McConnell: Republicans focused on foreign aid package after seeing no border solution

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said Republicans grew more focused on the foreign aid package after seeing no solutions for the border.

McConnell recounted on CBS’s “Face the Nation” how some Republicans changed their minds on the foreign aid package that was signed by President Biden after passing through Congress last week. CBS host Margaret Brennan asked him what he believed changed the minds of his colleagues on aid for Ukraine.

“The actual facts. Once we realized we were not going to get a border result, I think our members really started focusing on the package. It was clear that it was not going to have a border provision attached to it. And there are almost no good arguments against this,” McConnell said, adding that “every argument” made by opponents of the package was “provably wrong.”

“And the facts, I think, were convincing for a number of our members, and they changed their minds,” he added.

McConnell celebrated the passage of the foreign aid package shortly after it was approved by the Senate last week but warned that the delay may have hurt Ukraine’s chances of defeating Russia.

He also said in his interview that he apologized to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky for any role Congress may have played in delaying the aid to the embattled country.

“I apologized for how long it took Congress to do its part, but we finally did. And he was also impressed by the fact that Republican support grew in the Senate substantially, substantially,” he said.

Biden signed the aid package last Wednesday, which includes roughly $61 billion for Ukraine, $26 billion for Israel and global humanitarian aid, and $8 billion for Taiwan and other U.S. allies in the Indo-Pacific.