On Sunday, Russ Baker wrote that he never thought he’d see the day when the American Right bedded down with a murderous Moscow-based dictator. He counted that as a young journalist he “covered the fall of several communist regimes and the sense of unlimited possibility in societies freed of brutal repression. I also knew that peril lay ahead. The Great Depression illustrated how, when free societies embrace unfettered capitalism, widespread misery can result. Then in the 90s we all witnessed how the collapse of communism (combined with Reagan’s focus on building capitalist structures before democratic ones) unleashed its own forms of free-market corruption that would soon undermine the fragile democratic institutions struggling to gain a footing in formerly communist states. Today, in Vladimir Putin’s Russia, we see the excesses of dictatorship combined with the most modern and most ingenious tools of mass deception and mass murder.”
Putin is Trump’s kind of guy— not just because he’s the kind of no-holds-barred kind of authoritarian Trump wished he could be, but also because he’s the richest man on the planet and controls the wealth of every oligarch in Russia. “Meantime, from the Russia that Putin rules with an iron hand, we’ve seen an endless procession of brutalities on both the individual and mass levels— from poisonings, shootings, at least one plane crash, various ‘accidents’ and ‘suicides,’ mostly involving windows, to the launch of a one-sided war against a neighboring country that has never attacked it, leading to hundreds of thousands of casualties on both sides. A staggering 87 percent of all the troops Putin had at the start of his invasion have died or been injured, disposable pawns in furtherance of whatever truly motivates him.”
The scalding irony is that throughout the Cold War American demagogues like Sen. Joe McCarthy grossly magnified the minuscule domestic component of the Russian threat to serve their political ends, while the kind of internal threat they falsely warned against then has become all too real now with the Cold War far in the rear view mirror.
Today, the poles have coalesced, and MAGA can both embrace Putin and seek a return to the authoritarian reign of terror against fellow citizens that McCarthy represented.
As a result of this hyper-debasement, the traditional American right wing, long defined by its implacable, obsessive hostility to Moscow and continuous warnings about its threat to the United States— is now Moscow’s partner in domestic US subversion.
…Much of the Trump’s MAGAverse loves Putin for everything he does, including invading a neighboring country. And they don’t want the US to do anything to help that smaller country.
…[Baker recalls] warnings of the far right circa 60 years ago— that the Democrat Kennedy was not tough enough, too much of an appeaser; he needed to “get off his daughter’s tricycle.”
Only the more extreme sectors of the GOP, America was told, could be trusted to man up against Moscow.
It would be instructive to hear more from those alive at the height of the Cold War who warned not to trust Russia. What would they make of Donald Trump inviting Putin to invade Europe?
Yesterday, Bill Kristol and Andrew Egger looked at Trump-Putin 2024 for Bulwark readers, noting that “We were slow in awakening to the threat of Putin. We have been sluggish in responding to that threat once awakened. But it is the most urgent foreign policy threat we face. A broad coalition of political forces in the U.S., ranging from Mike Pence on the right to Bernie Sanders on the left, is anti-Putin. Against them stand Donald Trump and some of his acolytes, who are pro-Putin. The likely nominee of one of our two major political parties is pro-Vladimir Putin. This is an astonishing fact. It is an appalling fact. It has to be a central fact of the 2024 campaign. But the political professionals say foreign policy doesn’t matter in elections. Americans vote on the economy. Or immigration. Or abortion rights. That’s true to some degree. But not as much as we might think— particularly now that the post-Cold War era has ended in the wake of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. The world we now live in seems more like that of 1972, or 1980, or 1988. In such a world, issues of foreign policy and national security matter in selecting a president. Putin matters.”
Americans know who Putin is— and do not like him. His favorability rating among Americans is around 10%… and that’s basically among hard core MAGAts, not normal people. Among registered voters, 81% have a negative view of Putin (even including 78% of voters who say they plan to vote for Trump in November.)
