April 24, 2024 • 13 mins
In a pivotal moment amidst Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine, the U.S. Senate passed a $60 billion aid package for Kyiv in a 79-to-18 vote Tuesday night. Despite the win, the measure faced dogged opposition in the House, where a majority of GOP members—112—voted against it. What explains the growing indifference, if not outright hostility, to Ukraine aid in the Republican Party? In this episode, Jacob Heilbrunn speaks with Curt Mills, executive director of The American Conservative. Mills previously worked at The National Interest, U.S. News & World Report, Washington Examiner, and the Spectator. He was a 2018-2019 Robert Novak Journalism fellow.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Hi, this is Jacob Heilbrunn, the editor of the National Interest, and my guest today
(00:27):
on our podcast In the National Interest is none other than Curt Mills, who is currently
the editor of the American Conservative and previously worked as a reporter at the National
Interest.
Welcome, Curt.
Good to be here.
Curt, it is a momentous day.
The Senate approved the Ukraine aid bill by a vote of 79 to 18.
(00:54):
However, 112 members of the House GOP voted against the bill and 110 voted for it.
What explains the upsurge in indifference, if not hostility, to Ukraine aid among the
Republicans in the Republican Party?
Yeah, I think this has been a long time coming.
(01:16):
I think first for at least 10 years, if not arguably longer, with progenitors such as
Pat Buchanan, Ross Perot, even the Rand Paul libertarian boomlet of the early 2010s, there
has been a building restraint oriented foreign policy wing of the Republican Party.
(01:37):
And the anti-establishment took control of the vote in 2016.
And it's been a complex winding road, but they have not relinquished it more or less.
Where there has been slower momentum is down ballot.
But 10 years is not a small amount of time.
(01:58):
And you are beginning to see shifts in the legislature, most principally in the House,
which has more elections, frankly, but also among a more vocal cadre of senators.
So while this aid passed, it almost didn't.
The numbers, the margins are misleading.
(02:19):
Speaker Johnson could have easily not brought this legislation to the floor as it was wanted
by the grassroots and was intermittently wanted by Mar-a-Lago.
And additionally, all said and done, a majority of the House Republican conference, as you
alluded to, voted against this, meaning that Johnson has violated the so-called Hastert
(02:42):
rule, which is to never bring legislation to the floor or see to the passage or something
that only a minority of his constituents as speaker want to see happen.
So it's a clear win for the White House.
But I also think it's a clear win in momentum for restraint and the anti-establishment GOP
(03:03):
team.
Kurt, how long could the GOP seriously adhere to a rule that was conceived and executed
by a known pedophile?
It's not a very fortunate moniker for the rule, I do concede.
But I think a rename is perhaps in order.
(03:23):
And I think the principle, which has nothing to do with what former representative Hastert
was convicted of, can stay, which is that the Speaker of the House is the closest thing
that we have in American politics to an analog with a European prime minister, which is he
ultimately, he or she ultimately represents the will of a majority of his own party and
(03:48):
thus controls the most populist and lowest chamber of representation in American government,
the House of Representatives.
And clearly, Johnson crossing this line will have major consequences and he has survived
today.
But we have to rewind.
And I'm not forecasting this.
I think base case Johnson does survive politically through the election if he's even interested
(04:11):
in that.
But rewind to last spring, then Speaker McCarthy brought over the finish line a similarly divisive
piece of legislation in late May, early June.
And Speaker McCarthy saw his speakership collapse within two financial quarters.
But Kurt, for all your disapprobation directed towards this bill, why did Donald Trump draw
(04:37):
in his horns?
He gave Mike Johnson the leeway to pursue this, which he did successfully.
I think Trump, for both good and ill, obviously has a personalistic style of rule in politics.
And I think he currently has the personal favor of Mr. Johnson.
(04:57):
And additionally, his preferred style of handling the Ukraine conflict will also be personal.
And so it could be argued that he would want to maintain this leverage if he was in power.
I think it was a milk toast support at the end of the day.
But you are correct.
He did not throw in with the true hard line.
(05:18):
That is, people like Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, Representative Thomas Massey,
Representative Paul Gosar, people that wanted to see Johnson gone, but still do.
