Representative Madison Cawthorn (R, N.C.) drew headlines last week for calling President Biden a “geriatric despot” as he attacked the president on the House floor for sending U.S. troops closer to Ukraine. Cawthorn went on to suggest that Biden’s careless approach to troops’ well-being merits a salute that “involved one finger.” Well you have to give it to the guy, he’s got . . . style.
Aside from delivering some notable quips, Cawthorn highlighted the growing tensions between the America First crowd and the rest of the GOP over the conflict in Ukraine. Biden has received bipartisan support for sending weapons to Ukraine and applying pressure on Russia. Cawthorn feels differently. In his speech, he said, “The path to American national security does not lie in American international interventionism.”
It’s valid to argue that we shouldn’t send troops to Eastern Europe to avoid escalation toward war. Cawthorn and company, however, have opted to defend their isolationism with partisan messaging and incomplete reasoning.
Cawthorn went on to say that “path to” American national security “lies in securing our southern border, not the Russia–Ukraine border.”
He tweeted something similar in January:
Maybe if our southern border identified as Ukraine’s border, our leaders would care about protecting it.
— Madison Cawthorn (@CawthornforNC) January 31, 2022
Tucker Carlson is on the same wavelength. For the past two weeks, the Fox News host has been the spokesperson for noninterventionism in Russia, also invoking the border crisis:
When caravans of undocumented Russians appear on the Ukrainian border, the United States doesn’t sit idly by. The United States swoops in with deadly weapons to push these people back. We’ll send missiles to Ukraine if we have to. In fact, we already have — billions of dollars worth.
(Russia may be trying to cross the Ukrainian border, but certainly not as a migrant . . .)
The U.S. southern border is indeed under crisis largely due to mismanagement by this administration. But last time I checked, one domestic crisis didn’t mean the U.S. had to ditch its foreign policy.
Apples and oranges, it would seem.