Sunday, during an appearance on Fox News Channel’s “Sunday Morning Futures,” Vice President JD Vance discussed efforts to push European nations to take a more active role in resolving the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
According to Vance, the American public has grown weary of sending taxpayer dollars to Ukraine to fund its side of the conflict.
“You did not want to send taxpayer dollars to Ukraine and taxpayer-funded arms to Ukraine,” host Maria Bartiromo said. “Do you feel that the current state of affairs improve that, whereas the U.S. will sell weapons to NATO countries, and they will go ahead and send the weapons?”
Vance replied, “Well, two things on that. First of all, I think the reason that we reached this decisive moment, a real change in where we were, is because the president was willing to apply some significant pressure and actually say, if you don’t come to the table, the American people, we’re not going to get involved in this war directly. We have a lot of economic points of leverage. And we’re willing to use those to bring about peace. And that was a big thing that happened. To your point about weapons, what we said to the Europeans is simply, first of all, this is in your neck of the woods. This is in your back door. You guys have got to step up and take a bigger role in this thing.”
“And if you care so much about this conflict, you should be willing to play a more direct and a more substantial way in funding this war yourself,” he continued. “I think the president and I certainly think that, America, we’re done with the funding of the Ukraine war business. We want to bring about a peaceful settlement to this thing. We want to stop the killing. But Americans, I think, are sick of continuing to send their money, their tax dollars, to this particular conflict. But if the Europeans want to step up and actually buy the weapons from American producers, we’re OK with that. But we’re not going to fund it ourselves anymore.”
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