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variety of compelling podcasts. c-span now is available at the am store or google play. or visit our website. c-span now, your front row seat to washington, anytime, anywhere. >> coming up, senate minority leader mitch mcconnell holding a briefing on the ukraine-israel-taiwan foreign aid package. he also made remarks on the u.s. withdrawal from afghanistan. defense budget and border security.

sen mcconnell: pharynx everyone. this has been an important day for america and a very important day for freedom-loving countries around the world. clearly on the ukraine portion of this, we had difficulty on the republican side. i think no democrats in the house voted against ukraine. i believe that's largely the case in the senate. but our problems didn't just arrive today.

this current administration's decision to leave afghanistan was a huge mistake, like sending a green light to all of our adversaries. second, the administration has not asked for a defense budget big enough to keep up with inflation so we've all learned a lesson as a result of russian behavior. we have two new members of nato, got a significant number of european countries spending more as a percentage of g.d.p. than we are. with regard to the claim that this was a huge amount of money, i know it seems like it but to put the $60 billion in context, it's about .2% of our g.d.p. .2% of our g.d.p. our overall defense budget is

3%. of our g.d.p. so what have we learned decisionly? number one, we need to get our industrial base going, aside from what we've experience in the ukraine. we do need to deal with the two big powers that are out there. i'm not a history professor with you i know a lot about american history in had the last 100 years and it seems to me this country has a tendency to be isolationist when there's a democrat in the white house. nervous right before world war ii when the most prominent republican robert taft opposed even lend-lease. pearl harbor solved that problem for a little while but then

after the war, taft and most of the republicans opposed nato and the marshall plan. so fortunately from my point of view, eisenhower got the nomination in 1952 instead of taft and we have largely been consistently in support of america playing a strong leadership role in the free world. and so i think all of us with these views have been enhanced, in my opinion in the right direction. the latest evidence is there were 30 republicans who just voted for cloture. we'll see what happens on final passage but that's eight more than the 22 who voted to send the bill out of the senate in the first place. reporter: you were clear you

wanted the senate bill to pass. another two months of changing the bill. what would you say about the way the speaker has handled it by waiting two additional months? sen? mcconnell: there's nothing in my view wrong with what we passed and the most important thing in my view so to get it to the president for his signature. reporter: what is your legacy if the next president is trump, who has encouraged russia to invade our nato allies. >> we can speculate all day about what might happen and what might not happen. i'm going to consistently avoid discussing the presidential election. i have one job as i give up my leader position and that's to

create a republican majority in the senate and i'm going to confine my political observations to taking the senate back. >> you've been probably one of the most ardent backers of ukraine in the senate here but what took so long to get some of these other eight republicans persuaded to your position? was it the nature of this bill and what's the time period for ukraine? >> that's a good question. you already know the answer. i think the demonization of ukraine began with tucker carlson, who in my opinion ended up where he should have been all along, which is interviewing vladimir putin. so he had an enormous all of a sudden which convinced a lot of rank and file republicans that maybe this was a mistake. i think the former president had sort of mixed views on it.

we all felt that the border was a complete disaster, myself included and chad, you remember covering the phases we went through. first, there was an effort to make law, which requires to you deal with democrats, and then a number of our members thought it wasn't good enough and then our nominee for if the didn't seem to want us to do anything at all. that took months to work our way through it so we ended up doing the supplemental that was originally proposed, which dealt with not all the problems. it didn't solve the border problem but certainly addressed the growing threats at the moment. >> you talk about wanting a republican majority or working to get a republican majority but many of these candidates who are running in republican primaries

espouse to believe this more isolationist perspective that you're concerned about. what rough saying to these candidates that you're working for and trying to get elected into this next congress about the positions they could they should take? >> i think we've turned the corner on this argument. we went from 2 votes to at least 30 we'll see what happens on final penny. the house is about 50/50, as we thought would happen if they voted on it. so i think we've turned the corner on the isolationist movement. i've noticed how uncomfortable proponents of that are when you call them isolationists. i think we've made some progress and i think it's going to have to continue because we have big, big problems. china, russia, iran. going into world war ii we just had germany and japan. you could argue that this is a more challenging time right now

than it was leading up to world war ii. i don't want it to take something like the pearl harbor attack to get our attention. and one of the good things that's come out of this, it seems to me is we've paid attention to the facts. underfunding defense, the importance of standing up for our friends. that we can't sort of hide out in isolation here in the hopes that they would give up on us if we give up on them. they're at war with us and i think a lot more americans now understand and appreciate >> talk about the border crisis and this contains nothing to help the border crisis. we have known terrorists coming over the border right now. how concerned are you about the potential threat to america and would you like to see the next congress deal with this border crisis? sen. mcconnell: i would have

