Republican Rep Madison Cawthorn offered a dismissive response to Volodymyr Zelensky’s joint address to Congress after arriving just as the Ukrainian president was about to finish.
The late entrance on Wednesday morning comes less than a week after North Carolina freshman Republican caused outrage when video emerged of him calling Mr Zelensky “a thug” and saying the Ukrainian government “is incredibly corrupt and is incredibly evil and has been pushing woke ideologies”.
In his speech, Mr Zelensky called on Americans to remember Pearl Harbor and the September 11 terrorist attacks and compared them to the killings of civilians and troops in Ukraine every day for almost three weeks by Russian forces.
“Our country experiences the same every day right now - at this moment, every night, for three weeks now,” he said. “Russia has turned the Ukrainian sky into a source of death for thousands of people.”
In pleading for US lawmakers to support a Nato-enforced no-fly zone over his country, Mr Zelensky played a heartbreaking video capturing some of the atrocities his people have endured.
The video, entitled “Close the Sky”, opened with images of families happily playing and going about their lives in pre-war Ukraine before shifting to clips of dead bodies, bombings and crying children taken since the invasion.
Fellow lawmakers watched the footage in horror before Mr Cawthorn finally made his entrance.
Despite having only seen a fraction of the address, the lawmaker gave a response afterward essentially dismissing Mr Zelensky’s requests.
“Emotion should never guide our foreign policy,” he said, according to journalist Jonathan Weisman. “The United States must be extraordinarily careful to implement logical, rational foreign policy that tactfully strengthens the Ukrainian people while simultaneously putting America first.”
Ahead of Mr Zelensky’s address - which he delivered from his office in Kyiv - Mr Cawthorn did not reply to questions from The Independent about whether he would attend.
In the wake of WRAL releasing video of his “thug” remarks about Mr Zelensky, Mr Cawthorn showed little remorse as he clarified that “I am praying for Ukraine and the Ukrainian people” but also said: “Honestly, both governments in both Russia and Ukraine are incredibly corrupt and very vile.”
Mr Cawthorn’s comments about Mr Zelensky came as many in his party scrambled not only to paint Joe Biden as insufficiently prepared to step up in Ukraine’s defence, but to distance themselves from some among their number who have praised Vladimir Putin or else parroted the Kremlin’s preferred talking points and conspiracy theories about the conflict.
Several Republicans condemned Mr Cawthorn’s attack, including North Carolina Senator Thom Tillis, who called it part of the “deranged propaganda” emanating from Russia.
Prior to the video, Mr Cawthorn faced an unsuccessful grassroots effort to prevent him from running for re-election for reasons that include but are not limited to false statements about his educational record, multiple allegations of sexual harassment and assault, “racist dog-whistles”, and heavily implying that his detractors could provoke political violence if events do not go his preferred way.
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