‘Total And Unmitigated Bullsh*t’: Senate Republican Shreds JD Vance Claim That Some Lawmakers Want to Cut Social Security to Fund Ukraine

Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) ripped his GOP colleague Sen. JD Vance (R-OH) for telling far-right podcast host Steve Bannon on Monday that there are lawmakers in the U.S. looking to cut Social Security in order to keep funding military aid to Ukraine.

“There are people who would cut Social Security, throw our grandparents into poverty. Why? So that one of Zelensky’s ministers can buy a bigger yacht. Kiss my ass, Steve. It’s not happening,” Vance wildly claimed while on Bannon’s War Room podcast.

The Hill’s Miranda Nazzaro reported on Tuesday morning that Tillis was asked by Capitol Hill reporters about Vance’s comments and he vehemently denounced them as “total and unmitigated bullshit.”

“I think it’s bullshit,” Tillis told reporters, adding, “If you’re talking about giving money to Ukrainian ministers — total and unmitigated bullshit.”

“Not productive conversation … not real happy about it,” added the North Carolina Republican.

Vance has made headlines in recent days for publicly calling on Ukraine to “cede some territory” to Russia’s Vladimir Putin to convince him to end his brutal invasion of the country.

“If you look at the size of the Russian armed forces, if you look at what would be necessary to conquer all of Ukraine, much less to go further and further west into Europe, I don’t think the guy’s shown any capacity to be able to accomplish these, these imperialistic goals, assuming that he has them,” Vance told reporters Monday.

“It ends the way nearly every single war has ever ended: when people negotiate and each side gives up something that it doesn’t want to give up,” Vance said.

“No one can explain to me how this ends without some territorial concessions relative to the 1991 boundaries,” he added.
The Hill asked Vance about Tillis’s rebuttal. “We know that a number of people have gotten rich in Ukraine, and … I think it’s naivety if you don’t think they’ve gotten rich with some of our money,” Vance claimed, adding that Tillis is “one of his favorite colleagues.”

“Well, it’s never good to have Thom Tillis peeved at us, but with all due respect to Thom, he’s not living in reality. There is no plausible pathway to the end of the war where Ukraine goes back to 1991 or 2014. It just isn’t … that’s not a desirable thing; it’s not a good thing,” Vance told reporters.

Watch the full clip above.