CNN Analyst Accuses McConnell of ‘Punching Down’ with Tucker Carlson Dig Over Ukraine: ‘Ignoring the Elephant in the Room’
CNN senior political analyst Ron Brownstein accused Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) of “punching down” by partly blaming Tucker Carlson for delaying Congress passing aid to Ukraine.
While speaking to reporters on Tuesday about a foreign aid package that includes funding for Ukraine, Israel, and more, McConnell pointed to Carlson, as well as former President Donald Trump as being partly responsible for delaying foreign aid. Ukraine funding has faced an uphill battle with a number of House Republicans.
Brownstein argued on CNN This Morning on Wednesday that McConnell did not blame Trump enough for the delay, referring to the former president as the “elephant in the room” for Republicans.
“Mitch McConnell is kind of punching down and kind of ignoring the elephant, I guess of the Republican Party, in the room which is Donald Trump and Donald Trump’s demonization of Ukraine,” Brownstein told anchor Kasie Hunt.
McConnell did point to the former president, noting he expressed “mixed views” on foreign aid packages.
“I think that the former president had sort of mixed views on it. We all felt the border was a complete disaster, myself included… First, it was an effort to make law, which requires you to deal with Democrats, and then a number of our members thought it wasn’t good enough, and then our nominee for president didn’t seem to want us to do anything at all,” he said.
On CNN This Morning, Hunt argued Trump ended up mostly “hands off” when it came to foreign aid, which Brownstein admitted despite his previous McConnell dig.
“In the end, he was hands off,” he said.
The analyst claimed, however, that Republicans elected after 2018 who are more of the “Trump era” are more isolationist when it comes to foreign policy.
They are “dubious of America’s traditional role,” he claimed, citing pushback against Ukraine aid in its current form.
“The direction of the party in the Trump era is towards skepticism toward America as the kind of Reaganite leader of the free world,” he said.
Watch above via CNN.
