Republicans warn of ‘impeachment time bomb’ in Ukraine aid that could target Trump
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) was hoping to have a first vote on the $95 billion supplemental aid bill Monday night, but Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), along with Sens. J.D. Vance (R-OH) and Mike Lee (R-UT), led the charge to stop the bill, with a particular focus on the $60 billion allocated for Ukraine.
While each Republican emphasized the lunacy of giving Ukraine billions while America’s southern border remains in chaos, there was also an additional concern discovered deep in the bill’s text by Vance’s office. Considering the Senate passed the bill Tuesday morning despite Republicans’ filibustering, it deserves a spotlight.
Alongside a memo Vance said he shared with all of his Republican colleagues, Vance warned, Buried in the bill’s text is an impeachment time bomb for the next Trump presidency if he tries to stop funding the war in Ukraine. We must vote against this disastrous bill.
Vance elaborated on why this part was especially dangerous and even undemocratic in an interview with Tucker Carlson on Monday.
Vance told Carlson of the aid bill, It doesn’t just fund Ukraine in 2024, and this is the most important point. It actually funds Ukraine in ’25 and ’26.
Now what’s the problem with that? the senator asked. Say, for example, that we have a new president in 2025. That president would be handcuffed by the promises that we are making in law to Ukraine today.
Vance continued, If you go back to 2019, Tucker, to sort of give you a sense of why this matters. In 2019, the U.S. House impeached then-President Donald Trump on the theory that they had appropriated the money to Ukraine and Donald Trump refused to send it to Ukraine.
So if Trump is elected president again and becomes president in January of 2025, he will conduct diplomacy, the Ohio Republican noted. And if that diplomacy does not include sending additional billions to Ukraine, there is a theoretical argument, a predicate if you will, for impeaching Donald Trump because they have tried to tie his hands.
We’re not just sending billions to Ukraine in 2024. We’re trying to make it impossible for the next president to conduct diplomacy on his terms, Vance said. It’s antidemocratic, and it will lead to endless war all over the world.
As news made the rounds about this clause, conservative host Dana Loesch asked Paul in an interview, What is this impeachment clause that’s buried in the supplemental?
Paul replied, Well, you know, last week, I was sort of joking, and I said, ‘Well, they impeached Trump during his presidency. They impeached him when he was already not president. The next thing they’ll do is impeach him before he becomes president.’
They’re already covering their ‘you know what’ in case Trump is elected, Paul added.
Vance, Paul, and Lee have a point.
For members of both parties who are always warning about the dangers of Trump and him being an alleged threat to democracy, Congress attempting to wrest the power of diplomacy from whoever might win the 2024 presidential election — that doesn’t sound very democratic.
Elon Musk even called it insane. And it truly is. It turns out there really are threats to democracy all around us. Especially, it appears, in the world’s most deliberative body.
