Rand Paul, Ron Johnson defend Trump over Ukraine aid

Chuck Todd and Rand Paul.
(Image credit: Screenshot/NBC)

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) continued to defend President Trump on Sunday in light of the House impeachment inquiry.

In an appearance on NBC's Meet the Press, Paul told host Chuck Todd that Trump had "every right to withhold aid" from Ukraine if he believed there was corruption in the country. Paul argued that presidents have always circumnavigated Congress and withheld aid from countries for different reasons, including suspicions of corruption.

The famously non-interventionist senator went on to say that basically everyone in Washington on both sides of the aisle besides himself was trying to get something out of Kyiv, so he's not quite sure where the quid pro quo line should be drawn.

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Similarly, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.) told Jake Tapper on CNN's State of the Union that he was sympathetic to Trump's concerns over Ukrainian corruption, reiterating that was the primary reason for withholding aid.

Of course, Democrats would argue that Trump and his allies seemed to be far more invested in getting Ukraine to investigate Trump's political rivals stateside than any Ukraine-specific corruption cases.

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Tim O'Donnell

Tim is a staff writer at The Week and has contributed to Bedford and Bowery and The New York Transatlantic. He is a graduate of Occidental College and NYU's journalism school. Tim enjoys writing about baseball, Europe, and extinct megafauna. He lives in New York City.