Hawley says Biden ‘doesn’t really care’ about Israel aid

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) said he thinks the Biden administration “doesn’t really care” about Israel and that aid should have been passed a long time ago, in reference to Senate Republicans blocking an aid package.

“We should have passed aid to Israel a long time ago. I mean, our ally Israel is fighting for their existence, we should have done that immediately,” Hawley told Fox News’s Laura Ingraham Wednesday. “But the Biden administration doesn’t really care about Israel aid, that’s the bottom line. Just like they don’t really care about the border.”

Senators voted 49-51, failing to reach the 60-vote threshold Wednesday, and blocked an aid proposal from coming up for consideration.

Senate Democrats introduced a roughly $111 billion national security package requested by President Biden providing aid to Ukraine and Israel and security at the southern border, but Republicans held firm and insisted, as they have for weeks, that the bill would not proceed if it did not have enough attention on the U.S.-Mexico border.

Hawley criticized the package and said the Biden administration lumped Israel aid and funding for the border “together with Ukraine, which is their top priority, apparently over everything else.”

The Missouri senator then said “the border is wide open” and the U.S. saw a “record number of terrorists on the terrorist watch list come across the border last year,” insisting that the president is funding foreign affairs at the expense of protecting Americans.

“It’s Ukraine, Ukraine, Ukraine,” Hawley said. “And I’m just going to tell you, I, for one, am not going to vote for a dime more for Ukraine until the United States’s security, our border security, is made whole and made right.”

The Hill has reached out to Hawley’s office for further comment.

Senate Republicans have accused Democrats of not taking their concerns seriously, despite holding firm that the southern border needs more attention than Ukraine in its war against Russia.

Biden signaled an openness Wednesday to strike a new deal and said he is willing to make “significant compromises” in order to get Ukraine its funding.