Posted on 08/08/2022 1:37:11 AM PDT by RandFan
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) clinched a victory on Wednesday when the Senate — including 48 of the chamber’s 50 Republicans — voted overwhelmingly to admit Finland and Sweden to NATO.
The resolution, which cleared the chamber in a bipartisan 95-1 vote, was a top priority for the Republican leader, who wanted to send a signal about the direction of a GOP that had drifted toward isolationism under former President Trump.
Trump throughout his presidency was a critic of NATO. It was a part of the “America First” agenda that reverberated with parts of the GOP base after the Iraq and Afghanistan wars but also divided Republican officeholders.
McConnell visited war-torn Ukraine with a congressional delegation in May and made stops in Finland and Sweden during that trip. During the debate over bringing those countries into NATO, he argued that doing so made the U.S. stronger, not weaker.
The GOP leader definitely won the battle, even if he lost Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), the only member of either party in the Senate to vote “no.”
Most strikingly, Sens. Mike Lee (R-Utah) and Rand Paul (R-Ky.) both shifted in their votes. The two were the only senators to vote against resolutions in 2017 and 2019 adding Montenegro and North Macedonia, respectively, to NATO.
On Finland and Sweden, the two libertarian-leaning lawmakers took a different stance: Lee voted for the resolution, and Paul voted present. .
(Excerpt) Read more at thehill.com ...
The Senate is going to be a problem for Trump in the future I predict. Nearly all the senators hate him.
Trump’s issue with NATO was merely one of making members pay their fair share.
WW3 shaping up nicely for the neocon trash.
Exactly right - Trump, instead of heaping empty praise on NATO, wanted to see it strengthened by pushing the other members to spend more on their own defense instead of free-riding on US security. He cared enough about the Alliance to call out its weaknesses in order to fix them. He cared enough about Germany to warn it about its growing dependence on Russian energy.
How right he was.
The author of this article is doing nothing more than trying to sow division. Don’t take the bait.
DISBAND NATO ! No more taxpayer $$, soldiers or weapons for this warmongering bureaucracy !
That is what I remember, too. Only 5 members were actually meeting the goal of 2% of their GDP contributions. GERMANY and FRANCE were two of the economically stronger nations who weren’t.
Correct. Trump was NEVER anti NATO. This is a typical political distortion by The HILL.
The article is projecting things onto Trump that he never said or felt.
-PJ
This is also what Congress has been up toL
https://rumble.com/v1exjn1-todd-callender-warning-medical-martial-law-incoming-worldwide.html
You know I agree with you 100% but we’re in the minority even on here..
Because the Germans and most other European countries refused to pay the 2% of GDP contribution they had agreed to and signed up on.
The Germans were the biggest freeloaders in the business despite huge German budget surpluses.
It was a part of the “America First” agenda that reverberated with parts of the GOP base after the Iraq and Afghanistan wars but also divided Republican officeholders.
It was simply a fight to get the “too smart by half” Europeans to pay up instead of America shouldering most of the financial and other burdens.
McConnell has won NOTHING over President Trump.
Nearly everyone in federal government elected or not hate him. Nothing new here. The swamp runs deep and will fight to its dying breath not to be drained.
"....Trump’s issue with NATO was merely one of making members pay their fair share...."
Exactly. I never knew him to say the organization was not noble. Only the member states were taking advantage of USofA footing the entire bill for their defense.
LOLz taken as gospel is that NATO will even still be a thing in 5 years once we see the full glory of the Joe Manchin American Bankruptcy Act of 2022.
Are we ? We should take a poll on disbanding NATO. I think a majority here must realize it outlived its usefulness after 1991. I mean, the fall of the Soviet Union WAS the goal. Mission accomplished.
We need to be reassessing the value of every bureaucratic and governmental agency we support. So many of them need to go or be dramatically restructured.
Precisely
Certainly a win for NEOCONs.
What happens if two NATO members get in a war with each other? Does the US bomb both?
The disbanding of NATO may well be the price Europe has to pay if they don’t want to freeze to death this winter.
Whether NATO survives will not be a decision that the United States has any say in.
Isolationist? Every f-ing day the lies about Trump become more outrageous.
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