By Tom Tomorrow for Comics
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"Trump said that our most precious heroes who gave their lives in America’s defense are ‘losers’ and wouldn’t visit their graves in France.”
- Former Trump Chief of Staff John Kelly
By Walter Einenkel
Daily Kos Staff
REPUBLISHED BY:
Donald Trump continues to go low in his attacks against primary opponent Nikki Haley. During a rally in Conway, South Carolina, over the weekend, Trump mocked Haley’s husband’s absence from her campaign appearances. On the one hand, these attacks are strange considering Haley’s husband, Maj. Michael Haley, is serving our country on a yearlong assignment in Africa. Something that was well-covered as his deployment came at the beginning of his wife’s campaign for the Republican presidential nomination.
On the other hand, Trump has a long history of being dismissive and disrespectful of military service members and their families. Trump famously received a medical exemption from serving in Vietnam in 1968 due to “bone spurs.” According to Trump’s former personal attorney, Michael Cohen, Trump could not provide any evidence of having the malady, telling Cohen, “You think I'm stupid, I wasn't going to Vietnam.”
But Trump’s chicken-hawk bonafides haven’t stopped him from disrespecting other Americans’ service to our country. Back in 2015, Trump spewed this repulsive statement about the late Sen. John McCain: “He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren't captured.” Trump followed up his disapproval of McCain’s military service by refusing to lower the flags at the White House to half-staff after the senator passed away—finally relenting after hours of pressure from members of Congress, veterans, and staff.
When retired four-star-Gen. John Allen endorsed Hillary Clinton in 2016, Trump called him “a failed general.” He followed that up by attacking Gold Star father Khizr Khan, whose son, Army Capt. Humayun Khan, died while serving in Iraq. Trump followed that up by implying Khan was a radical Islamic terrorist sympathizer.
In 2017, Trump told the widow of slain Army Sgt. La David Johnson that “he knew what he signed up for, but I guess it still hurt.” To add to Trump’s general cowardice in the face of facts, Trump denied the conversation had happened the way it was reported, including him forgetting Johnson’s name during the conversation with his widow. Johnson’s widow confirmed the account to CNN.
According to The Atlantic, Trump canceled a visit to the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery near Paris in 2018 because he worried the rainy weather would mess up his hair. Trump’s cavalier attitude towards fallen soldiers included him describing the cemetery as being “filled with losers.” That account was confirmed by Trump’s longest-serving former chief of staff, John Kelly, who added:
“A person that thinks those who defend their country in uniform, or are shot down or seriously wounded in combat, or spend years being tortured as POWs are all ‘suckers’ because ‘there is nothing in it for them.’ A person that did not want to be seen in the presence of military amputees because ‘it doesn’t look good for me.’ A person who demonstrated open contempt for a Gold Star family – for all Gold Star families – on TV during the 2016 campaign, and rants that our most precious heroes who gave their lives in America’s defense are ‘losers’ and wouldn’t visit their graves in France.”
Trump’s disregard for service to one’s country led to hundreds of government workers being dismissed or resigning from their positions–people like Army Lt. Colonel Alexander Vindman, who Trump attacked relentlessly for testifying before Congress during Trump’s impeachment trial. The attacks on Vindman were as low as it gets, pushing an idea that he was somehow less patriotic or American because he had immigrated to the United States.
Trump’s attacks on military members’ and their families have always been frowned upon by most Americans. But the grotesque nature of Trump’s attacks have not seemed to have made a dent in the MAGA-cult’s confidence in him. Hopefully it helps to remind the rest of the electorate how bad a Trump presidency tastes.
Economist Robert Reich. (photo: Getty)
...and subjective, biased report by Trump DOJ appointee Robert Hur
Yesterday evening, special counsel Robert K. Hur — appointed in January 2023 by Attorney General Merrick Garland to lead an inquiry into President Biden’s possible criminality after classified files were found in the garage and living areas of Biden’s home in Delaware — cleared Biden of any wrongdoing.
But Hur also suggested that one reason Biden could not be prosecuted was because of his memory lapses — thereby underscoring one of the biggest issues that the public is concerned about in reelecting Biden: His aging brain.
In recounting his interviews with Biden, Hur portrayed him as unable to remember key dates of his time in President Barack Obama’s White House. Hur wrote:
“Mr. Biden would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview with him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory,” and that it would be difficult to convince a jury that “a former president well into his 80s” was guilty of a felony that “requires a mental state of willfulness.”
I don’t know how much this statement by special counsel Hur will hurt Biden, but it surely will not help.
Yet let me point out five things:
by thomhartmann
Community
The single most astonishing thing about yesterday’s oral arguments before the Supreme Court was the almost complete lack of historical context in those arguments about an insurrectionist staying on the ballot.
