Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) said on Wednesday that House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s (R-Calif.) recent remarks suggesting a GOP majority would limit Ukrainian aid are “giving aid and comfort to the enemy.”
“Maybe in his mind, he actually did believe that all he was saying is, ‘Hey, we want to have some oversight in this,’” Kinzinger said on CNN on Wednesday night. “But what he did … you’re giving aid and comfort to the enemy, intentionally or unintentionally.”
Kinzinger suggested that McCarthy may be trying to appease the more conservative members of his party in an effort to build support for a bid for House Speaker after the midterm elections.
“His whole point in going out and giving that interview is to try to assuage those folks, to try to assuage the intense kind of members of the party that he knows he’s going to need to be Speaker,” he added.
McCarthy warned in an interview published on Tuesday that if the Republican Party retakes the House in November’s elections, they will not write a “blank check” to Ukraine as it fends off an invasion from Russia.
“I think people are gonna be sitting in a recession and they’re not going to write a blank check to Ukraine,” McCarthy said. “They just won’t do it.”
He doubled down on his remarks on Wednesday, saying he was amazed they “somehow made news.”
“There should be no blank check on anything,” he added.
Fellow Republicans have since attempted to walk back McCarthy’s remarks. Rep. Michael Waltz (R-Fla.), a member of the House Armed Services Committee, said on Wednesday that the majority of Republicans support aid to Ukraine and simply want further oversight, as Kinzinger also suggested.
Former Vice President Mike Pence also urged continued support on Wednesday in order “to provide Ukraine with the resources to defend themselves.” Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson (R) chimed in as well, calling it a “mistake” to withdraw funding for Ukraine’s defense.