Just days after Mick Mulvaney’s controversial comments that military aid to Ukraine was held up in exchange for cooperation with a corruption investigation, Elizabeth Warren promised that she was open to making aid to Israel conditional on how the Jewish state handles settlements in the West Bank.
“Right now, Netanyahu says he is going to take Israel in a direction of increasing settlements, [but] that does not move us in the direction of a two-state solution,” Warren responded when asked what her stance was on aid and settlement-building.
“It is the official policy of the United States of America to support a two-state solution, and if Israel is moving in the opposite direction, then everything is on the table,” she said, before repeating: “Everything is on the table.”
This is exactly what the media claimed was a quid pro quo last week when Acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney said the military aid to Ukraine was held up because Trump wanted their help with “an ongoing investigation into the 2016 election.” In response to this statement, a reporter told him that it was a quid pro quo. Mulvaney said, “We do that all the time,” and then added, “You’re saying the president of the US can’t ask someone to help with an ongoing public investigation?”
Of course, Mulvaney failed to note at the time that Ukraine was not even aware the aid had been withheld, but the point that politics influences foreign policy is one that many in the left and the media seem to have forgotten so quickly. Elizabeth Warren just said she’d withhold aid to Israel unless Israel does what she wants—a quid pro quo by definition if Trump or someone in his administration had made the exact statement. Yet, where is the media pile-on? Where are the headlines pointing out Elizabeth Warren wants a quid pro quo from Israel if she’s elected?
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Matt Margolis is the author of Trumping Obama: How President Trump Saved Us From Barack Obama’s Legacy and the bestselling book The Worst President in History: The Legacy of Barack Obama. You can follow Matt on Twitter @MattMargolis
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