The fear that led Colorado to ban Trump from the ballot was that he’d keep his word and “suspend the Constitution” and “be a dictator on day one.” Neither were mentioned even once: the words “suspend” and “dictator” don’t appear anywhere in the transcript.
And yet that is exactly what provoked Pennsylvania Congressman Thaddeus Stevens, Michigan’s Senator Jacob Howard, and New York’s Senator Roscoe Conkling (and 12 others) to write and push through Congress the 14th Amendment.
The Confederate states had ceased to be a democracy in any real sense by the late 1830s, as I detail in The Hidden History of American Oligarchy, with the wealthiest families in each of those states running them like dictatorial fiefdoms.
When their political or economic power was challenged, they were not at all reluctant to beat, imprison, and even lynch poor or working-class whites: much like today’s Russia, no dissent was tolerated. If somebody tried to launch a serious political challenge against one of the Old South’s oligarchs during that era, they most frequently ended up dead or being burned out of their home.
That is the American Trump is promising to bring us back to “again.”
Compounding this, Lincoln had made the horrible mistake of taking a slaveholder, Andrew Johnson, as his second-term Vice President — a largely futile effort at healing the nation — and when Lincoln was assassinated the following year and Johnson became president, Congress freaked out.
On the Supreme Court, both Chief Justice Roger Taney and Associate Justice Samuel Nelson were in poor health; Taney had authored the notorious Dred Scott decision (and had earlier owned enslaved people) and Nelson’s tuition through law school was paid by his father selling one of his family’s enslaved individuals.
So Congress — fearing President Johnson was preparing to appoint another Confederate sympathizer to the Court — passed legislation in 1866 cutting the size of the Supreme Court from ten to six members.
That’s how concerned they were — and how extreme an action they were willing to take — to rescue the fragile democracy that the Confederate oligarchs had just recently tried to destroy.
Congress, particularly the Radical Republican faction Stevens led, then essentially went to war with President Johnson and those who supported him, who bitterly opposed ratification of the 14th Amendment.
The landslide victory of the Radical Republicans in the election of 1866 arguably saved the day for the Amendment and helped save American democracy.
That virtually none of this history was mentioned by the attorneys representing Colorado in the arguments before the Court yesterday is tragic; even worse is how the justices seemed so intent on finding technical reasons to ignore the plain language of the Amendment’s Section 3.
“No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any state, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any state legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any state, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.”
The simple reality is that the future of American democracy is as much on the line in this case as it was in 1866. That was completely lost in yesterday’s arguments: it should have been central to them.
So, why did even the “liberal” wing of the Court go along with this charade? Was it because, like Mitt Romney said of his Republican Senate colleagues who failed to convict Trump in his second impeachment, they were afraid for their own safety?
As Romney’s biographer, Atlantic writer McKay Coppins, wrote:
“One Republican congressman confided to Romney that he wanted to vote for Trump’s second impeachment, but chose not to out of fear for his family’s safety. The congressman reasoned that Trump would be impeached by House Democrats with or without him — why put his wife and children at risk if it wouldn’t change the outcome?
“Later, during the Senate trial, Romney heard the same calculation while talking with a small group of Republican colleagues. When one senator, a member of leadership, said he was leaning toward voting to convict, the others urged him to reconsider. You can’t do that, Romney recalled someone saying. Think of your personal safety, said another. Think of your children. The senator eventually decided they were right.”
Were we watching the consequence of Trump’s thuggish threats? After all, just a few weeks ago Trump attorney Alina Habba said on Fox “News” of Bret Kavanaugh:
“You know, people like Kavanaugh, who the president fought for, who the President went through how to get into place, he’ll step up.”
Nice little house and kids you’ve got there, Brett; be a shame if something were to happen to them…
This is how fascists and authoritarians have seized and held power for all the millennia we’ve had what we call civilization: by inducing terror. Just ask Ruby Freeman or Paul Pelosi. Or read Shakespeare or the Bible. Or talk with Alexi Navalny’s wife.
Did they never learn in American History class that there was a time, spanning about a generation, when democracy had been replaced by strongman oligarchy in the South and Trump is merely echoing the values and postures of that time?
That the 14th Amendment was written to prevent or rescue us from exactly today’s situation?
Stevens, Howard, and Conkling went to their graves believing they’d secured America’s future. Tragically, Trump’s lawyers, Sam Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Clarence “sugar baby” Thomas (among others) proved they were wrong.
Yesterday’s hearing was a disgrace. Now that the Supreme Court has apparently failed in their responsibility, it’s up to us to prevent this monster or anyone like him from ever again setting foot in the halls of American power.
Make sure everybody you know is registered to vote and understands what’s at stake this November.
A cartoon by Pedro Molina.
