Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s visit to a U.S. Army ammunition plant in Scranton, Pennsylvania on Sunday has come under fire from some Republicans including Speaker Mike Johnson for being partisan.

Johnson wrote in a letter to Zelenskyy, “The tour was clearly a partisan campaign event designed to help Democrats…”

ZELENSKYY QUESTIONS CHINA’S ‘TRUE INTEREST’ BEHIND PLAN TO END RUSSIA’S WAR

The visit was at the request of Ukraine to thank the American workers who have helped boost ammunition production for Ukraine to defend against Russia, White House and Pentagon officials told Fox News.

Elected officials who attended the event were all Democrats, but that is because it is standard procedure to invite House and Senate members who represent the district where the visit is located.

JOHNSON DEMANDS ZELENSKYY FIRE UKRAINE’S AMBASSADOR TO US AMID FALLOUT FROM PENNSYLVANIA TRIP

In this case, all elected officials happened to be Democrats due to what is called the “geographical jurisdiction,” a defense official told Fox News.

U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson wrote in a letter to Zelenskyy, “The tour was clearly a partisan campaign event designed to help Democrats…” (Getty Images)

Zelenskyy has met exclusively with Republicans in past trips due to this same reason of who happens to be in elected office in the districts he is visiting.

VOLODYMYR ZELENSKYY’S VANCE CRITICISMS COULD COME BACK TO HAUNT HIM, REPUBLICANS WARN

Zelenskyy visited Utah in July of this year to meet with Utah’s Republican Gov. Spencer Cox and met with Utah’s all-Republican Congressional delegation.

Zelenskyy visited Utah in July of this year to meet with Utah’s Republican Governor Spencer Cox and met with Utah’s all-Republican Congressional delegation. (Utah State Office of the Governor)

Senator Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) the Senate Armed Services Committee’s top Republican said in a statement, “If President Zelenskyy came to Mississippi, he would be accompanied by Republican officials because that’s who the people in their wisdom elected.”

The U.S. Army helped arrange the visit, White House press secretary KJP told Jacqui Heinrich in today’s briefing

Jacqui Heinrich questioned KJP about this in the WH briefing earlier this afternoon-

Karine Jean-Pierre: “This is something that Ukrainians asked for. They did this a couple months ago in Utah, in Utah, with a Republican governor and Republican, elected officials were there as well. We didn’t hear any type of investigation request when we went to a Republican state. We didn’t.”

The Democratic candidate for senate in Maryland has pulled significantly ahead of her Republican rival, according to a recent poll. 

The Washington Post-University of Maryland poll released Thursday shows Democrat Angela Alsobrooks holding an 11% lead over her rival, Republican Larry Hogan.

Alsobrooks is leading Hogan 51% to 40%, according to the Washington Post-University of Maryland poll. 

ACCUSATIONS OF IMPROPER TAX BREAKS FLY IN CRUCIAL SENATE RACE: ‘RULES DON’T APPLY’

The gap between them among likely voters is surprising, given that both candidates enjoy a similar level of popularity with respondents.  

Approximately 53% of respondents expressed favorable impressions of Hogan, compared to 27% who reported an unfavorable impression. Respondents gave Alsobrooks a 50% favorability rating, compared to 22% unfavorability.

Registered voters in the poll ranked the economy as the most important issue of the November elections, followed by immigration and then abortion.

MARYLAND SENATE RACE POLL SHOWS DEMOCRAT ALSOBROOKS LEADING GOP’S HOGAN, DESPITE ONE IN THREE NOT KNOWING WHO SHE IS

The Washington Post-University of Maryland poll was conducted between Sept. 19 and Sept. 23 with a sample size of 1,012 registered voters. 

It has a reported margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.

With Democrats outnumbering Republicans by a roughly two-to-one margin in the state, Hogan will need a good chunk of cross-over voters to have a chance and has been highlighting his opposition to Trump and his independence from his party as he runs for the Senate.

CLICK TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

Former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan speaking at an annual meeting of the Republican Jewish Coalition. (AP Photo/John Locher)

Hogan, who flirted with a 2024 White House run before deciding against it, stood out from most other Republicans this spring for publicly calling for the guilty verdicts in Trump’s criminal trial to be respected.

Hogan skipped July’s Republican National Convention, where Trump was formally nominated, and has said he would not be voting for the former president. Hogan’s campaign, after the former president’s comments, spotlighted in a statement that “Governor Hogan has been clear he is not supporting President Trump just as he didn’t in 2016 and 2020.” 

Republicans are also aiming to flip seats in Ohio and Montana, two states Trump comfortably carried four years ago. And five more Democratic-held seats up for grabs this year are in crucial presidential-election battleground states.

Fox News Digital’s Paul Steinhauser and Julia Johnson contributed to this report.

You’ve heard it many times: A voter says they don’t like Donald Trump; they cite his nasty personality, divisiveness or penchant for saying stupid stuff. But then they say they’ll vote for him anyway: “Because I liked his policies.”

