'Russian propaganda' has 'infected a good chunk of my party’s base': House GOP foreign affairs chair

“I want to be on the right side of history,” is what House Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Michael McCaul (R-TX) told Puck News’ Julia Ioffe in a recent interview.

The Texas Republican spent much of the conversation expressing frustration towards his GOP colleagues' refusal to move on the bipartisan package passed by the Senate in February — which includes Ukrainian aid.

A self-described “Reagan Republican,” the Texas congressman told Ioffe he’s a strong supported of “freedom, democracy, human rights.”

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According to Ioffe, the “pressure” Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) has been getting from colleagues like McCaul “has resulted in Johnson’s inching closer to letting the House vote on the Senate aid package, provided he can dress it up in a way that would make it more attractive to his fellow Republicans: namely, through the inclusion of McCaul’s REPO for Ukrainians Act, which would allow the U.S. to redirect seized Russian assets to Ukraine; reversing Biden’s moratorium on new LNG terminals; and, in line with Trump’s demands from the sidelines, making part of the Ukraine aid a loan, rather than a grant.”

The Puck News Washington correspondent reports:

As for making a portion of the aid a loan, it would apply only to the funds that go toward supporting the Ukrainian government’s budget—things like salaries for the soldiers and bureaucrats who keep the fight going and the state from collapsing. That is a tiny fraction of the $60 billion aid package. The vast majority is going to weapons and ultimately stays in the U.S. with U.S. manufacturers, creating U.S. jobs. Moreover, making the loan zero-interest and forgivable makes it palatable even to Ukrainians, who—as the Ukrainian ambassador told me the other day—understand that it’s a meaningless sweetener for Republicans, but if that’s what it takes to get the rest of the aid through, so be it.

“I think Russian propaganda has made its way into the United States, unfortunately, and it’s infected a good chunk of my party’s base,” the Foreign Affairs Committee chair told Ioffe. “And I have to explain to them what’s at stake, why Ukraine is in our national security interest. By the way, you don’t like Communist China? Well, guess what? They’re aligned [with Russia], along with the Ayatollah. So when you explain it that way, they kind of start understanding it. And unlike 1939, we want to provide deterrence so that we don’t have to send anyone over, and we don’t want Article V invoked. Because the next thing the Russians will do is [attack] Moldova, Georgia, and then part of the Baltics. Or at least provoke a lot. So I just think it’s preventative. “

Referring to his far-right colleagues against supplying aid to Ukraine, McCaul added, “There’s a new wing of isolationism, and that takes you back again to the 1930s. That was not helpful. Now, I understood it—because World War I was very bloody, and Americans were like, “We don’t want to go over to save Europe again.” But had we been involved earlier and provided that deterrence, we could have saved a lot of blood and treasure.”

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The GOP leader emphasized, “I just see so many parallels between then and what’s happening right now. And if we fail in this aid package and Putin does take Ukraine—and it won’t take him very long—then where will the United States be?”

Ioffe's full interview with McCaul is available here.