And of course, the best salesman against isolationism in America is President Zelensky. As you heard others say, Winston Churchill in a T-shirt. He’s an inspiration, not only to his own people, but to us as well.
For a lot of younger people in America, this is the first time they’ve ever seen a clear battle between right and wrong. To a lot of people, Afghanistan was murky. Iraq was murky. It just didn’t seem like a clear choice. I thought both those wars were necessary, by the way, but it was confusing to people. I don’t think anybody’s confused about this.
We’ve seen the bodies, we’ve seen the destroyed buildings. I don’t think anybody’s confused about who the bad guys are and who the good guys are, and whether or not America really ought to play that kind of role it has traditionally since World War II: being the leader of the free world in opposition to this kind of authoritarianism.
How important do you think the China factor was in all of this?
Huge. You’ve got both the prime minister of Japan and the defense minister of Japan saying if you want to push back against the Chinese, the single most important thing to do is beat Putin in Ukraine. That’s from the Japanese, whose biggest worry is not Putin but Xi [Jinping, China’s leader].
Senator Ted Cruz’s vote for the aid bill was interesting. He gave a very long speech explaining why, and one of the reasons was to counter China.
It was an excellent speech, I thought. And since he is among our most conservative members, I thought it was courageous and correct for him to say what he did, to people who follow him carefully. And in fact, I mentioned to him today, I thought it was really excellently crafted and an important message for someone like him to say. He’s clearly chosen a different path from another of our members who has presidential aspirations.
You said it was courageous — why?
Well, if you think of the brand of Republicans that you would typically think Senator Cruz would appeal to, this is not what they want to hear. That’s why I applied the word “courage” to it, because I think he was educating his supporters rather than mirroring them.