loved to see this congress delivered. i asked senator langford to get it to negotiation with the democrats, they have the white house and the senate and he negotiated a bill that i thought was the important step in the right direction. i thought that because the democrats are awfully uncomfortable with it. that did not happen. that is not an argument for not dealing with the other issue. i am not happy with the situation at the border. my own view is the president's single biggest problem if i were in his shoes as i would do something about it. reporter: nancy pelosi called on the israeli prime minister benjamin netanyahu to resign following what chuck schumer said. what is your response to that? sen. mcconnell: my view with regard to allies of ours who are

democracies, we ought not to give them advice on whether or not to have elections, and how to conduct a war. both of those were broken and -- in effect by this administration. i think that was a mistake. i am not president. he is. i think the israelis have two -- to live in the neighborhood. they know best what to do and protect their citizens. with a lot of help from our technology and their own, they had a successful push back against the missile attack. and i do not think that they need public advice from the administration about whether or not to have an election or what their military tactics ought to be. reporter: if the attacks are provided, will you restrict them to fire at targets only inside

of ukraine? the long-range missiles? will there be restrictions for them to be only fired inside of ukraine? sen. mcconnell: i hope not. i will not try to dictate to ukrainians how to handle a war either. reporter: are you in favor of sending them? sen. mcconnell: i am for whatever our military thinks would be useful for them. i would not put restrictions on it. they are dealing with a rogue country that is trying to take away their independence. it is always important to remember we are not fighting this war. we don't have any troops there. we are helping them stand up to -- up for their independence. and also to do a lot of damage to the military of one of our two biggest adversaries. what is not to like about that? reporter: senator murray talked about the cost of the delay that

this package did not get past, do you think that this a package -- this aid package could be sufficient to help ukrainian fighters make up the time lost in the -- sen. mcconnell: i hope so, no question delay was harmful. very harmful. the administration is partly -- partially responsible for that by being too skittish. i thought the administration could have done it sooner. for example, i can remember either the previous administration or the one before that saying we always send a meal ready to eat. really? they have been asking for serious military help for a number of years. i personally have advocated that in the last two administrations and this one. so i do think the president was too tentative, too wary about

-- too worried about antagonizing the russians, who already had troops at the border and obviously they were not for training exercises. acting quicker, partially because of the administration, partially because of congress not approving this bill sooner. reporter: two years ago you expressed questions about candidate quality. do you have similar concerns this time of year? -- this time with your candidate? sen. mcconnell: you talking about senate races? yeah, well i feel pretty good about our nominees. i am pretty confident we are going to win west virginia. you can do the math, one more makes 51. i have been the majority leader and the minority leader. majority is better. and i hope to hand this job over to the majority leader. reporter: what do you think

about the fact that even though you got 30 republicans on this that both you and speaker johnson have had to lean on unanimous support from democrats to get ukraine aid because of this isolationist wing in your party? sen. mcconnell: well, i will not say that it has gone away, but we certainly prevailed by a larger majority today than we did two months ago. if you are looking for a trend, i think it is a trend in the direction that i would like to see us go, which is that america steps up to its leadership role in the world and does what it needs to do. reporter: can you talk about the decision to include the tiktok ban on this bill? sen. mcconnell: i cannot hear you. reporter: can you talk about the decision to include the tiktok bill with very little changes? sen. mcconnell: it certainly enjoyed a lot of support. i think there were only 48 votes against it in the house. my impression is most of the

senators are in favor of it too. so i don't think it did the bill any harm. reporter: can you please respond to j.d. vance's assertion in the new york times that we lack the capacity to manufacture the weapons ukraine needs to win the war? can you respond to j.d. vance's claim in the new york times -- sen. mcconnell: yeah, i am not going to get into an argument with a colleague. obviously we have very different points of view about this, but -- in fact he wrote about it. reporter: could you discuss a little about speaker johnson's transition. he previously voted against ukraine aid, and now he is the driving force behind this package in the house you are going to be voting on today. what have you seen and what did you learn over the last two months? sen. mcconnell: more important than what i think about the speaker is what the former president thinks about the speaker.

and he obviously made it clear that he was a fan of speaker johnson, and suggested some of his critics to shut up. so i would just quote the former president. reporter: what do you make of the comments made by kentucky's andy barr that isolationist within the party are one of the big reasons why border security could not be attached to this foreign-made package? -- foreign aid package? sen. mcconnell: i think we already covered that. i am not happy with where we are at the border. but we can walk and chew gum at the same time. if we can't agree how to fix the border, that is no good excuse for not dealing with an obvious additional problem that we have been talking about here. reporter: what would you say to the ukrainian people who have been waiting for this package for more than six months? sen. mcconnell: i had a hard time hearing you.