You're right, he could have done more, but he went quite far.
Kurt, it does seem like this is a make or break year for Ukraine.
They've got a pile of American aid coming.
(05:40):
The Europeans are ramping up their efforts.
And President Biden has apparently been sending ATACMS secretly to Ukraine.
If this results in significant Ukrainian successes over the next six months, would you still
say it was a waste of money and effort?
(06:01):
Or would you say that maybe Biden had it right?
Well, I'll have what you are having, Jacob, if you think that the Ukrainians are going
to make significant advances on the battlefield in the next six months.
I didn't postulate that they would.
I just said if they do.
It's a little bit like saying, do you think, Jacob, that there's something to Trumpism
(06:24):
if Trump wins by 40 vote points in the popular vote?
No, what I'm trying to flesh out is whether you are simply indifferent to you think it's
simply a bad idea, regardless of the consequences.
I'll answer the question directly and then I'll answer the broader question.
I don't think this will make a meaningful difference in the war.
I think this will get more people killed.
(06:46):
I think the steel man of this allotment is that this will give the Ukrainians time and
a little more leverage to negotiate now and potentially end the war.
But I have no faith that's what the U.S. government is going to do with this aid because they
haven't gesticulated in that direction whatsoever.
So I think you have a dangerous, irresponsible government in Kiev that the U.S. should be
(07:06):
pulling support from, or at least not maximizing it.
Why yours?
Go ahead.
Well, secondly, yeah, no, I think it's a longstanding position.
And I don't think it's worth risking nuclear war over control of the eastern provinces
of Ukraine.
I was with Simon Shuster this morning.
He's written a book about Zelensky called The Showman, and he is a senior correspondent
(07:28):
at a time.
And one of the things that he reveals in his book is that even as the war raged in the
early weeks and months, Zelensky was offering permanent neutrality of Ukraine, which the
Russians did not accept.
So I disagree with your view of the Zelensky government is intractable and you're responsible.
(07:48):
Fair enough.
I do think that the reporting is contradictory and shrouded about those months.
That's one report.
And, you know, I'm not taking up for Mr. Shuster's work.
I'm not familiar enough with it to comment on its veracity now, but I do know that there's
reports to the contrary.
And so we don't know that much about this part of the world, which is another reason
(08:09):
I am leery of getting involved militarily.
But secondly, I would also postulate that there are limits on how relevant 24 months
ago really are.
A brutal war has ensued, emotions have hardened and visions have become more blinkered.
In 2000 and in 2022, February, so 27 months ago, Emmanuel Macron was arguably the most
(08:35):
restraint oriented major European leader trying to prevent this war, famously being mocked
for his efforts to negotiate with the Kremlin and Putin.
And now today, if you read the headlines, Macron is the absolute tip of the spear, a
hawk of hawks.
So how Mr. Zelensky may or may not have behaved at the outset of the war, I think is less
(08:56):
relevant than how he's behaving now.
Hurt, let's switch to another conflict, the Middle East.
There was just an election in Pennsylvania that was quite interesting.
It looks like it's summertime in Pittsburgh, by which I mean that summer Lee, the congresswoman,
survived a primary challenge and she has refused to vote for aid to Israel and is in the progressive
(09:22):
wing of the Democratic Party.
What do you think is brewing among the Democrats and the progressives when it comes to Israel
coupled with the mass protests that we now see on college campuses?
I think it's very significant.
I think there's in one respect a mirror image of the Republican Party, although there are
(09:44):
with there were votes in the Republican Party, I believe a little over 20 that voted against
Israel aid as well.
But I believe you can look at the Democrat coalition as emerging towards something like
a majority in the years or even months to come being net Israel skeptic, or at least
not Israel maximalist like Representative Lee.
(10:05):
I think this is a dynamic that's been a long time coming.
I do think it is in conflict with the party's establishment and contra the Republican establishment,
the Democratic establishment is actually quite powerful and extremely well financed.
I think for President Biden, this is a no win scenario.
The more we are talking as Americans about Israel, the more Biden is in trouble.