What policies? The voters rarely say, nor do reporters follow up. Curious minds, not least mine, want to know: What are they talking about?

Trump was by far the most ignorant on policy of seven presidents I’ve covered, and four years in office didn’t educate him: As former advisors attest, he refused to do homework, trusting to his instincts. Trump had positions on many issues, often ill-informed and wrong-headed. As president he executed policies, of course, though the best known — cutting taxes, for example, and seating right-wing federal judges — were largely the work of Republicans in Congress.

Filling in Trump’s policy vacuum was the impetus behind MAGA Republicans’ massive — and massively unpopular — Project 2025 blueprint for a second Trump term. But forget prospective policies. Does it really make sense to remember the Trump 1.0 initiatives fondly?

Are policies on the economy and immigration what these voters have in mind? Polls consistently show more voters prefer Trump over Kamala Harris in these areas.

First the economy: Trump inherited a growing one from the Obama administration, and left a pandemic-ravaged economy to Biden and Harris. His big edge in voters’ perceptions about economic matters reflects in large part their dismay over the rise in inflation on Biden’s watch, and the higher interest rates set by the Federal Reserve to tame it. But inflation has been a global problem, mostly a consequence of the spurt in post-pandemic demand for goods. Had Trump been reelected in 2020, he would surely have faced rising prices as well.

With prices still elevated, voters haven’t yet felt how much inflation has abated, faster here than in other nations, and just last week the Fed finally cut interest rates, and signaled more cuts ahead. Meanwhile, growth in the economy’s output and employment has been greater under Biden-Harris than under Trump, despite Trump’s lies and voters’ vibes to the contrary.

Trump had two main economic policies, and he’s now promising more of the same: tariffs, which raised prices on many goods Americans buy and cost jobs in import-reliant industries (Biden kept most of the tariffs in place, alas), and deep tax cuts that favored the rich and piled up debt. The $8.5 trillion in new debt that Trump ran up was twice as much as under Biden, and he did far less than Biden has done to trim annual deficits.

As for immigration: Yes, the influx of unauthorized migrants was lower under Trump and it spiked under Biden. But new restrictions have since reduced illegal border crossings to levels last seen late in the Trump administration. In any case, for all Trump’s false talk now about his wall and migrant crime, he in no way closed the border.

Those voters who have immigration in mind when they endorse Trump’s past policies should remember the forced separation of children from their families, without a plan to reunite them. Years later hundreds remain essentially orphaned, yet Trump last year celebrated his cruel achievement: “It stopped people from coming by the hundreds of thousands, because when they hear ‘family separation,’ they say, ‘Well, we better not go.’ ”

Perhaps Trump’s three Supreme Court picks and their votes to override Roe amount to a winner for a few voters, but most Americans oppose the 2022 ruling. At a rally on Monday in Pennsylvania, Trump crowed about Roe’s reversal. Despite mounting horror stories of women who’ve suffered or even died under new state bans, he said we ladies will “no longer be thinking about abortion” — “I will be your protector.”

On foreign policy, Trump was guided by his admiration for autocrats, especially Russia’s murderous Vladimir Putin. He rejected the U.S. intelligence community’s findings of Russian interference in the 2016 election, weakened NATO and other U.S. alliances and withheld military aid provided by law for Ukraine as Russia threatened to invade. Could those be the policies some voters have in mind? Let’s hope not.

We know they can’t be thinking of Trump’s major infrastructure initiative or his better, less costly alternative to the Affordable Care Act because, despite repeated promises, he never came up with even “concepts of a plan” for either. “Two weeks,” he’d say, and all would be revealed. We’re still waiting. Meanwhile Biden enacted an infrastructure program and expanded Obamacare.

Speaking of inaction, for four years Trump did nothing to acknowledge let alone mitigate climate change, even as its effects were increasingly evident in eroded coastlines, droughts, wildfires and extreme weather patterns. If a do-nothing policy is what some voters liked, they’ll certainly get more of that should Trump get elected: He’s vowed to dismantle Biden’s landmark climate law, with its clean energy projects, and “drill, baby, drill.”

Amid the biggest crisis of his term, Trump’s policy to deal with COVID-19 was ultimately malpractice: Delays and misfires have been deemed responsible for tens of thousands of preventable deaths. Trump spurred on the historic development of a vaccine against the disease, only to surrender to anti-vax sentiment. It was left to Biden to get shots in Americans’ arms.

Then there was Trump’s final policy as president: undermining faith in our elections and rejecting the peaceful transfer of power. Do the “I liked his policies” voters really want to see more of that, as they anticipate casting their ballots this fall?

The policy record is bad enough, but even a creditable Trump initiative shouldn’t offset voters’ concerns about his manifest character flaws. Those flaws by themselves merit a vote against the man. People thinking of going with Trump “anyway” should check their gauzy memories. And beware of Trump 2.0.

@jackiekcalmes