Nebraska GOP Sen. Ben Sasse on Sunday took issue with the Biden administration's response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, arguing that the president is addressing the situation as a "PR crisis" and that the U.S. response to the war is "too slow."
The Biden administration announced a massive Ukrainian military aid package last week that includes supplying the country with Switchblade drones.
But still, Sasse said in a "Fox News Sunday" appearance that the U.S. must do more in providing arms to Ukraine and to do so soon. He also accused the administration of reacting too slowly to the war in Ukraine because it did not believe the eastern European country stood a chance against Russia.
"The biggest problem here is that the administration has a bunch of lawyers who are treating this as if it's a [cover your a--] PR crisis instead of the national security crisis it is," Sasse said. "And so my message to the president is simple: Stop listening to all of your advisers who say Zelenskyy's a dead man walking. Stop listening to those who say that Ukraine is inevitably going to lose. We should hear the president's strategy to help Ukraine win. We should be on the side of these freedom fighters and we’re too slow in almost every step we take."
Sasse supports the administration's decision not to send U.S. troops to fight Russia, noting that Ukrainians "have the will to fight." But he expressed that the U.S. must "have the will to re-arm them constantly."
The Republican senator recently voted against a $1.5 trillion omnibus bill that included $13.6 billion in aid for Ukraine. He explained that the legislation was "crap" because it was thousands of pages long, came out in the middle of the night, and the portion of the bill for Ukrainian aid was less than 1 percent of the proposal. The legislation passed the Senate by a 68-31 vote and was signed by President Joe Biden on Tuesday.
Sasse argued that re-arming Ukrainians for its war with Russia "could have been done as a stand-alone bill in 10 minutes."
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