Tennessee Republican Sen. Bill Hagerty slammed President Joe Biden on Sunday for waging war on the economy and not putting Americans first.
Hagerty shared the blistering remarks during an interview on Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures” with Maria Bartiromo.
“I’ll be a no on the package, Maria,” Hagerty said about an additional $40 billion aid package under consideration for Ukraine.
“We’ve got to look at our own national security first,” he added. “We’re not taking care of our own country.”
Hagerty instead focused on Biden’s own war against American industry.
“The best thing Biden administration could do is stop the war that he’s waged on American industry. That would lower prices overall. That would take the funding away from Putin’s war machine against Ukraine and make our economy better here. Biden will not do that, and he’s taken us in a bad direction,” he said.
Hagerty sympathized with Ukraine’s situation despite his plan to vote against the latest effort, noting that many senators will vote in favor of the new package.
“We’ve already committed a great deal of money, and I know people are concerned that money is being well spent, and we should certainly take effort to oversee that carefully,” he said. “At the same time, we’ve got to take care of things at home first.”
Hagerty later concluded that Biden’s lack of leadership in office has led to a number of failures.
“And Biden has one failure after the other to point to. The failure of Afghanistan has precipitated global concern about America’s posture. Our adversaries obviously emboldened. That stepped up Putin’s activities in Ukraine, North Korea’s back at it again. The world is in a more dangerous place thanks to Joe Biden, and what does he do? Blame Americans,” he noted.
The Tennessee senator also criticized the Biden administration during an interview on Fox News’ “The Ingraham Angle” this week.
“The Biden Administration is completely out of touch with Americans. They’d rather wage war on Americans & ignore our plight in our own country, yet rush to a cause that perhaps Joe Biden gets better ratings for,” Hagerty tweeted alongside a link to the interview.
The Biden Administration is completely out of touch with Americans. They'd rather wage war on Americans & ignore our plight in our own country, yet rush to a cause that perhaps Joe Biden gets better ratings for. pic.twitter.com/TVfHFAxrxW
— Senator Bill Hagerty (@SenatorHagerty) May 14, 2022
Hagerty is not the only GOP senator to oppose the latest round of proposed aid to Ukraine.
Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul took to Twitter to express his concerns regarding support for Ukraine.
“My oath of office is to the U.S. Constitution, not to any foreign nation. Congress is trying yet again to ram through a spending bill – one that I doubt anyone has actually read – and there’s no oversight included into how the money is being spent,” Paul wrote.
My oath of office is to the U.S. Constitution, not to any foreign nation. Congress is trying yet again to ram through a spending bill – one that I doubt anyone has actually read – and there’s no oversight included into how the money is being spent.
— Rand Paul (@RandPaul) May 13, 2022
“While I sympathize with the people of Ukraine, and commend their fight against Putin, we cannot continue to spend money we don’t have. Passing this bill brings the total we’ve sent to Ukraine to nearly $54 billion over the course of two months,” he added in a later post.
Despite pushback from some Senate Republicans, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell believes the majority of his party’s lawmakers will support the new Ukraine aid package.
After a meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Saturday, McConnell told reporters, “What I assured him — as this is an all-Republican delegation — is that support for Ukraine and this war against the Russians is bipartisan,” McConnell said, adding that the support includes “an overwhelming majority of Republicans.”