FILE PHOTO: Former U.S. President Barack Obama addresses a town hall of young leaders from across Europe at an Obama Foundation event in Berlin, Germany April 6, 2019. REUTERS/Fabrizio Bensch
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) tried to muddy the waters and say Obama never released aid to Ukraine while defending Donald Trump.
Transcript via CNN’s State Of The Union:
TAPPER: This is about people who desperately need military aid getting it.
JOHNSON: Jake — Jake — Jake, there’s a war going on. And people are dying.
You know, President Obama, we authorized $300 million of lethal defensive weaponry. He never supplied it.
I would take things that Colonel Vindman says with a grain of salt as well, because, in his testimony, he said the Obama administration provided Javelin weapons. They didn’t. It was March 2018 that 210 Javelin weapons were finally approved in terms of a movement over to Ukraine.
TAPPER: Right.
JOHNSON: So — so, again, yes, people are dying. But I ask the question…
TAPPER: So, it doesn’t concern you that Mulvaney is bringing up this quid pro quo?
JOHNSON: … why — why — why weren’t the Ukrainians — why weren’t the Ukrainians — why weren’t the Ukrainians asking me about, where’s all the support? They never brought that issue…
TAPPER: But, sir, it doesn’t concern you…
JOHNSON: Poroshenko didn’t in my other meetings.
It wasn’t until the very end of August, a few weeks before the end of the fiscal year…/em>
Video:
PolitiFact has checked the Republican talking point that Obama withheld military aid from Ukraine and found it false, “The Obama administration did not provide lethal military aid that Ukraine asked for in 2014. However, it did provide other military equipment and training. The United States has provided $1.6 billion in security assistance to Ukraine since 2014, on average $300 million a year.”
There is one additional problem with the blame Obama excuse. Obama never withheld congressionally appropriated aid to force the Ukrainians to investigate his political opponents.
Obama did nothing like what Trump has done. Sen. Johnson’s claim was not true, and a sign of growing Republican desperation to save Trump.
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