It’s actually striking that all the work of the pro-Putin right— from Trump himself to Tucker Carlson— has had so little effect in improving Putin’s image. Putin turns out to be a very hard sell.
Which is all the more reason to hang Putin around Trump’s neck. It could well make Trump a harder sell to some number of swing voters.
Those who seek to save the country from a Trump second term can and should hammer home Trump’s fondness for Putin.
A Bush 1988 campaign operative was quoted as saying that they were going to make the American public believe that Willie Horton, the murderer paroled under a law signed by Massachusetts governor Michael Dukakis, was Dukakis’s running mate. They did a pretty good job of that. There is far better justification for making Vladimir Putin into Donald Trump’s figurative running mate. Because it’s true: A vote for Trump is a vote for Putin.
And not just Trump… a vote for any Republican running for any office is a vote for Putin. And this year that means incumbent senators Ted Cruz (TX), Josh Hawley (MO), Rick Scott (FL) as well as Trump-endorsed challengers like Tim Sheehy (MT), David McCormick (PA), Sam Brown (NV), Bernie Moreno (OH), David Clarke (WI), Kari Lake (AZ)… not to mention every single member of the House, but especially the ones who are already on shaky ground like Californians Michelle Steel, Mike Garcia, Ken Calvert, Young Kim, John Duarte and David Valadao; New Yorkers Mike Lawler, Anthony D’Esposito, Marc Molinaro, Brandon Williams, Elise Stefanik, Nick LaLota, Andrew Garbarino and Nicole Malliotakis; and scattered Republicans too scared to do anything about the Trump-Putin Axis: Tom Kean (NJ), John James (MI), Lori Chavez-DeRemer (OR), Laurel Lee (FL), David Schweikert (AZ), Scott Perry (PA), Zach Nunn (IA), Jen Kiggans (VA), Don Bacon (NE), Maria Salazar (FL), Brian Fitzpatrick (PA), Bryan Steil (WI), Juan Ciscomani (AZ), Mike Turner (OH), Anna Paulina Luna (FL), Bob Good (VA), Rob Wittman (VA), Monica de la Cruz (TX), Andy Ogles (TN), Lauren Boebert (CO), Derrick Van Orden (WI), Jeff Van Drew (NJ), Cory Mills (FL), Mariannette Miller-Meeks (IA), Bill Huizenga (MI), Victoria Spartz (IN)…
I hope you already know that Jamie McLeod-Skinner is the Blue America-endorsed candidate in central Oregon fighting to take back a swing seat from Republican Lori Chavez-DeRemer. Last night, Jamie told me that “Putin has tried to destroy our democracy, pit us against each other as Americans, and murdered his only political opposition in Russia. And Lori Chavez-DeRemer voted in favor of Putin. We knew we couldn't trust him, and this is just one more reminder that we can't trust her.”
Herb Jones, a retired Army colonel is running for the Virginia congressional seat held by Trump sock puppet Rob Wittman. Unlike Wittman, he understands how service to the country differs from service to oneself. Yesterday, Herb told me that “If Russia’s vicious assault on Ukraine didn’t, the murder of Alexei Navalny should make it clear— there’s no middle ground when it comes to Vladimir Putin. My entire military career was focused on the enemy, which was the Soviet Union and now Russia. Now, we have a former president who is in bed with one of the people who wants to destroy our nation and our way of life. If the crimes he’s committed aren’t enough, this alone is treasonous and disqualifies Trump from ever holding office again. And, this is why we must fumigate Congress of persons like Rob Wittman, who are more concerned with maintaining power and staying in office instead of what is best for the people of the United States. We must put country over politics.”
Sue Altman is a kickass New Jersey progressive working to take back the swing district another Trump sock puppet, Tom Kean, took last cycle. Sue reminded me that “Kean Jr. and Mike Johnson continue to enable Trump and the most extreme elements of their own party as they pander to authoritarian dictators like Putin. America must stand for and protect Democracy across the world, and it’s far past time for congressional Republicans to stop playing political games and pass real military aid for Ukraine.