Laura Ingraham interviewed Señor Trumpanzee on Wednesday:
Frau Ingraham: Does this mean you are not going to defend NATO countries if they haven’t paid their 2-point whatever percent?
Señor T: Yeah, sort of, it does.
I bet Putin would prefer to see Trump rather than Nikki Haley win the GOP primary. In fact… Haley has been roughing Trump up with Russia, Russia, Russia. Listening to her, you’d almost think Trump killed Navalny! It’s going to be so awkward when she endorses him after in a few weeks winning no states. But now she’s jabbing him for taking three whole days to acknowledge Navalny’s death and then for failing to condemn his pal Putin for it. MAGAts to Nikki: We Care A Lot. She’s her small audiences that Señor T is “weak in the knees” when it comes to Russia.
She’s slammed him for criticizing NATO at a time when many in the West see Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as a threat to European stability. And at a Wednesday afternoon rally on the Georgia border, Haley unleashed some of her most pointed criticism yet of Trump’s relationship with Putin
“Trump is siding with a dictator who kills his political opponents,” Haley said. “Trump sided with an evil man over our allies who stood with us on 9/11. Think about what that told them.”
Haley is turning Russia— and Putin, specifically— into a cudgel at a crucial moment in the Republican presidential primary. She’s running far behind Trump. And the former South Carolina governor is poised to get blown out in her home state’s primary on Saturday.
Her focus on Russia, in addition to providing a new line of attack on Trump, has created a platform for the former U.N. ambassador to again flex the foreign policy chops she has long invoked as a way to stand out in the race. And she has used it to help boost her rationale for staying in the race. Earlier this week, while insisting that she will not drop out of the primary, Haley said, “People have a right to have their voices heard. And they deserve a real choice, not a Soviet-style election where there’s only one candidate, and he gets 99 percent of the vote.”
…Gasps rippled through the audience when Haley reminded a crowd at a waterfront park in Beaufort on Wednesday of Trump’s remarks that he would “encourage” Russia to attack any NATO member countries that don’t meet financial obligations.
“The hell with him!” one man in the crowd cried out, waving a “Pick Nikki” sign against the backdrop of a blazingly orange setting sun.
Navalny’s death— and Haley’s effort to capitalize on Trump’s response— has become a flashpoint in the late stages of the South Carolina campaign, as Haley searches for ways to close a wide polling deficit in her home state as early voting gets underway.
Trump this week doubled down on his previous comments on Navalny, likening himself to the Russian opposition leader. On Tuesday, amid widespread outrage over Navalny’s death, Trump called the $355 million judgment against him in a New York civil trial “a form of Navalny” and said the myriad indictments he faces are “all because of the fact that I’m in politics.”
So, reported CNN, here we are going into a third successive election with Putin’s malevolent presence front and center “Putin has trained the malevolence of his intelligence agencies, his military power, global diplomacy and obstructive statecraft into a multi-front assault on American power in the United States and abroad. He has carved out baleful influence at the center of US politics in an extraordinary display of an adversary penetrating and exploiting American political divides. The ex-KGB lieutenant colonel, who conceived a grievance after watching the Soviet Union dissolve from his outpost in East Germany, has sparked chaos in a single-minded effort to discredit and weaken the United States. Successive US presidents have underestimated Russia, misread its historic humiliations and struggled to work out how to change Putin’s course and contain his threat.”
Western observers often point out that Putin’s leadership has been a disaster for Russia. As oligarchs plundered natural resources, Russians were hammered by international sanctions, democracy was crushed and thousands of soldiers perished in his wars.
But Putin has been remarkably resilient following earlier signs that his invasion of Ukraine— nearly two years ago– was a disaster and could even bring him down. There are now signs that Russia’s reconstituting of its armed forces and willingness to absorb horrendous losses are turning the tide of the war and raising the prospect of a victory that would turn Putin into a far greater danger.
The Russian leader’s leveraging of power and successful forays into US politics are, meanwhile, threatening to cause a schism between the US and European NATO allies that could put the post-World War II security architecture at risk.
Putin is advancing Russian interests against the US on multiple fronts.
Yet another US election appears to be falling prey to Russian interference, after prosecutors accused long-time FBI informant Alexander Smirnov of “actively peddling new lies that could impact US elections.” In 2016, US intelligence agencies assessed that Moscow meddled in the election to help Trump.
Smirnov, who was last week charged with making up false evidence over Biden family corruption in Ukraine, told investigators after his arrest that the material came from Russian intelligence, a court filing from prosecutors said Tuesday. The development suggests yet another attempt by Russia to hurt one of Trump’s electoral opponents.
