Ukraine will lose only if MAGA Republicans cut off U.S. aid

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In 1940 and 1941, America First isolationists argued that the United States should not help Britain resist the Nazi onslaught because it had no chance to prevail. “I have been forced to the conclusion that we cannot win this war for England, regardless of how much assistance we extend,” Charles Lindbergh said on April 23, 1941.

Today’s America Firsters are voicing a similar refrain when it comes to Ukraine. Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) said: “I haven’t voted for any money to go to Ukraine because I know they can’t win.” Former president Donald Trump chimed in: “You’re really up against a war machine in Russia. … They defeated Hitler, they defeated Napoleon.” (This vaunted “war machine” lost the Crimean War, the Russo-Japanese War, World War I and the Soviet-Afghan war.) Many of these isolationists make it sound as though they are doing Ukraine a favor by hastening its defeat and occupation. “It doesn’t help the Ukrainian people,” Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), said recently, “to prolong their suffering in this war.”

Just as the original America Firsters played into Adolf Hitler’s hands, so their ideological descendants play into Vladimir Putin’s. Dictators always want to convey a sense that their triumph is inevitable and that resistance is futile. Indeed, the MAGA Republicans sound indistinguishable from Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, who said last year that Western aid deliveries “will not change anything” and “can only prolong the suffering of the Ukrainian people.”

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