It’s hard to overstate how in-your-face the MAGA/GOP/Trump party is in their support of murderous war criminal Vladimir Putin. Putin and the 2016 Trump campaign, although not found to have left evidence of a chargeable criminal conspiracy, colluded in at least 140 instances, as documented by Robert Mueller. Trump loves the taste of Putin’s nether regions as much as Lindsey Graham loves the taste of Trump’s. As president Trumpie routinely took Putin’s side against US intelligence agencies. Why wouldn’t he?
At a news conference, a day following a secret personal meeting with Putin in Helsinki, Trump clarified his “I don’t know why Putin would” do anything to corrupt the 2016 election, by saying that, obviously, he’d meant the exact opposite. After all, how often do all of us accidentally say the exact opposite of what we mean and are then unfairly given shit about it?
Trump’s PERFECT CALL to newly elected Ukrainian president Zelensky in 2019 asked for help smearing Biden with a fake announcement about Burisma and, by the way, none of the weapons authorized by Congress months ago will be released to Ukraine until you go on US TV and announce a fake investigation into Biden’s criminal activities in Ukraine.
Trump instructed his loyal, Christ loving puppet MAGA Mike to hold up aid to Ukraine while Putin makes advance after advance in his war of aggression against Ukraine. MAGA Mike held up this aid for many months, along with aid to Gaza, Israel and Taiwan, until Democrats promised to shield him from removal as Speaker. Today MAGA Mike lied about it, of course, (doing it this way, he said, was the only way to get Democrats to support aid to Israel, among lies) because, presumably, that’s what Christ would have done.
Here’s Heather Cox Richardson on what MAGA was doing in the House right before MAGA Mike treacherously betrayed them by working with Democrats:
The extremist House Republicans were adamantly opposed to the plan because of their staunch opposition to aid for Ukraine. They wrote in a memo on Wednesday: “This tactic allows Johnson to pass priorities favored by President Biden, the swamp and the Ukraine war machine with a supermajority of House members, leaving conservatives out to dry.”
Extremists Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and Thomas Massie (R-KY) vowed to throw House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) out of the speakership, but Democrats Tom Suozzi of New York and Jared Moskowitz of Florida have said they would vote to keep him in his seat, thereby defanging the attack on his leadership.
So the extremists instead tried to load the measures up with amendments prohibiting funds from being used for abortion, removing humanitarian aid for Gaza, opposing a two-state solution to the Hamas-Israel war, calling for a wall at the southern border of the U.S., defunding the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), and so on.
Greene was especially active in opposition to aid to Ukraine. She tried to amend the bill to direct the president to withdraw the U.S. from NATO and demanded that any members of Congress voting for aid to Ukraine be conscripted into the Ukraine army as well as have their salaries taken to offset funding. She wanted to stop funding until Ukraine “turns over all information related to Hunter Biden and Burisma,” and to require Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky to resign. More curiously, she suggested amending the Ukraine bill so that funding would require “restrictions on ethnic minorities’, including Hungarians in Transcarpathia, right to use their native languages in schools are lifted.” This language echoes a very specific piece of Russian propaganda.
Finally, Moskowitz proposed “that Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene…should be appointed as Vladimir Putin’s Special Envoy to the United States Congress.”
Many congress members have left Washington, D.C., since Friday was to be the first day of a planned recess. This meant the partisan majority on the floor fluctuated. Olivia Beavers of Politico reported that that instability made Freedom Caucus members nervous enough to put together a Floor Action Response Team (FART—I am not making this up) to make sure other Republicans didn’t limit the power of the extremists when they were off the floor.
The name of their response team seems likely to be their way to signal their disrespect for the entire Congress. Their fellow Republicans are returning the heat. Today Mike Turner (R-OH) referred to the extremists as the Bully Caucus on MSNBC and said, “We need to get back to professionalism, we need to get back to governing, we need to get back to legislating.” Derrick Van Orden (R-WI) told Juliegrace Brufke of Axios: “The vast majority of the Republican Party in the House of Representatives…are sick and tired of having people who…constantly blackmail the speaker of the House.”
