Republican right-winger Marjorie Taylor Greene has told Lord David Cameron to “kiss my ass” after he urged US legislators to pass a bill including support for Ukraine.
The Donald Trump ally said the UK Foreign Secretary should “worry about his own country” after his intervention over the multibillion-dollar foreign aid package making its way through Congress.
The bill has passed through the Senate but faces a deeply uncertain future in the House of Representatives, where hard-line Republicans aligned with GOP presidential front-runner Mr Trump oppose the legislation.
In an article for US political website The Hill, Lord Cameron called on Washington to vote through the package for the sake of global security as he embarks on a series of diplomatic visits across Europe this week to push the case for sustained support for Kyiv.
Asked about his comments on Wednesday, Ms Taylor Greene told Sky News: “David Cameron needs to worry about his own country and, frankly, he can kiss my ass.”
“Kiss my ass”
The Foreign Secretary is visiting Bulgaria and Poland this week before travelling to the Munich Security Conference, where he will encourage counterparts to boost defence production for Ukraine.
During a trip to Sofia on Wednesday, Lord Cameron said: “Right now in Congress, the American support for Ukraine is being debated, and I urge those congressmen and women to pass that bill to provide that money, to provide those weapons to Ukraine.
“They are fighting off illegal Putin aggression and they need our support. We should be standing up for freedom, standing up for the right of this country to defend itself and making sure that Putin doesn’t win.”
In an article also published on Wednesday, he said he was dropping “all diplomatic niceties” in his appeal to US legislators as Kyiv keeps up its defensive position against Russia.
“Weakness”
Lord Cameron, who served as UK prime minister between 2010 and 2016, said: “I do not want us to show the weakness displayed against Hitler in the 1930s. He came back for more, costing us far more lives to stop his aggression.
“I do not want us to show the weakness displayed against Putin in 2008, when he invaded Georgia, or the uncertainty of the response in 2014, when he took Crimea and much of the Donbas – before coming back to cost us far more with his aggression in 2022.
“I want us to show the strength displayed since 2022, as the West has helped Ukrainians liberate half the territory seized by Putin, all without the loss of any Nato service personnel.”
Ms Taylor Greene, an ardent Trump supporter, suggested that comparing a refusal to vote through the funding with appeasement of Hitler in the 1930s was “rude name-calling and I don’t appreciate that type of language”.
In a post on X later on Wednesday, she said the remarks would not “bully me into funding the war in Ukraine”.
“Interfering” with US politics
The Foreign Secretary made a similar intervention last December, when he warned during a visit to Washington DC that blocking funding for Ukraine would be a “Christmas present” for Vladimir Putin.
He dismissed suggestions at the time that he was “interfering” with US politics, saying he came “as a friend of America” to argue that voting through the package is “the right thing to do”.
The aid bill for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan has passed through the Senate 70-29, despite a small group of Republicans opposed to 60 billion dollars (£47.5 billion) for Kyiv arguing that the US should focus on its own problems before sending more money overseas.
But it faces an uphill battle in the House, with the Republican Speaker Mike Johnson suggesting he might block it.
Kyiv has moved to a defensive posture in the war amid critical shortages on the battlefield, but has kept up its strikes behind the largely static 930-mile front line.
Ukrainian attacks on Russian aircraft and ships in the Black Sea have helped push Moscow’s naval forces back from the coast.
On Wednesday, the country’s military said it sank a Russian landing ship in the Black Sea using naval drones. The report has not been confirmed by Russian forces.