UK Foreign Secretary David Cameron meets with Trump ahead of push for Ukraine aid in DC
UK Foreign Secretary David Cameron met with former President Donald Trump on Monday before the top British diplomat headed to Washington, DC, to call on Congress to pass further military aid for Ukraine.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) has withheld a $95 billion national security supplemental bill, which was already passed by the Senate, from a floor vote in the lower chamber for nearly two months, as lawmakers worked on fiscal year 2024 spending bills in February and March.
A rep for the British Embassy in Washington told The Post that the evening meeting between Cameron and Trump was part of a “routine international engagement” with US presidential candidates and other allies but did not discuss details of the pair’s conversation.
Speaking to reporters alongside Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Tuesday, Cameron also declined to detail what he and the presumptive Republican presidential nominee discussed, saying that it was “a private meeting,” and part of his “regular international engagement.”
“We had a good meeting, we discussed a range of international issues, but effectively it was a private meeting and one that very much is in the precedent of meeting with opposition leaders,” Cameron said, noting that he also met with then-Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney while prime minister in 2012.
“Obviously in Britain, we respect the electoral process, the democratic process here the United States and work with whoever is elected for the benefit of both our countries,” he added.
Cameron, 57, also said he had “no intention to lecture anybody or tell anyone what he wants to do or get in the way of the process of politics and other things in the United States.”
“I just come here as a great friend and believer in this country and a believer that it’s profoundly in your interest, and your security, and your future and the future of your partners to release this money and let it through,” he said.
Cameron last week called on European officials to pressure Johnson “to get that supplemental through,” telling reporters the effort “could most change the narrative about Ukraine.”
House Republicans have opposed the proposed $60 billion in additional funding for Kyiv’s war effort, arguing among other things that the bill doesn’t also include US border security provisions. Johnson has told Senate leaders his chamber would “work its own will” on the legislation.
President Biden, congressional Democrats, and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) have all called on the House speaker to push to pass the bill — even as Johnson faces the threat of his ouster over the move from far-right Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.).
Cameron said he was headed to Capitol Hill Tuesday afternoon, where he would meet with lawmakers in the House and Senate about approving the critical aid for Ukraine.
“I always do this with great trepidation; it’s not for me to tell the legislators of other countries what to do,” he said. “I’m here to share my opinion [and] to meet with anyone who wants to talk to me about it.”
Before heading into the talks, he said he may drop “diplomatic niceties” in his discussions with US lawmakers.
“I feel passionate about this country, its role in the world in defending freedom and standing up to aggression,” he said. “And so when I go and speak with colleagues in Congress, I try and keep the diplomatic language – but sometimes it spills over into quite an emotional language because this is the right thing for us to do.”
Cameron has also said that he wants to meet with Johnson, but was unclear as of Tuesday afternoon whether the speaker would accept the visit.
Johnson, who met with Cameron in December, has stood firm in his support for the military aid in the face of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s military, telling The Post in an interview last month that Russia’s aggression “wouldn’t stop in Ukraine.”
“If he was allowed, he’d go through, all the way, through Europe,” he said of Putin. “There is a right and wrong there — a good versus evil, in my view, and Ukraine is the victim here … They were invaded.
“We stand with good,” he affirmed.
As the House prepared to return after a spring recess, Johnson, 52, said in a Fox News interview earlier this month that he would bring the proposed Ukraine funding up for a vote “with some important innovations.”
Those changes may include paying for the military aid with the seized assets of Russian oligarchs or giving the money to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as a loan — a proposal endorsed by Trump.
“We’re not just giving foreign aid — we’re setting it up in a relationship where they can provide it back to us when the time is right,” Johnson said last week on “Sunday Night in America with Trey Gowdy.”
“And then, you know, we want to unleash American energy,” he said. “We want to have natural gas exports that will help unfund [Russian President] Vladimir Putin’s war effort there.”
In February, Trump faced backlash after suggesting at a campaign rally that Russia — which invaded neighboring Ukraine in February 2022 — could “do whatever the hell they want” to NATO allies who are not contributing enough to their common defense.
Cameron was quick to criticize the former president at the time, telling Politico he was a “very strong supporter of NATO” and for Trump to alienate member states with his provocation was “not a sensible approach.”
House Republicans have yet to release the text of their bill, but a Capitol Hill source told The Post on Monday that it is expected to have a topline funding amount of $60 billion.
