.

His more than valid questions:

• What about America’s broken southern border?

• What about the fact that the Ukraine-Russia conflict is an unwinnable war that was never our fight to begin with?

• What about the fact that the U.S. is $36 trillion in debt and we don’t have this money to begin with?

Not to mention that Ukraine is a dictatorship.

Paul asked all of these questions for three long years, and leaders in both parties behaved as if he was being irresponsible to ask them.

That HE was the problem.

The spending always passed, with plenty of help from both Democrats and Republicans.

But Paul always fought it. Every time.

A history:

May 2022, the New York Times:

Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky on Thursday single-handedly delayed a bipartisan effort to quickly send $40 billion in aid to Ukraine, which Congress had tried to fast-track amid the escalating brutality of Russia’s war.

Mr. Paul had sought to alter the bill to include a provision requiring that an inspector general monitor the spending…

“My oath of office is to the U.S. Constitution, not to any foreign nation,” he said, adding, “We cannot save Ukraine by dooming the U.S. economy.”

September 2023:

February 2024, CNN:

The Senate is working to pass a $95.3 billion foreign aid bill with assistance for Ukraine and Israel, but it may be days until a final vote as GOP Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky is using arcane and complex chamber rules to slow down the process into the weekend…

“I think we should stay here as long as it takes,” Paul told CNN’s Manu Raju on Thursday. “If it takes a week or a month, I’ll force them to stay here to discuss why they think the border of Ukraine is more important than the US border.”

April 2024, McClatchy (Sen. Paul missed the vote due to the death of his father-in-law, but was going to oppose it either way):

Kentucky’s U.S. Sen. Rand Paul was among three senators who missed Tuesday’s vote on the $95 billion foreign aid package providing weapons and equipment to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan.

Two days later and his office won’t explain why. The libertarian anti-interventionist was an outspoken critic of the supplemental spending measure throughout the seven-month debate in Congress. He railed against the spending as a “ludicrous” allocation given mounting U.S. debt.

Paul opposed the spending in principle, but if it was going to be spent, shouldn’t the U.S. keep track of how it was being spent?

It’s a simple question that deserved a simple answer for every month and year Paul has asked it.

Yet, until President Trump’s decision to pause aid this week, Washington was all in on giving Ukraine everything it wanted with no questions asked.

No demands. No transparency. No sunlight.

That’s just stupid.

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