Sen. Marco Rubio hasn’t always been the most steadfast supporter of the Trump administration, but he – like many Republicans – was distressed by what he witnessed on Thursday when the United Nations General Assembly voted 128-9 to condemn the U.S. for recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. In a tweet following that disgraceful vote, the Florida senator said it might be time for America to seriously think about pulling its investments out of the increasingly-hostile international organization.
“Given its tendency to be a forum for anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism, reevaluation of US role as single largest donor to #UN is long overdue,” wrote Rubio.
President Donald Trump and Ambassador Nikki Haley have also said that the vote will weigh heavily when it comes to America’s relationship with member countries, to say nothing of the organization as a whole.
“They take hundreds of millions of dollars and even billions of dollars, and then they vote against us,” Trump said Wednesday. “Well, we’re watching those votes. Let them vote against us. We’ll save a lot. We don’t care.”
It’s really remarkable that UN member countries would launch such a startling rebuke of the U.S. and Israel at a time when the Trump administration and congressional Republicans are already thinking very seriously about reducing America’s role in the governing body. Either this vote was a bluff or the countries really believe that the U.S. is not an integral contributor to the United Nations. We find it difficult to believe the latter so we’re forced to think it was the former. These countries don’t think that Trump will put his money where his mouth is. Or take it away, as the case may be.
When it happens, they won’t be able to say they weren’t warned.
“Unlike in some member countries, the United States is answerable to its people,” Haley said prior to the vote. “As such, we have an obligation to acknowledge when our political and financial capital is poorly spent. The United States will remember this day in which it was singled out for attack in the general assembly for the very act of exercising our right as a sovereign nation. We will remember it when we are called upon once again to make the world’s largest contribution to the United Nations.”
May it be so. As Trump said, we’ll save a lot. The UN, insofar that it has any effective function whatsoever, merely serves as an arm of the U.S. government and a tool of the U.S. taxpayer. When it no longer serves that function, there’s no longer any need for it to exist in its current iteration. Let the 128 countries that voted against us pay America’s share of the bill next year. And then we’ll see if we don’t get some apologies.