(10:29):
It's quite like abortion with Mr. Trump.
It doesn't matter that Mr. Biden's position Israel is actually quite nuanced, and it doesn't
matter that Mr. Trump's position on abortion is actually quite nuanced.
It is a toxic asset on each of their balance sheets.
They can't explain it quickly and it frustrates voters.
And so the more that these types of conversations have are had, the more the protests are occurring,
(10:56):
it's bad for Biden.
And I think I would just quickly point out that this country has had arguably a protest
movement in some form or other since the middle of last decade, if not earlier on college
campuses and in urban centers around elections.
In 2020, it was famously for Black Lives Matter and Biden was elected the president.
(11:20):
And I believe that sort of shock troop presence in the streets was a net gain for the Democrats
at the end of the day.
It would be interesting to see if this is now turned on the beneficiary himself and
that he is actually blamed for the urban disquiet, for the campus disquiet, much like his predecessor,
(11:42):
Mr. Trump, was four years ago.
Now, Kurt, you mentioned that some 20 Republicans also voted against aid to Israel.
And Tucker Carlson recently invade against Israel's actions in the Gaza Strip.
Do you think that there will be a turn in the Republican Party away from its previous
(12:03):
reflexive support for Israel?
I think a lot of it depends on the course of the war and the course of the government.
Israel itself is a nation divided.
I mean, Netanyahu, if he's not going to lead Israel, might be imprisoned by Israel.
So it's not entirely much like Mr. Trump.
So it's not entirely clear what these entities are.
(12:24):
So if Netanyahu were to lose or the Israelis were to become less hawkish or this conflict
would suddenly die down, I think this would put some quiet on the subject.
But yes, the critique that was always levied at Mr. Netanyahu about 10 years ago when he
first addressed the House of Representatives, or I believe the joint session of Congress
(12:45):
in the late Obama term over the JCPOA was once you throw in with one party in an American
political context, you risk the bipartisan support forever.
Not only would he lose the Democrats, he could potentially lose the level of vigor they had
previously from Republicans.
And I think that prophecy is somewhat coming true.
(13:07):
Curt, I'd like to thank you for coming on this podcast again.
I'd like to also alert listeners that if you're interested, Kurt's magazine recently ran a
denunciation of yours truly as returning to the Neocon camp, which you can find on the
American conservative website.
And I look forward to our next conversation.
(13:27):
Cheers.
Hi, this is Jacob Heilbrunn, the editor of the National Interest, and my guest today
(00:27):
on our podcast In the National Interest is none other than Curt Mills, who is currently
the editor of the American Conservative and previously worked as a reporter at the National
Interest.
Welcome, Curt.
Good to be here.
Curt, it is a momentous day.
The Senate approved the Ukraine aid bill by a vote of 79 to 18.
(00:54):
However, 112 members of the House GOP voted against the bill and 110 voted for it.
What explains the upsurge in indifference, if not hostility, to Ukraine aid among the
Republicans in the Republican Party?
Yeah, I think this has been a long time coming.
(01:16):
I think first for at least 10 years, if not arguably longer, with progenitors such as
Pat Buchanan, Ross Perot, even the Rand Paul libertarian boomlet of the early 2010s, there
has been a building restraint oriented foreign policy wing of the Republican Party.
(01:37):
And the anti-establishment took control of the vote in 2016.
And it's been a complex winding road, but they have not relinquished it more or less.
Where there has been slower momentum is down ballot.
But 10 years is not a small amount of time.
(01:58):
And you are beginning to see shifts in the legislature, most principally in the House,
which has more elections, frankly, but also among a more vocal cadre of senators.
So while this aid passed, it almost didn't.
The numbers, the margins are misleading.
(02:19):
Speaker Johnson could have easily not brought this legislation to the floor as it was wanted
by the grassroots and was intermittently wanted by Mar-a-Lago.
And additionally, all said and done, a majority of the House Republican conference, as you
alluded to, voted against this, meaning that Johnson has violated the so-called Hastert
(02:42):
rule, which is to never bring legislation to the floor or see to the passage or something
that only a minority of his constituents as speaker want to see happen.
