A group of Republican senators abruptly stormed out of a classified briefing earlier this week following an outburst from South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, who exclaimed, “Can we f—king get someone in here who knows anything?” during foreign aid discussions with defense secretary Lloyd Austin and Joint Chiefs Gen. Charles Q. Brown, who are both Black.
The meeting, held in Washington Tuesday, Dec. 5, and led by Sens. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and James Lankford, R-Okla., took place as the administration pursued a deal with Congress to send additional aid to Israel and Ukraine amid simultaneous wars involving U.S. allies.
The meeting, also attended by Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and national intelligence director Avril Haines, among others, turned rancorous when some Republicans tried to redirect the talks to the subject of securing the U.S. southern border with Mexico, which GOP hardliners have been seeking in exchange for sending more taxpayer dollars overseas.
Several Republicans in the room, including Romney, stood up and began shouting after Schumer interrupted a plea by Lankford to strengthen the Southern border, while Schumer tried to push the discussion back to the developing situation in Ukraine, according to “PBS NewsHour” correspondent Lisa Desjardins.
Also there was Sen. Kevin Cramer, R-N.D., who loudly confronted Gen. Brown about his stance on securing the border, to which Brown answered that border security did not fall under his purview.
That’s when one of the senators screamed at Brown, while asking if the decorated four-star Air Force general had ever personally been to the Southern border, according to Desjardins’ account.
Brown then replied that he was from Texas, prompting more grumbling and Graham’s outburst that quieted the room before Republican members walked out.
Later Tuesday, Schumer told NBC News that McConnell “hijacked” the meeting, saying, “Instead of asking our panelists, he called on Lankford to give a five-minute talk about the negotiations on the border. And that wasn’t the purpose of the meeting, at all.”
Schumer told the network, “One of them started — it was disrespectful — started screaming at one of the generals and challenging him to why he didn’t go to the border.”
After the meeting, Cramer told reporters that “people got up and walked out, because this is a waste of time.”
Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., told reporters it was “the most heated briefing” he had ever witnessed on the Hill.
“Well, usually senators don’t scream at each other in front of, you know, the secretary of defense and so forth,” Hawley noted.
Graham, meanwhile, blamed the administration for the breakdown, saying they should have known that Republicans were ready to discuss the border.
“It started off pretty bad … a lot of tension in the room because nobody talked about the border. In case you don’t have a television or you’ve been living in a cave, you would know that most Republicans feel like we need to address the broken border,” he said, according to NBC.
Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ariz., blamed Schumer for sparking the disorder.
“Schumer running his big mouth, claiming that it was Republicans who, quote, unquote, ‘injected immigration for border security in this debate’ — and I had none of that.”
Romney attempted to explain the bitterness in the discussions.
“We want to help Ukraine and Israel, but we’ve got to have the Democrats recognize that the trade here, the deal, is we stop the open border. They don’t want to do that. So Republicans are just walking out of the briefing because the people there are not willing to actually discuss what it takes to get a deal done.”
