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Senate Republicans Block Biden Ukraine Aid Despite Warning Over 'Direct Conflict With Russia'

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by Tyler Durden
Authored...

Update (1810ET): Nope...

On Wednesday President Joe Biden suggested that if Congress doesn't send Ukraine more money, now, it may 'embolden' Russian President Vladimir Putin to invade a NATO ally, which would precipitate "American troops fighting Russian troops."

The threat was not persuasive.

In response, Senate Republicans channeled Elon Musk (G...F...Y...), blocking Biden's $111 emergency supplemental package that would also include aid for Israel, humanitarian aid for Gaza, and a smattering of border funding.

The Senate voted 49-51, failing to reach the 60-vote threshold required to allow the proposal to come up for consideration. Notably, Bernie Sanders (I-VT) voted against the measure, while Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) flipped his vote to 'no' to preserve the option of revisiting the bill at a later date.

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President Joe Biden has raised the possibility of "American troops fighting Russian troops" in a speech urging Congress to put aside "petty, partisan, angry politics" which is holding up his multibillion-dollar aid package for Ukraine. He said that he's willing to make "significant compromises" with Republicans but that it's they who've been unwilling to back down from their "extreme" demands. 

"This cannot wait," Biden stressed in the televised remarks from the White House. “Congress needs to pass supplemental funding for Ukraine before they break for the holiday recess. Simple as that. Frankly, I think it’s stunning that we’ve gotten to this point in the first place. Republicans in Congress are willing to give Putin the greatest gift he can hope for and abandon our global leadership."

"I’m willing to make significant compromises on the border. We need to fix the broken border system. It is broken. And thus far I’ve gotten no response," Biden pleaded. He made the speech after speaking with G7 leaders, who are reportedly alarmed that US funding to Ukraine is set to run dry in a mere three weeks.

"If we walk away, how many of our European friends are going to continue to fund and at what rates are they going to continue to fund?" he posed.

And that's when the fear-mongering really kicked into overdrive. He went so far as to say that if Ukraine's defense isn't funded, this will lead to the country being steamrolled by the Russian military machine, and an emboldened Putin will then seek to gobble up more territory. Here's what the US president said, as reported in The New York Times: 

The president even raised the prospect that an emboldened Mr. Putin would pose a threat to NATO allies, requiring the United States to come to their assistance with troops on the group. “If Putin takes Ukraine, he won’t stop there,” Mr. Biden said. “It’s important to see the long run here. He’s going to keep going. He’s made their pretty clear.”

“If he keeps going and then he attacks a NATO ally” to which the United States is bound by treaty to help, “then we’ll have something that we don’t seek and that we don’t have today — American troops fighting Russian troops,” Mr. Biden said.

“Make no mistake,” he added. “Today’s vote is going to be long remembered and history’s going to judge harshly those who turn their back on freedom’s cause. We can’t let Putin win. I’ll say it again, we can’t let Putin win.”

Of course, this shaky "logic" is the opposite of reality. It is the nearly two years of 'blank check' spending which has only served to ever-deepen American military involvement in the war, and this is what has gotten Washington into yet another foreign quagmire. 

The soon to emerge narrative will also inevitably be that these hold-out Republicans "lost" the Ukraine war, as Biden's Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has already been saying. The MSM will also help the administration float this as a key 2024 election talking point... wait for it to be on an endless CNN/NPR loop headed into next November.

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