{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.mcconnell.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/pressreleases?ID=6701DB95-523D-43AF-A8F8-501B2E5C9489", "McConnell: Biden-Harris Admin. Failing To Change Adversaries\u2019 Calculus", "2024-07-29", "2024", "2024-07", "Republican", "Senate", "KY", "Mitch McConnell", "M000355", "www.mcconnell.senate.gov", "mcconnell", "https://www.mcconnell.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/pressreleases", "scraper", "WASHINGTON, D.C. \u2013 U.S. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) delivered the following remarks today on the Senate floor regarding national security priorities:\n\n\u201cThe partners, puppets, and proxies of America\u2019s biggest adversaries spent a busy weekend repressing and killing innocent people.\n\n\u201cOn Saturday, in the Golan Heights, Israeli Druze children were playing soccer when Hizballah launched a rocket made in Iran and killed twelve of them.\n\n\u201cAnd on Sunday, Venezuela\u2019s communist dictator hijacked an election, promising the suffering people of his country even more brutal days to come.\n\n\u201cWe live in a world where thuggish repression and terrorist violence are increasingly common. Tragically, the slaughter of innocent children by terrorists is not surprising.\n\n\u201cNeither, unfortunately, is a stooge of the world\u2019s most powerful authoritarians tightening his own chokehold on power.\n\n\u201cBut one thing doesn\u2019t ever get less shocking or alarming: the continued naivete with which our leaders respond.\n\n\u201cThe Secretary of State says the Biden-Harris Administration has, \u2018serious concerns that the result announced does not reflect the will or the votes of the Venezuelan people.\u2019\n\n\u201cWell, many of us have serious and longstanding concerns that the Administration does not know how to credibly change the calculus of America\u2019s adversaries.\n\n\u201cAutocrats don\u2019t care about disapproving looks from Western diplomats.\n\n\u201cDon\u2019t believe me? Ask the mullahs in Tehran how worried they were about stern condemnations of their ongoing nuclear enrichment efforts.\n\n\u201cWe certainly don\u2019t have to wonder whether promises of sanctions relief from Washington succeeded in convincing Nicolas Maduro to permit a free and fair election.\n\n\u201c\u2018Concern\u2019 is not a strategy. And speeches, for that matter, are not policy. Especially when they\u2019re not backed by facts and by force.\n\n\u201cLast week, President Biden tooted the horn of his own foreign policy and declared proudly that, \u2018the United States is not at war anywhere in the world.\u2019\n\n\u201cThis was news to American servicemembers deployed in harm\u2019s way.\n\n\u201cThe very next day, Iran-backed terrorists attacked U.S. personnel in Iraq and Syria. Again. For months, at his orders, U.S. Navy destroyers have expended more than $1 billion dollars in high-tech munitions to intercept the Houthis\u2019 Iran-made arsenal of missiles and drones\u2026 in exchange for no measurable increase in deterrence.\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s well and good to insist that America is not at war. But a growing list of authoritarians, rogues, and strongmen are at war with us.\n\n\u201cThe President\u2019s failure to respond decisively to threats may have let him believe we\u2019re not at war. But the same failure has emboldened our adversaries.\n\n\u201cTime and again, the Biden-Harris Administration has limited support, agonized over perceived risks of escalation, and tried to micromanage the way our friends in Ukraine and Israel actually defend themselves.\n\n\u201cIn Secretary Blinken\u2019s first public comment after Hizballah\u2019s most recent strike, he insisted \u2018we don\u2019t want to see it spread.\u2019\n\n\u201cWell, neither did Israel on October 6th, before Hamas spread murderous violence into peaceful kibbutzes, in violation of a ceasefire agreement.\n\n\u201cAnd neither does Israel now, as its military continues to focus on finishing the job against Hamas and building the pressure necessary to secure a more stable peace.\n\n\u201cThere is simply no question that Iran and its proxies are the instigators and aggressors of this conflict.\n\n\u201cThey have planned and prepared this violence for years. And they will escalate, spread, and perpetuate it until it is no longer in their interests to do so.\n\n\u201cIf the so-called international community wants an end to the war in Gaza and the chaos in the region, they could do more than issue statements expressing concern about escalation.\n\n\u201cIt is past time for civilized countries to present Tehran with cold consequences. With heavy pressure on the leaders responsible for the campaign of death and destruction across the Middle East.\n\n\u201cInstead, Western leaders have repeatedly blamed the victim.\n\n\u201cThis is the message sent by Democrats who boycotted the joint address to Congress by the democratically-elected prime minister of Israel.\n\n\u201cThis is the message sent by their presumptive Presidential nominee who, instead of extending a hand of solidarity, pressured a friend and ally to cease military operations to defend itself.\n\n\u201cThis sort of pressure will please the American left.\n\n\u201cBut restraining Israel also pleases the butchers in Tehran.\u201d", 1, "2026-03-30T01:40:41Z", "2026-04-06T18:32:29Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://www.mcconnell.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/pressreleases?ID=6701DB95-523D-43AF-A8F8-501B2E5C9489"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 1.5645239036530256, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}