House Republicans once held up Smirnov’s evidence as the center piece of their evidence-challenged bid to impeach Biden. Now that it’s been discredited, they are insisting it didn’t matter. But Putin can’t lose. The GOP is seeking to further discredit the FBI— the agency responsible for hunting Russian spies. Even if the credibility of Republican impeachment plans has been shattered, Russia may already have benefited by fomenting more discord and divisions in Washington. “I think it’s another brilliant success as a part of Russian intelligence in meddling in our elections,” Douglas London, a former CIA counterintelligence chief for south and southwest Asia, said on CNN on Tuesday.
Even the death of Russian opposition hero Alexey Navalny in a penal colony last week opened bitter new divides in US politics. It has refocused attention on Trump’s odd refusal to ever criticize Putin. And Trump’s comparison of Navalny’s persecution to his own legal plight is not just grotesque— it’s doing the kind of damage to the reputation and integrity of US political and judicial institutions that Putin relishes.
The result is that Russia will again be at the epicenter of a US election campaign certain to deepen the national political estrangement as Biden lambasts Trump over his relationship to Putin. “It’s shameful. It’s weak. It’s dangerous. It’s un-American,” Biden said last week.
Whatever happens next, Russia will be central to Biden’s legacy. The invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 led the US president to invigorate NATO and to send billions of dollars of arms and ammunition to help President Volodymyr Zelensky stave off his country’s elimination from the map. Biden is also shepherding two new members, Sweden and Finland, into the alliance, further weakening Russia’s strategic position.
In the most unfathomable recent transformation, the Republican Party— which lionized President Ronald Reagan, who beseeched ex-Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to “tear down this wall” in Berlin— is now enabling Russian expansionism. The refusal of House Republicans to pass a new $60 billion aid package for Ukraine is leading to battlefield gains for Moscow’s forces. And Trump, the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination, is vowing to quickly end the war if he’s elected to another term— which would likely mean rewarding Putin’s illegal invasion and snatching of territory that has become the biggest land conflict in Europe since the end of World War II.
Trump’s warning that he’d invite Russia to invade NATO allies that didn’t reach defense spending targets, meanwhile, rattled the Western alliance and cast doubt on its bedrock mutual defense mantra. If Trump wins a second term and pulls out of NATO, he’d hand Putin Russia’s greatest strategic victory since the Cold War.
Russia’s capacity to create fear and recriminations in Washington was laid bare again last week, when House Intelligence Chairman Mike Turner sparked alarm by revealing a supposed plan by Moscow to develop a nuclear space weapon that could potentially cripple vast numbers of commercial and government satellites.
On Wednesday, it emerged that yet another American citizen is being imprisoned in Russia. Moscow typically seeks to use captives as bargaining chips for Russian criminals and intelligence operatives held overseas. Ksenia Karelina, a US-Russian dual citizen, was arrested on charges of treason for allegedly donating just $51 to a Ukrainian charity, her California employer told CNN. Other Americans jailed in Russia include Paul Whelan – a former US Marine, who has been held for more than five years and denies espionage charges – and Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, who was detained last year on espionage charges he and his employer vehemently contest. Their ordeals represent a convenient way for Putin to dial up political pressure on Biden whenever he pleases.
Geopolitically, Russia is increasingly finding common interests and military synergies with other US adversaries like China, North Korea and Iran. The cooperation is well short of the formal alliance that Washington has long feared. But this united front of autocracies is dedicated to challenging US global power. Putin recently formalized his warming ties with North Korean tyrant Kim Jong Un by presenting him with a new limousine.
Who’s going to get burned by Smirnov-Gate? Well aside from the most obvious— Gym Jordan and James Comer (both in safe districts)— we have all the foolish GOP incumbents in swing districts, like Tom Kean, Micheelle Steel, John James, Maria Salazar, Ken Calvert, Nick LaLota, Anthony D'Esposito, Mike Lawler... a couple dozen of them. And then there's notorious Ukraine-hater J.D. Vance and Speaker MAGA Mike, who Timothy Snyder painted as “the weak man.” Or at least one of them.
“Ukraine,” he wrote, “could win, if Americans would help; but our weak men have cut off the weapons. Musk spreads Russian propaganda. Vance amplifies Russian foreign policy. Trump follows Putin’s wishes. Johnson maneuvers for months to block a vote on aid to Ukraine. And so the Ukrainians, fighting for their lives, run out of artillery shells, and must withdraw from losses from Avdiivka. The weak man kills because he lacks the energy to act and consumes the energy of others. He scorns those who struggle with real danger, and want them to fail and die. The problem is not masculinity… The problem is brittle masculinity, the male form of weakness that substitutes mendacious prattle for necessary action.”
