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BISMARCK – U.S. Senator Kevin Cramer (R-ND), member of the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC), joined Brian Kilmeade from “Fox & Friends” to discuss the status of the bipartisan border security deal and aid for Israel, Ukraine, and Taiwan. Text of the supplemental aid bill is expected to be released over the weekend. Additionally, they spoke about the three United States servicemembers killed in Jordan following a drone attack.
On the Drone Attack in Jordan:
“Just a week before this, I was visiting the family of a North Dakotan who was injured in an attack in Erbil on Christmas day by the small drones that are getting through and now 165-170 attacks that have gone with minor responses. […] The swiftness of the response is part of the projection of strength we need, and it's already too late to do it swiftly, and the fact that they didn't already have targets in mind in case something like this happened so that they could respond quickly as well as kinetically and lethally and in a way that sends a message that would deter our enemy. Right now, our weakness is the very thing that's escalating this war and in this battle, rather than the strength, which as we've seen over the years and decades with Iran, is the only thing they respond to.”
On How to Respond to Iran:
“One of the things that frustrates me is our Secretary of Defense, who has been AWOL for a couple of months and doesn't seem to have a grasp on things and certainly doesn't communicate them very well if he does, works for a commander in chief who is even worse, who is even harder to understand and who I think is very, very weak, and he projects that weakness way too often.”
On the Border Security Legislation:
“I, like you and everybody else, really am anxious to see the actual text of the bill because in something that's as complicated as immigration law, every word matters—how one word sort of references another, how one part of the law references another part of the code—all of these things will determine whether or not the aspirations and the goals and the good intentions of the negotiators are actually reflected in the words themselves. That's why we're anxious to see the text.”
“What I worry about the most is Chuck Schumer is going to rush to a vote. He's going to rush to cloture, and that will absolutely blow up any confidence people have in the process itself. I think it's important to see the text first, then read the text, and then start picking it apart and judging it.”
On Ukraine Funding Provisions:
“[Ukraine funding] is almost as controversial as the border funding. I think we ought to strip everything that's not related directly to fighting the war and beating back Vladimir Putin and diminishing his military more. I think the humanitarian aid and the other things need to be supported by the neighborhood in Europe, and we need to help Ukrainians do their very noble thing and that is beat back Vladimir Putin.”
“Most people thought Ukraine would lose [the war] within the first few days, which is why this weak President of ours was so slow to roll out the assistance that he finally did roll out. They maybe could have ended this war early in the first year if they had all of the things they needed right away rather than the way we're rolling them out, dribbling them out. We still haven't given them the F-16s to finally have some air dominance.”