Vice President JD Vance responded to Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., who urged the Trump administration to reject "appeasing" Russian President Vladimir Putin with a peace agreement that favors Moscow.
McConnell said in a statement last week: "Putin has spent the entire year trying to play President [Donald] Trump for a fool. If Administration officials are more concerned with appeasing Putin than securing real peace, then the President ought to find new advisers."
He added: "Rewarding Russian butchery would be disastrous to America's interests."
Vance, in a social media post on Monday, rebuked McConnell.
"This is a ridiculous attack on the president's team, which has worked tirelessly to clean up the mess in Ukraine that Mitch – always eager to write blank checks to Biden's foreign policy – left us," Vance wrote.
"I wonder if the three candidates to replace McConnell in Kentucky share his views here," Vance added.
In a series of social media posts Monday, McConnell responded to critics who said "that to criticize a proposed deal that initially hewed closely to Russia's preferred outcome is to misunderstand or misstate 'some critical reality on the ground.'"
He added that more than three-quarters of Ukrainians have said they would continue to fight against Russia's invasion even if the U.S. were to withdraw its support, meaning "a peace deal that doesn't secure Ukraine won't actually stop the killing."
McConnell added that most Americans don't support Ukraine losing territory in a peace agreement.
"The most basic reality on the ground is that the price of peace matters," McConnell said. "A deal that rewards aggression wouldn't be worth the paper it's written on. America isn't a neutral arbiter, and we shouldn't act like one."
Theodore Bunker ✉
Theodore Bunker, a Newsmax writer, has more than a decade covering news, media, and politics.
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