Aid for Ukraine and Israel should continue to be tied together with money for immigration reform as long as President Joe Biden insists on "having an entire package" for his emergency aid bill, Sen. Kevin Cramer said on Newsmax.
"I suppose if the president wanted to send us separate packages, one for Ukraine, one for Taiwan, one for replenishing America's weapons and munitions, and the border bill, we could deal with them one at a time, but clearly that's not what he's chosen to do," the North Dakota Republican told Newsmax's "The Record With Greta Van Susteren" on Wednesday night.
"I think the condition that Republicans have put on that we're first going to secure our own safety and our own borders before we secure somebody else's is an easy ask and should be easy to fulfill," he added.
Earlier Wednesday, Republican senators blocked the White House's request for $106 billion in emergency aid primarily for Ukraine and Israel, balking because immigration reforms were not part of the package.
Cramer said he agreed with Van Susteren when she asked how senators can face their constituents in this political year and tell them border security comes second.
"I know I can't go home and say 'Listen, we'd love to keep our children safe, our border cities safe, and our inner cities safe. We'd love to prevent 100,000 deaths a year from fentanyl poisoning, But first, we have to take care of Ukraine and we have to take care of Israel. We have to take care of Taiwan.'"
All of those are high priorities for most Republicans, he added, especially in the case of Israel, but U.S. national security comes first.
"These are not unrelated issues, and it should be easy," said Cramer. "Quite honestly, if the Democrats would agree to our conditions on the border, they [would] get several hundred votes in the house, and they would get a vast majority."
But if the bills were separated, Cramer said he would agree to vote for aid packages, including with Ukraine.
"I think we have a national interest in doing that," Cramer said. "I think we have a moral and historical obligation to do that, but I wouldn't do it until we got the border secure. That's the condition on the next vote."
Cramer also Wednesday discussed comments he made at the weekend's Reagan National Defense Forum, where he voiced concerns over where the Pentagon's advertising funds are going.
At the event, he said the Army uses Omnicom Media Group, an advertising agency associated with NewsGuard, and targets more than $2 million of advertising in liberal media outlets such as Huffington Post.
He told Newsmax that such placement is "not fair," but it's also "not very good strategy" to spend $2 million on Huffington Post online or digital and none on Newsmax "when Huffington Post is liberal and less likely to be targeted at people more likely to join the military and defend our freedom."
Cramer added that, having been a teacher of marketing management students before coming to Congress, he believes the decision "is not based on good marketing or good strategy or good targeting, but rather based on some sort of weird political bias, where NewsGuard picks the winners and the losers, regardless of the marketing."
He said there was an attempt to get language into the National Defense Authorization Act to extend recruitment efforts to a wider audience, and if that doesn't happen, "we have to take it to the next step and work on appropriations limitations."
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