Trump Veepstakes and the Israel-Ukraine Aid Bill

Plus, the Wall Street Journal on “obstinate” Israel; polling campus-protest response

Senator Tim Scott, Republican of South Carolina, issued a press release announcing he’d support the recent $95 billion Ukraine-Israel aid legislation and then was listed as “not voting” in the 79-18 roll call on final passage of the bill.

The politics of the bill, which also included money to help defend Taiwan and a provision to force the sale of TikTok, were complicated enough that it took months to get through Congress. Even by standards of complicated legislative maneuvering, though, it’s unusual to see a senator issue a press release announcing support for a bill that he then winds up not voting on.

Senator Tim Scott, Republican of South Carolina.

“Sen Scott to Support Supplemental Funding Bill,” the press release was headlined. In the release, Scott says, “This is an essential step in standing shoulder-to-shoulder with our ally Israel and providing meaningful action as they defend their people from Iran and its terrorist proxies.” The release goes on, “While far from perfect, I support this national security package because it will help keep Americans and our allies safe.” 

A spokesman in Scott’s Senate office referred my question about the non-vote to a spokesman in Scott’s political operation, who didn’t respond.

One possible explanation for the non-vote relates to Donald Trump’s vice presidential selection process. Two other senators who are reportedly under consideration as Trump’s running mate, J.D. Vance and Marco Rubio, both voted “no.”  Rubio called it “legislative blackmail,” complaining, “Not only did the ‘foreign aid’ bill that passed yesterday do nothing about the mass migration invasion of America, it provided over $3.5 billion to help bring migrants from the Middle East to America.”

Vance called it a replay of the “shameful” Iraq War funding votes: “the same exact talking points 20 years later.”

“Back then, in 2003, we actually had an antiwar left in this country. Now nobody really is antiwar,” Vance said.

Rep. Elise Stefanik, another potential Trump running mate, voted no on the Ukraine portion of the bill, which the House allowed a separate vote on.

Scott’s no-vote could be a sign that he is indeed under active consideration as Trump’s running mate. Trump didn’t actively try to scuttle passage of the foreign aid bill, but he did publicly oppose an earlier version of the legislation.

Wall Street Journal on “Obstinate” Israel: One of the disappointments of the post-October 7 world has been the visibility of a tilt against Israel in the news pages of the Wall Street Journal. The Journal’s opinion coverage has been excellent, magnificent, even, but the news coverage has been in some cases even more egregious than the New York Times, which is saying quite something. As an example, on page one of the Saturday, May 4 print Wall Street Journal came a news article by Aaron Zitner, Stephen Kalin, Tarini Parti, and Sabrina Siddiqui with the claim that even before Israel’s war with Hamas, “Americans had already been debating the limits of free speech on campus, the balance between protest and public order and the U.S. alliance with an obstinate Israeli government.”

My Webster’s Second Unabridged defines obstinate as “unreasonably determined to have one’s own way; not yielding to reason or plea; stubborn; dogged; mulish.”

The obstinate Wall Street Journal journalists, by slapping a pejorative adjective on the democratically elected government of an American ally, are themselves unreasonably abandoning journalistic standards. What, precisely, is so obstinate about the Israeli government? Its reluctance to allow the establishment of an armed, terrorist-dominated state along its border? Its objection to a nuclear deal that provided hundreds of billions of dollars in sanctions relief to Iran in exchange for temporary, unverifiable promises? Its refusal to surrender unilaterally to its ISIS-like and Al Qaeda-like enemies?

The U.S.-Israel alliance has broad bipartisan support grounded in the understanding that the same enemies who hate Israel also hate America, and that the same values that undergird Israel also undergird America.

As we like to ask here at the editors, where were the editors? Or what were the editors thinking when they allowed that insult in the newspaper? It’s one thing if it’s in a quote from someone, or if the Israeli government is allowed an opportunity to respond to the accusation. But just to drop it into a news article?

If the “obstinate” word touches a nerve, it may be because of overlap with a longstanding frustration among some Christians about Jewish refusal to convert to Christianity. Those stubborn Jews unreasonably insist on sticking with their outdated religion, the view goes. Many Christians have moved past that idea, but it resurfaces intermittently in ways that can be offensive to Jews.

Response to campus protests: Here is a new Economist/YouGov poll on whether college administrators have been too harsh or not harsh enough in response to anti-Israel protests (which the poll biasedly describes as pro-Palestinian protests, as if leaving Hamas in power in Gaza, the policy outcome of the immediate ceasefire advocated by the protesters, would be good for the Palestinians rather than disastrous):

One striking thing is the crosstabs showing how Protestants and to some degree Catholics look much more like the Jews, while atheists look much more like the Muslims. As I noted in an earlier post (“Elite Campuses Could Use More Evangelical Christians”) at the House hearings on antisemitism, Christian members of Congress cited the Bible’s message in Genesis 12, and the Jewish connection to the land of Israel is taken as basic biblical context. No close reader of the Bible can consider Zionism a purely European colonial project.

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