WaPo | But Massie — an engineer who graduated with several degrees from M.I.T. and became an inventor who still holds a number of patents — has devoted time and energy to honing his America First views during five terms in the House.
“I’m further, I think, than he is on the issue of NATO. He demanded that the partners pay their share. I would withdraw us from NATO,” Massie explained of his and Trump’s views toward the critical alliance. “It’s a Cold War relic. Our involvement should have ceased when the [Berlin] wall fell and the Soviet Union collapsed.”
He would have preemptively surrendered portions of eastern Ukraine to Russia in a manner that would have “avoided tens of thousands of people dying,” because this is how he sees the war ending anyway.
“A fractured Ukraine, with the Eastern portion of it being a satellite or more government, more deferential to Putin, and the Western part of it more deferential to Europe or the United States,” Massie said.
These views are anathema to traditional Republican hawks as well as Democrats in line with Biden, who push for a vigorous foreign policy that works to unify allies, particularly in Europe.
“Both Democrats and Republicans have at different times in history had a more isolationist, nativist wing,” said Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. “Right now, it’s the Republicans who are highest on that. They’re playing a very isolationist card.”
“Honestly there is an isolationist wing within the party that’s traditionally been there,” said Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas), ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
Smith takes a more optimistic outlook, focusing on how more than 70 percent of House Republicans supported the latest Ukraine aid package and that on other votes, Massie and Greene have had few allies.
“Pretty much everybody else understands that this isn’t just about Ukraine. It is about our security and peace and stability in the world. So thus far the Republican Party is still there,” Smith said.
McCaul has actually been pleasantly surprised that the anti-Ukraine faction has not grown larger, something he attributes to the success on the ground of Ukrainian troops and the atrocities committed by Putin’s troops.
“I was really worried, interestingly, earlier on about how this was going to trend,” McCaul said Friday.
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