US Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) on Tuesday took aim at former Fox News host Tucker Carlson in response to a question about the recent passing of the $95.3 billion bipartisan foreign aid bill.
About $60 billion of the bill will be used to assist Ukraine in its fight against Russia. Carlson interviewed Russian President Vladimir Putin earlier this year.
Axios notes, "It's not the first time McConnell has publicly criticized Carlson, also blasting the anchor for his coverage of the January 6th riot at the capitol."
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C-SPAN posted a video via X (formerly Twitter) of a press conference, in which the top Republican was asked, "You've been probably one of the most ardent backers of Ukraine in the Senate here, but what took so long to get some of these other eight Republicans persuaded to your position? Was it the overall nature of this bill and what was lost in that time period for Ukraine?"
McConnell replied, "I think the demonization of Ukraine began by Tucker Carlson, who, in my opinion ended up where he should have been all along, which is interviewing Vladimir Putin."
Referring to the foreign aid package, the Senate minority leader emphasized that Carlson "had an enormous audience, which convinced a lot of rank and file Republicans that maybe this was a mistake."
Then, regarding why the legislation took months to pass, McConnell said, "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 the nominee for president didn't want us to do anything at all. That took months — to work our way through it.
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The top Republican added, "We ended up doing the supplemental that was originally proposed, which dealt with — not all problems, it didn't solve the border problem — but certainly addressed the growing threats at the moment."
Watch the video below or at this link.
