Republican lawmaker Marjorie Taylor Greene was told to “stop repeating Putin’s propaganda” after she contested a $40bn (£32.4bn) aid package for Ukraine on Tuesday, claiming that the Biden administration was using this to cover up its crimes.
The bill would provide Ukraine military and economic assistance, replenish weapons the Pentagon has shipped overseas and provide $5bn to address global food shortages.
As members of the US House of Representatives began debating the aid package, Ms Greene said: “$40bn dollars but there’s no baby formula for American mothers and babies.”
“An unknown amount of money to the CIA and Ukraine supplemental bill but there’s no formula for American babies,” she added. “Stop funding regime change and money laundering scams. A US politician covers up their crimes in countries like Ukraine.”
However, her remarks were criticised by Democrat lawmaker Jamie Raskin, who asked her to not parrot the propaganda of Russian president Vladimir Putin.
“Here’s a formula for the destruction of democracy: repeating Putin’s propaganda and disinformation and appeasing imperialist assaults on sovereign nations,” the Maryland district representative said in the House in response to Ms Greene.
On Tuesday, the House of Representatives passed the bill, clearing Washington’s legal hurdle to deliver more aid to Ukraine.
The House passed the legislation with 219 Democrats and 149 Republicans voting in favor. Only two Democrats did not vote for the legislation at all but 57 Republicans, including Ms Greene, voted against it. It will now be sent to the Senate before it can be signed into law by president Joe Biden.
This is not the first time Mr Raskin has served a rebuttal to the Republican leader for following former president Donald Trump’s “sickening appeasement of Vladimir Putin and blaming Ukraine” for the conflict in the European nation.
He cited her in the House last month: “She said: ‘You see Ukraine just kept poking the bear, which is Russia, and Russia invaded Ukraine, there is no win for Ukraine here. Russia is successful in this invasion.’”
“We have members of Congress who are cheerleaders for Vladimir Putin and are voices of nothing but defeatism, fatalism and pessimism for democracy in Europe,” he had said at the time, adding that a handful of Republicans were trying to “distract us with a lot of phoney rhetoric about other issues”.
“She also said, ‘Nato has been supplying the neo-nazis in Ukraine with powerful weapons and extensive training on how to use them. What the hell is going on with these #NatoNazis?’,” he added.
Bringing up the Second World War, Mr Raskin asked the representatives in the House to decide which side they were on.
“When Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt and the Americans looked at what was happening in Europe during Second World War, when they saw Nazis marching down the street, they did not see very fine people on both sides of the street,” he said.
“They did not start cheerleading for Mussolini and Hitler and Franco. And yet we have people here who go out and speak on the side of Vladimir Putin and on the side of Russia.”
