Republican party’s divisions over Ukraine on show at testy Iowa summit

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Mike Pence was booed by an audience of some 2,000 evangelical Christians on Friday in Iowa after the former US vice-president said it was in America’s interest to continue providing weapons and aid to Ukraine.

The audience’s reaction to Pence, who is challenging Donald Trump for the party’s presidential nomination in 2024, underscored the sharp split among Republicans over military support for Kyiv. That divide has cast doubt on whether Congress will approve more aid for Ukraine later this year.

“I believe that it is in the interest of the United States of America to continue to give the Ukrainian military the resources that they need to repel the Russian invasion and restore their sovereignty,” Pence said.

His answer was in response to dogged questions from conservative pundit Tucker Carlson, the former Fox News host, at The Family Leadership Summit, an annual gathering of influential evangelical leaders in the key early voting state of Iowa.

Carlson — who was ousted this year from Fox after the cable news channel agreed to pay $787.5mn to settle a defamation case from voting machine maker Dominion — is one of the most prominent voices on the American right to attack Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy and praise Russian president Vladimir Putin.

The Iowa crowd cheered as Carlson told Pence: “Your concern is that the Ukrainians, a country most people can’t find on a map, who have received tens of billions of US tax dollars, don’t have enough tanks? I think it’s a fair question to ask, like, where is the concern for the United States here?”

“It’s not my concern,” Pence replied. “Tucker, I have heard that routine from you before, it’s not my concern . . . Anybody that says that we can’t be the leader of the free world, and solve our problems at home, has a pretty small view of the greatest nation on Earth.”

The testy back-and-forth highlighted the growing divide between hawks and isolationists in the Republican party.

Opinion polls suggest US public support for aiding Ukraine has waned since the Russian invasion last year, with Republicans far more likely to object to more support than Democrats. Pew polling conducted last month found 44 per cent of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents said the US was giving too much aid to Ukraine, compared to 14 per cent of Democrats and Democrat-leaning independents.

US president Joe Biden is expected to ask a sharply divided Congress to approve more funding for Ukraine later this year. Biden has insisted that a spending package will be approved by lawmakers, even as Republicans, who control the House of Representatives, have voiced opposition.

Biden told western allies in Lithuania this week at the conclusion of the Nato summit: “We will not waver . . . We’re going to help Ukraine build a strong, capable defence across land, air, and sea, which will be a force of stability in the region and deter against any and all threats.”

Tim Scott, the Republican senator from South Carolina, also made the case for more military aid at Friday’s summit, while Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina and Trump’s ambassador to the UN, shrugged when Carlson asked who had blown up the Nord Stream pipeline.

“I mean, I don’t know. Do you know who did it?” Haley said.

Carlson replied: “Seems pretty obvious that it was backed by the Biden administration.”

The Kremlin has accused the US of destroying the pipeline, a claim that has been sharply rejected by the White House and US and European intelligence agencies.

Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor who is polling a distant second behind Trump among Republican voters, has sought to carve out his own position on Ukraine.

Earlier this year, he said the war was a “territorial dispute” and not in America’s “vital interests”, but later walked back the comments, calling Putin a “war criminal”.

On Friday, DeSantis told Carlson: “My critique of the DC foreign policy elite is that they are doing a blank cheque policy without telling us when we will have achieved our objective.”

“Now, because you dissent from the DC foreign policy elite, they then try to smear you and say, oh, you must be for Putin,” DeSantis added.

“I’ve always thought Putin is a bad guy. I still think he’s a bad guy. But that’s a separate question . . . you have to make a judgment about what’s in America’s national interests.”

Trump, who has said he could end the war in Ukraine in a single day, did not attend Friday’s evangelical conference in Iowa. The summit was hosted by Bob Vander Plaats, a prominent Christian leader who has called on Republicans to embrace an alternative candidate in 2024.

Vivek Ramaswamy, the biotech entrepreneur and fund manager who launched his long-shot presidential run on Carlson’s now cancelled Fox News show, pitched a more radical position on Ukraine at Friday’s conference. He said he could end the war by convincing Kyiv to cede part of the Donbas region to Russia in exchange for Moscow breaking ties with Beijing, and a US commitment to block Ukraine from joining Nato.

But Ramaswamy — who has risen steadily in opinion polls in recent weeks — admitted his position was not popular with the Republican establishment, telling Carlson: “To be really honest with you, I have lost many large donors, or prospective donors, over this issue.”