So it's a clear win for the White House.
But I also think it's a clear win in momentum for restraint and the anti-establishment GOP
(03:03):
team.
Kurt, how long could the GOP seriously adhere to a rule that was conceived and executed
by a known pedophile?
It's not a very fortunate moniker for the rule, I do concede.
But I think a rename is perhaps in order.
(03:23):
And I think the principle, which has nothing to do with what former representative Hastert
was convicted of, can stay, which is that the Speaker of the House is the closest thing
that we have in American politics to an analog with a European prime minister, which is he
ultimately, he or she ultimately represents the will of a majority of his own party and
(03:48):
thus controls the most populist and lowest chamber of representation in American government,
the House of Representatives.
And clearly, Johnson crossing this line will have major consequences and he has survived
today.
But we have to rewind.
And I'm not forecasting this.
I think base case Johnson does survive politically through the election if he's even interested
(04:11):
in that.
But rewind to last spring, then Speaker McCarthy brought over the finish line a similarly divisive
piece of legislation in late May, early June.
And Speaker McCarthy saw his speakership collapse within two financial quarters.
But Kurt, for all your disapprobation directed towards this bill, why did Donald Trump draw
(04:37):
in his horns?
He gave Mike Johnson the leeway to pursue this, which he did successfully.
I think Trump, for both good and ill, obviously has a personalistic style of rule in politics.
And I think he currently has the personal favor of Mr. Johnson.
(04:57):
And additionally, his preferred style of handling the Ukraine conflict will also be personal.
And so it could be argued that he would want to maintain this leverage if he was in power.
I think it was a milk toast support at the end of the day.
But you are correct.
He did not throw in with the true hard line.
(05:18):
That is, people like Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, Representative Thomas Massey,
Representative Paul Gosar, people that wanted to see Johnson gone, but still do.
You're right, he could have done more, but he went quite far.
Kurt, it does seem like this is a make or break year for Ukraine.
They've got a pile of American aid coming.
(05:40):
The Europeans are ramping up their efforts.
And President Biden has apparently been sending ATACMS secretly to Ukraine.
If this results in significant Ukrainian successes over the next six months, would you still
say it was a waste of money and effort?
(06:01):
Or would you say that maybe Biden had it right?
Well, I'll have what you are having, Jacob, if you think that the Ukrainians are going
to make significant advances on the battlefield in the next six months.
I didn't postulate that they would.
I just said if they do.
It's a little bit like saying, do you think, Jacob, that there's something to Trumpism
(06:24):
if Trump wins by 40 vote points in the popular vote?
No, what I'm trying to flesh out is whether you are simply indifferent to you think it's
simply a bad idea, regardless of the consequences.
I'll answer the question directly and then I'll answer the broader question.
I don't think this will make a meaningful difference in the war.
I think this will get more people killed.
(06:46):
I think the steel man of this allotment is that this will give the Ukrainians time and
a little more leverage to negotiate now and potentially end the war.
But I have no faith that's what the U.S. government is going to do with this aid because they
haven't gesticulated in that direction whatsoever.
So I think you have a dangerous, irresponsible government in Kiev that the U.S. should be
(07:06):
pulling support from, or at least not maximizing it.
Why yours?
Go ahead.
Well, secondly, yeah, no, I think it's a longstanding position.
And I don't think it's worth risking nuclear war over control of the eastern provinces
of Ukraine.
I was with Simon Shuster this morning.
He's written a book about Zelensky called The Showman, and he is a senior correspondent
(07:28):
at a time.
And one of the things that he reveals in his book is that even as the war raged in the
early weeks and months, Zelensky was offering permanent neutrality of Ukraine, which the
Russians did not accept.
So I disagree with your view of the Zelensky government is intractable and you're responsible.
(07:48):
Fair enough.
I do think that the reporting is contradictory and shrouded about those months.
That's one report.
And, you know, I'm not taking up for Mr. Shuster's work.
I'm not familiar enough with it to comment on its veracity now, but I do know that there's
reports to the contrary.
And so we don't know that much about this part of the world, which is another reason
(08:09):
I am leery of getting involved militarily.