It’s hard to grasp the passionate MAGA embrace of dictatorial, enemy assassinating war criminal Vladimir Putin, except that their leader, a vain, compulsively lying orange-faced man with pale pink ears, appears to truly love the taste of Putin’s ass. Heather Cox Richardson, putting a few pieces together:
Under its new co-chairs, Trump’s daughter-in-law Lara Trump and Trump loyalist Michael Whatley, the Republican National Committee last week sent out a robocall to voters’ phones saying that Democrats committed “massive fraud” in the 2020 presidential election and that “If Democrats have their way, your vote could be canceled out by someone who isn’t even an American citizen.” This is a straight-up lie, of course—Trump and his loyalists have never produced any evidence for their accusations and lost more than 60 court cases over it—but Trump clearly intends to make it a centerpiece of his campaign.
While Republicans are pushing the Big Lie, in The Bulwark today, conservative commentator Mona Charen noted that Ukraine president Volodomyr Zelensky this week warned the U.S. that Ukraine will lose the war against Russia’s aggression if it does not get U.S. aid.
“Putin seems to have pulled off the most successful foreign influence operation in American history,” Charen wrote. “If Trump were being blackmailed by Putin it’s hard to imagine how he would behave any differently. And though it started with Trump, it has not ended there. Putin now wields more power over the [Republicans] than anyone other than Trump…. [T]hey mouth Russian disinformation without shame. Putin,” she said, “must be pinching himself.”
I read an interesting critique of Biden’s campaign speculating about why, in spite of his impressive achievements in office, he seems to be trailing, or at best tied with, the destructive Trump in a nation many (on all sides) perceive to be broken. The author of the op ed writes as a professional centrist with a seeming bent toward the myth of The Great Communicator, Ronald Reagan. Aside from some nods to the MAGA right (Trump’s economic policies the first three years of his administration were widely seen as a great success), he makes an excellent point.
In a moment when so many are angry and feel betrayed by our institutions, where even an historically strong economy leaves millions feeling screwed, Biden the Institutionalist needs to vow to make fundamental, transformational change to fix broken institutions and commit to using the government to make real fairness a core and long term goal of his next term.
Ronald Reagan was a bigot and something of a dunce, though he was indisputably a very effective front man for the interests of our greatest, if most avaricious, citizens, the 1%, the best of us, born booted and spurred, continuing the ride the rest of us. There was no reason, but an appearance of giving credence to both sides of the political spectrum, for the op ed’s author to mention Reagan in the paragraph about Biden committing to reform, or to cite with approval Reagan’s words about limited government, but the larger point makes sense. Biden should stress his commitment to making the necessary reforms to a system many Americans now see as badly wounded, if not already broken beyond repair (enter dictator, who alone can fix it). Democracy has not broken yet, but there are crucial reforms that will make it stronger against determined enemies, here and broad, that we now know are maniacally intent on permanent minority rule.
A few examples of desperately needed reform: an independent, nonpolitical system for lifetime judicial appointments in which party operatives and ideologically committed judicial fraternity members would be ineligible for office. A rebalancing of the Supreme Court with several additional law abiding new justices. An end to the filibuster and the Electoral College, two crucial instruments for minority control, both remnants of slavery. No more one legislator blocking of all appointments in the manner of ignoramus Senator Tommy Tuberville. An independent commission to rule on electoral maps and have new ones drawn and implemented quickly. An interbranch dispute resolution court to quickly decide all conflicts between the three branches of government. An expedited way to keep vexatious, frivolous, transparently delay-seeking legal motions out of our courts. There are many institutional reforms that need to be done, a commitment to do them would strengthen Biden’s appeal and inspire voters to sign on.
Otherwise the party that has carried out its long term goal of creating hostility against our own government, who has broken all of the institutions that protect the will of the majority in a democracy, gets to benefit from the broken system. By their disabling of government, MAGA/Koch vindicate the demented Reagan’s glib assertion, regurgitating a very old line and making it his own, that the nine most terrifying words in the English language are “I’m from the government and I’m here to help” Here is a paragraph from the op ed I mentioned up top.
Even better would be an effort to develop a reform agenda: Mr. Biden could declare it’s long past time for America to put its house in order, to begin cleaning up the messes of the past two decades, to face our problems and return to our own best national self. He might even think of adapting and repurposing for the center-left a few lines from Ronald Reagan’s first Inaugural Address: “It’s not my intention to do away with government. It is rather to make it work — work with us, not over us; to stand by our side, not ride on our back. Government can and must provide opportunity, not smother it; foster productivity, not stifle it.”
gratuitousblahg 