While President Trump makes a sharp pin towards Russia, overturning generations of American foreign policy, he is also challenging the members of his own party at the congress, many of whom have spent their career to discuss for a hawk position against Moscow and a Strong support for allies in Europe face its most immediate threats.
But the republican response to Capitol Hill was deactivated, in some cases to the silence point. There has been a small rejection of the Gop on the efforts of Mr. Trump to approach President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia or blame Ukraine while trying to end the war started when Russia has invaded the country.
While some Republicans have expressed dismay for the moves and declarations of Mr. Trump, there has been no concerted effort to challenge him as a leader of the Gop or senators who carry out key roles in the supervision of military and foreign policy to the congress.
“At this moment, you have to give him some space,” said Senator John Thune, republican and leader of the majority of South Dakota, during a press conference in Capitol Hill Wednesday after a lunch in the Senate behind closed doors with the vice president JD Vance.
The weekly meeting often offers senators the opportunity to iron internal disputes. Some senators have expressed the desire to use at least a part of the time to press Vance on the apparent availability of Mr. Trump to abandon the American allies, approach Mr. Putin and denounce the president Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine as a “dictator”.
But when the time came, the topic did not emerge, according to several participants.
“What I am in support of is a peaceful result and causes in Ukraine,” Thune said to journalists after the meeting, “and I think that at this moment the administration, the president and his team are working to achieve this goal “. Mr. Zelensky’s labeling of Mr. Trump as a dictator, he said: “The president speaks alone”.
Thune was among the considerable contingent of republican senators who have spent the last three years to support the legislation to send dozens of billions of dollars in aid in Ukraine for his war effort. Now that Mr. Trump is in the White House, they are fighting little while he turns to Kiev.
Even senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the former party leader who worked to establish himself as a main republican voice in support of Ukraine and a counterweight for the “America First” approach by Mr. Trump to foreign policy, remained publicly silent in the face of the president of the president towards Russia.
It is a surprising turning point for the Republicans, who for decades have defined themselves as the party of a strong defense and has argued that the United States played a fundamental role to play as a lighthouse of freedom and defender of democracies all over the world.
Some Gop legislators clarified that they did not agree with the approach of Mr. Trump, but most did so by making fun of the president. Senator Roger Wicker, republican of Mississippi and president of the armed services committee, said he did not agree with the idea of a meeting in person with Mr. Putin.
“My advice to the president, if he asked me, would not be to give Vladimir Putin the benefit of sitting with a democratically elected head of state,” said Wicker, defining the Russian leader “an international brazen and a war criminal of The worst type.
But although he guides the Senate Committee who supervises national security, Wicker clarified that Mr. Trump did not consult him.
A year ago, almost two dozens of republican senators have challenged Trump’s wishes and voted in favor of continuing to send dozens of billions of dollars to the military and other aid in Ukraine to fight Russia. Few of these legislators spoke against its current position and those who mostly offer critical criticism formulated to Mr. Putin, but not to Mr. Trump.
“Well, it seems that this is the direction in which they are directed,” said Senator Lisa Murkowski, Alaska Republican, of the thrust of the Trump administration to restore diplomatic ties with Russia.
Mrs. Murkowski, who seems to speak carefully to avoid criticizing Mr. Trump directly, said that the country did not “lose sight of the fact that Russia, Putin, simply brazenly and, without regard to the life or boundaries invaded L ‘Ukraine”.
“I think we have to be very careful,” he added.
Trump has declared that in the last few days it is the fault of Ukraine for the beginning of the war, telling journalists of his Mar-A-Lago estate that the Ukrainian leaders “could have made an agreement”. On Wednesday he sharpened his criticisms, defining Mr. Zelensky a “dictator without elections”.
Senator Thom Tillis, republican of the North Carolina, who recently returned from a trip to Kyiv, where he and two other senators reiterated their support for Ukraine, opposed the observation of the “dictator”.
“It’s not a word that I would have used,” he told journalists on Wednesday.
“There is no moral equivalence between Vladimir Putin and President Zelensky,” said Tillis of the comments that Mr. Trump made in a post on his social media site.
But Mr. Tillis, who recently taken into consideration and then retired from a clash with Mr. Trump on his defense secretary, was also careful to avoid criticizing the president’s approach directly. Mr. Tillis said he believed that Mr. Trump would ultimately listen to his councilors and taken note of the discomfort of the Republicans in Capitol Hill, who could urge him privately to avoid placulating Mr. Putin.
When he was asked if he supported the idea that Trump held a meeting in person with the Russian president, Senator Joni Ernst, Iowa Republican, simply shaken his shoulders.
Last year, Mrs. Ernst was among the contingents of Republicans who voted for the sending of billions of dollars in military aid in Ukraine. At the time, he said that his support was to project the American force to the world scene, something that said that President Joseph R. Biden Jr. was not doing.
“By strengthening and equipping America to reject the aggression of our opponents, the congress intensified to do the work that this president will not do,” said Mrs. Ernst in a note.
Now that Mr. Trump is in office, many republicans have dropped their more hawk positions on Russia and Mr. Putin to support the push of Mr. Trump to end the war.
Senator Lindsey Graham, a republican of the South Carolina, once he defined Mr. Putin as a “criminal” and a war criminal, saying that “must be treated”. But shortly after Mr. Trump announced that Mr. Putin had extended an invitation for the president to go to Moscow, Graham has substantially changed his melody.
“I don’t care if they meet Putin in Cleveland,” he said in the last days of plans to keep high -level interviews between the White House and the Kremlin. “I don’t care if they speak, I don’t care if they go on vacation. It doesn’t matter for me what you do as long as you do it well. “
On Wednesday, Graham wrote on social media that Mr. Trump “is the best hope of Ukraine to end this war honorably and rightly”, adding that he believes that the president “will have success and will achieve this goal in a Trump way”.