reporter: what would you say to the ukrainian people who have been waiting for six months for this package? sen. mcconnell: i would say better late than never. look, i would love to have gotten this finished a long time ago. for those of you who work here every day, you know i have been talking about this since last summer if not before. but today is a day of celebration, because we finally did get the job done. it is not too late. we don't have to give up on ukraine, and we are not going to. reporter: so, given how long it took to pass this package, it is not clear whether congress or future president can get another package through. on top of that you mentioned it takes a while to replenish. sen. mcconnell: are you talking about an additional package? reporter: yeah. sen. mcconnell: i think the next thing to focus on is the defense department budget for next year.

the president's request have not been adequate. we need to make sure we are doing more in defense through the regular appropriations process. the kinds of things this supplemental allowed us to do would normally have been done in the regular appropriations process, but we did not have a high enough number. this supplemental actually rescued us, in the sense that it allowed us to build up our industrial base and to create lots and lots of jobs. the last figure i saw was something like 38 states are benefiting from this. these are american workers producing cutting-edge equipment. and, as i said earlier, i have a hard time seeing what's wrong with doing this.

it's exactly what we need to do, not only for ukraine but for ourselves. reporter: you said there is a lot of support for the tiktok passage, tiktok proposal in the bill. but president trump yesterday, once again, blamed president biden for supporting facebook and other social media platforms. do you agree with that assessment? sen. mcconnell: i don't think i have anything to say about that part of the bill. reporter: on tiktok though, how do you respond to critics who say that this is government overreach, that this is congress doing something republicans don't like to do, which is telling a business what can and cannot do? also, perhaps intimidating the free-speech of hundreds of millions of americans? sen. mcconnell: is your question, am i troubled -- reporter: it is more what do

think about the tiktok ban and concerned that it limits free speech, and also that it may limit corporations doing what they want. sen. mcconnell: look, that part of the bill, the house added. it was apparently popular among our members. i really have nothing to add to that. i saw that several members said to some of you that i needed to be guided by the majority of our conference. let me suggest, if i viewed that as my responsibility, we would never raise the debt ceiling and we would never found the -- fund the government. because i have been on the short side among republicans on both of those issues. so it's not unusual for me to be in a different place with the majority on some things that republicans just don't like to do. they don't like raising the debt ceiling, they don't like funding

the government, but we have to do both. sen. mcconnell: opponents on ukraine aid within your party claimed they are winning the argument, the fact that donald trump is once again the republican nominee. given the vote we are going to see today in the senate, what is your response to that claim, that they are winning the argument? sen. mcconnell: i hope i understand your question correctly. i think no matter who gets elected president, he will benefit from what we have done today. this is important, no matter who wins the presidential elections. because if we had not done it, things would have been considerably worse for whoever the next president is. reporter: some of the house republicans have some issues with provisions in ukraine aid, like economic assistance. what comments do you have on that? some feel it should only be strictly military assistance to

ukraine. sen. mcconnell: your question is about house republicans? reporter: yes, sir. sen. mcconnell: i confess, that is not my expertise. reporter: what could the senate have done to move this along faster, or do you think the senate had to follow this course through the house? sen. mcconnell: well, we actually ended up with a greater percentage of our congress than -- conference than in the house supporting the supplemental. and as i have said repeatedly, it shows growth for us playing a role in the world that we need to play. 22 the first time, at least 30 this time. we will see what the final passage vote is, but at least 30. that is moving the way i would like to see it move, so i would call that progress. reporter: how important is it to you personally, the passage of this before you step down from

leadership? sen. mcconnell: this is not about me. this is about our country and the free world. as you all know, i have been around a while. we've been dealing with the russians off-and-on since i was born. my dad was fighting the germans in world war ii, in the war came -- and the war came to an end when he met the russians in the czech republic. and i have some letters he wrote my mother pointing out the russians were going to be a big problem. this is a regular footsoldier. and boy, have they been, for a long time. and as we all know, there was some hope after the berlin wall came down and we expanded nato all the way over to russia. thought maybe that russia would be a normal country. bush 43 tried to treat them like a normal president.

so did president obama. but it is clear this is just like the soviet union in terms of their ambition for their country. they only respect one thing, and that is strength, and that we learned from ronald reagan. peace through strength works. pretending enemies don't hate you does not work. you can hide out at home, they are still going to hate you. and they are attacking us, at least the houthis are. and we need to stand up and do what we did today. ok. thanks, everybody. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2024] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] announcer: get information from

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