Instead of aiding Ukraine, the weak men of Congress have dedicated months to a long series of lies that have wasted the energy and good faith of others. First Johnson said that he wanted to protect the border and would pass aid for Ukraine if it was connected to a border bill; then, when presented with exactly this solution, he rejected it. When aid for Ukraine was then separated from the border issue in another bill, he rejected that too, on the grounds that the border was not mentioned. The weak men of Congress want inaction both at the border and in Ukraine. They only mention the one to explain why they are not acting on the other.
After this parade, Johnson called to House of Representatives to recess. But Johnson himself is not on vacation. He has to put on a tie and abase himself before Trump in Florida. In the photograph Johnson posted, Trump lacks the strength to raise his thumb. Trump submits to Putin, and encourages Russia to attack American allies.
And Putin, in his turn, is all fear. He kills opponents because he fears that a younger generation might do better. He attacks Ukraine because he cannot stand the thought of democracy in Russia. The submission chain that runs through Johnson and Trump to Putin ends in a vacuum.
The danger is that this vacuum will consume our democracy. The weak man runs from danger by running for office. Not strong enough to believe in law or to live by it, the weak man breaks laws and then tries to break law itself. Putin wants to die in his bed. And so we will soon have another fake Russian presidential election. Trump wants to pardon himself or otherwise avoid prosecution for all the crimes he seems to know he has committed. For the weak man, fear is everything, and fear must also become everything for us.
…Americans don’t tend to learn from foreign examples or from the past. We don’t recognize a politics of fear, which makes us vulnerable to it. We assume that any action they take from personal fear must be justified. And so we normalize fear, and spread it, and institutionalize it.
The Republican Party is becoming a party of fear, in which Republicans fear other Republicans, fear their constituents, and fear Trump, which means fearing Russia. Republicans enter the submission chain that binds them to Trump, and to Putin, and then rationalize what they have done. From the position, actual cooperation with actual Russians no longer seems to be a problem, as we have just seen in the attempt to impeach Biden with the help of Russian lies, and for that matter in a series of events going back a decade.
Americans beyond the cult of MAGA submit in a different way. They decide that the weak man is the strong man, and thereby make it so. They instruct us, absurdly, that the war in Ukraine or the work of democracy makes us "fatigued." If we think that labor and courage are bad things, we are conceding the point— and our democracy— to the weak man. But the work itself is invigorating, and is the example of those doing the work.
…In 2024, a year of war and a year of elections, a year that will test decency and democracy, the weak man wants to see his fear in our eyes. We will need the courage to admire the courageous, and to say something that might feel risky. For example: we believe in our values, and we believe in our strength. Ukraine can win this war, Biden can win this election, and democracy can thrive.
Yesterday, John Pavlovitz took up the top: When self-professed American patriots get in bed with a murderous dictator, suggesting that “Republicans need to take off the big red hats and retire them. That whole MAGA nonsense has reached its expiration date. All their flag-waving histrionics and their hand-wringing anthem outrage have proven to be nothing but fake news. The America First chest-bumping and God Bless America showy piety they’ve spent the past five years peddling, looks largely ridiculous at this point. They have been fully exposed.
We thought it was just racism and nationalism.We figured it was Islamophobia and misogyny.We suspected it was weaponized religion.We imagined it was homophobia and privilege.We knew it was blind hatred of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.That was all bad enough.
We never dreamed that in their lust for Supreme Court seats, women’s rights rollbacks, NRA contributions, and for some feeling of retribution against the world or the Libs— that they’d do this.
We never thought our neighbors and church friends and family members would ratify sedition and defend insurrection and support a dictator in a brutal war. Honestly, that’s been a shock.
But it’s clear now. We know what we’re dealing with. When you side with the Kremlin, you’ve sorta said all you have to say, haven’t you? There’s no gray area there, no red, white and blue veneer of patriotism that can make this right, no star-spangled distraction to parade in front of it all.
Millions of Americans died to protect us from the very sickness Donald Trump is willingly getting into bed with— and the fact that they don’t give a damn about it makes them reckless and irresponsible, and yeah it makes them traitors-by-association.
If MAGAs are okay with what’s with been unearthed over the last few years and what’s unfolding right now, they may as well swap those Stars and Stripes for a hammer and sickle because that’s where we are now. Trade that MAGA hat for an ushanka because it’s a more fitting covering.
MAGA Republicans may as well come clean now.They may as well just tell us they just want the power grab.Tell us they want Roe V Wade overturned.Tell us they want a white Evangelical theocracy.Tell us they just wanted to win at any cost. Tell us they want LGBTQ people and immigrants eradicated.Tell us they just really don’t like brown and black people.We’ll believe them.
They just had better not say that they love both Donald Trump and America anymore.
They’re making it perfectly clear:
One of those things simply isn’t true.
Sadly, we know which one.