But secondly, I would also postulate that there are limits on how relevant 24 months
ago really are.
A brutal war has ensued, emotions have hardened and visions have become more blinkered.
In 2000 and in 2022, February, so 27 months ago, Emmanuel Macron was arguably the most
(08:35):
restraint oriented major European leader trying to prevent this war, famously being mocked
for his efforts to negotiate with the Kremlin and Putin.
And now today, if you read the headlines, Macron is the absolute tip of the spear, a
hawk of hawks.
So how Mr. Zelensky may or may not have behaved at the outset of the war, I think is less
(08:56):
relevant than how he's behaving now.
Hurt, let's switch to another conflict, the Middle East.
There was just an election in Pennsylvania that was quite interesting.
It looks like it's summertime in Pittsburgh, by which I mean that summer Lee, the congresswoman,
survived a primary challenge and she has refused to vote for aid to Israel and is in the progressive
(09:22):
wing of the Democratic Party.
What do you think is brewing among the Democrats and the progressives when it comes to Israel
coupled with the mass protests that we now see on college campuses?
I think it's very significant.
I think there's in one respect a mirror image of the Republican Party, although there are
(09:44):
with there were votes in the Republican Party, I believe a little over 20 that voted against
Israel aid as well.
But I believe you can look at the Democrat coalition as emerging towards something like
a majority in the years or even months to come being net Israel skeptic, or at least
not Israel maximalist like Representative Lee.
(10:05):
I think this is a dynamic that's been a long time coming.
I do think it is in conflict with the party's establishment and contra the Republican establishment,
the Democratic establishment is actually quite powerful and extremely well financed.
I think for President Biden, this is a no win scenario.
The more we are talking as Americans about Israel, the more Biden is in trouble.
(10:29):
It's quite like abortion with Mr. Trump.
It doesn't matter that Mr. Biden's position Israel is actually quite nuanced, and it doesn't
matter that Mr. Trump's position on abortion is actually quite nuanced.
It is a toxic asset on each of their balance sheets.
They can't explain it quickly and it frustrates voters.
And so the more that these types of conversations have are had, the more the protests are occurring,
(10:56):
it's bad for Biden.
And I think I would just quickly point out that this country has had arguably a protest
movement in some form or other since the middle of last decade, if not earlier on college
campuses and in urban centers around elections.
In 2020, it was famously for Black Lives Matter and Biden was elected the president.
(11:20):
And I believe that sort of shock troop presence in the streets was a net gain for the Democrats
at the end of the day.
It would be interesting to see if this is now turned on the beneficiary himself and
that he is actually blamed for the urban disquiet, for the campus disquiet, much like his predecessor,
(11:42):
Mr. Trump, was four years ago.
Now, Kurt, you mentioned that some 20 Republicans also voted against aid to Israel.
And Tucker Carlson recently invade against Israel's actions in the Gaza Strip.
Do you think that there will be a turn in the Republican Party away from its previous
(12:03):
reflexive support for Israel?
I think a lot of it depends on the course of the war and the course of the government.
Israel itself is a nation divided.
I mean, Netanyahu, if he's not going to lead Israel, might be imprisoned by Israel.
So it's not entirely much like Mr. Trump.
So it's not entirely clear what these entities are.
(12:24):
So if Netanyahu were to lose or the Israelis were to become less hawkish or this conflict
would suddenly die down, I think this would put some quiet on the subject.
But yes, the critique that was always levied at Mr. Netanyahu about 10 years ago when he
first addressed the House of Representatives, or I believe the joint session of Congress
(12:45):
in the late Obama term over the JCPOA was once you throw in with one party in an American
political context, you risk the bipartisan support forever.
Not only would he lose the Democrats, he could potentially lose the level of vigor they had
previously from Republicans.
And I think that prophecy is somewhat coming true.
(13:07):
Curt, I'd like to thank you for coming on this podcast again.
I'd like to also alert listeners that if you're interested, Kurt's magazine recently ran a
denunciation of yours truly as returning to the Neocon camp, which you can find on the
American conservative website.
And I look forward to our next conversation.
(13:27):
Cheers.
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