ANALYSIS – House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) met with Ukraine's embattled leader Volodymyr Zelensky on Tuesday during the latter's D.C. tour to plead for more aid to fight the Russian invaders. As much as most House Republicans rightly sympathize with Ukraine and are willing to help (and SHOULD HELP), they are no longer willing to write Joe Biden a blank check.
“The president of the United States should be involved,” said Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina. “Everybody behind me will vote to aid Ukraine if we can get the border right,” as reported by The New York Times.
And that is the correct approach. Defending Ukraine is in America's national security interest but protecting our own borders must come first. (RELATED: Watch: White House Gives Terrifying Response To Concerns Over Terrorists Potentially Crossing Border)
After meeting with Zelensky, Johnson indicated he's not budging from his position on pairing Ukraine aid with U.S. border security reforms to help seal Biden's dangerously open border.
He also blasted the White House over its total lack of a clear strategy on U.S. involvement with Ukraine. As Fox News reported:
“I have asked the White House since the day that I was handed the gavel as speaker for clarity. We need a clear articulation of the strategy to allow Ukraine to win. And thus far their responses have been insufficient,” Johnson told reporters after the meeting.
“What the Biden administration seems to be asking for is billions of additional dollars with no appropriate oversight or clear strategy to win, and none of the answers that I think the American people are owed.”
He added, “I have also been very clear from day one, that our first condition on any national security supplemental spending package is about our own national security first.”
Johnson added: “In the last three months – October, November, December alone – we've had more illegal crossings at the border than in any entire year of the Obama administration. The American people see this. They feel it acutely.”
While Biden has claimed “extreme” Republicans linking Ukraine aid to border security are “playing chicken with our national security,” it is Biden and his extreme open border Democrats who have already gravely endangered our national security by allowing MILLIONS of unvetted illegal migrants to invade across our border.
And it was Biden who first linked aid to our other embattled ally, Israel, after its horrendous attack by Hamas terrorists with aid to Ukraine and border security. Thank you for that, Joe. (RELATED: Report: Biden Says Netanyahu Must Change Course)
Meanwhile, Republicans want Biden to reverse his egregiously absurd “everyone who crosses illegally can apply for asylum” policies. The vast majority are economic migrants, and some are simply criminals, gang members and hoodlums.
Very few would qualify as legitimate asylum seekers.
And Republicans are standing fast. The New York Times reported:
Senior Biden administration officials have told both sides in the negotiations that the White House is open to making it more difficult to gain asylum in the United States, according to four people familiar with the matter. One such measure would impose a stricter definition for migrants to meet when they claim they need refuge because they fear persecution in their home countries.
But Republicans say that is not enough. They want the United States to impose policies that would make most migrants ineligible for asylum and require them to wait in Mexico until their case is processed.
To the extreme leftists at the White House, these Republican requests are “extreme” measures. John Kirby, spokesman for the Biden National Security Council (NSC), said of securing aid for Ukraine:
There are a small number of Republicans that want to hold that aid hostage for some pretty extreme border policies that the president is not willing to talk about. That said, he did say we're willing to negotiate in good faith.
Well, NO, Admiral Kirby, GOP immigration proposals are in no way extreme policies. Allowing eight MILLION illegal aliens into our country in two years, that's an extreme policy.
And NO, Biden isn't negotiating in good faith. As I explained earlier, Biden's budget request for border security was really a request for funds to help illegal migrants resettle throughout the United States, which only enables the invasion, while doing nothing to stop it.
As Biden said: “Petty, partisan, angry politics can't get in the way of our responsibilities.” And I agree, but his first responsibility is to protect our own nation from invasion.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of American Liberty News.
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