Republican obstructionism would lead ultimately to global disaster.
Ukrainian defenses are in danger of being destroyed and overrun because House Republicans refuse to provide ammunition and aid. If Russia wins this war, the consequences could be catastrophic.
What Could Happen
Ukraine is fighting for the lives of its people and its very existence, and it is running out of ammunition. If the United States does not step back in with aid, Russia could eventually win this war.
Despite the twaddle from propagandists in Moscow (and a few academics in the United States), Russia’s war is not about NATO, or borders, or the balance of power. The Russian dictator Vladimir Putin intends to absorb Ukraine into a new Russian empire, and he will eradicate the Ukrainians if they refuse to accept his rule. Europe is in the midst of the largest war on the continent since Nazi panzers rolled from Norway to Greece, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine is by far the most important threat to world peace since the worst days of the Cold War. In a less febrile political era, defeating Russia would be the top priority of every American politician.
The Republicans in Congress, however, remain fixated both on their hatred of Ukraine and on their affection for Russia. Their relentless criticism of assistance to Kyiv has had its intended effect, taking a bite out of the American public’s support for continuing aid, especially as the war has been crowded out by the torrent of more recent news, including Donald Trump’s endless legal troubles and Israel’s campaign in Gaza.
And so it’s time to think more seriously about what might happen if the Republicans succeed in this irresponsible effort to blockade any further assistance to Ukraine. The collapse and dismemberment of a nation of millions is immediately at stake, and that should be enough for any American to be appalled at the GOP’s obstructionism. But the peace of the world itself could rest on what Congress does—or does not do—next.
First, what would it even mean for Russia to “win”? A Russian victory does not require sending Moscow’s tanks into Kyiv, even if that were possible. (The Russians have taken immense losses in manpower and armor, and they would have to fight house-to-house as they approached the capital.) Putin is reckless and a poor strategist, but he is not stupid: He knows that he doesn’t need to plant the Russian flag on the Mother Ukraine statue just yet. He can instead tear Ukraine apart, piece by piece.
The destruction of Ukraine would begin with some kind of cease-fire offered by a Ukrainian leadership that has literally run out of bullets, bombs, and bodies. (The average age of Ukraine’s soldiers is already over 40; there are not that many more men to draft.) The Russians would signal a willingness to deal only with a new Ukrainian regime, perhaps some “government of national salvation” that would exist solely to save whatever would be left of a rump Ukrainian state in the western part of the country while handing everything else over to the Kremlin.
The Russians would then dictate more terms: The United States and NATO would be told to pound sand. Ukraine would have to destroy its weapons and convert its sizable army into a small and weak constabulary force. Areas under Russian control would become, by fiat, parts of Russia. The remaining thing called “Ukraine” would be a demilitarized puppet state, kept from integration of any kind with Europe; in a few years, an internal putsch or a Russian-led coup could produce a new government that would request final union with the Russian Federation. Soon, Ukraine would be part of a new Russian superstate, with Russian forces on NATO’s borders as “peacekeepers” or “border guards,” a ploy the Russians have used in Central Asia since the 1990s.
Imagine the world as Putin (and other dictators, including in China) might see it even a few years from now if Russia wins in 2024: America stood by, paralyzed and shamed, as Ukraine was torn to pieces, as millions of people and many thousands of square miles were added to the Kremlin’s empire, and as U.S. alliances in Europe and then around the world quietly disintegrated—all of which will be even more of a delight in Moscow and Beijing if Americans decide to add the ultimate gift of voting the ignorant and isolationist Trump back into the White House.
The real danger for the U.S. and Europe would begin after Ukraine is crushed, when only NATO would remain as the final barrier to Putin’s dreams of evolving into a new emperor of Eurasia. Putin has never accepted the legitimate existence of Ukraine, but like the unreformed Soviet nostalgist that he is, he has a particular hatred for NATO. After the collapse of Ukraine, he would want to take bolder steps to prove that the Atlantic Alliance is an illusion, a lie promulgated by cowards who would never dare to stop the Kremlin from reclaiming its former Soviet and Russian imperial possessions.
Reckless and emboldened, emotional and facing his own mortality, Putin would be tempted to extend his winning streak and try one last throw of the dice, this time against NATO itself. He would not try to invade all of Europe; he would instead seek to replicate the success of his 2014 capture of Crimea—only this time on NATO territory. Putin might, for example, declare that his commitment to the Russian-speaking peoples of the former Soviet Union compels him to defend Russians in one of the Baltic states. After some Kremlin-sponsored agitation close to the Russian border, Russian forces (including more of the special forces known as “little green men”) might seize a small piece of territory and call it a Russian “safe zone” or “haven”—violating NATO sovereignty while also sticking it to the West for similar attempts many years ago, using similar terms, to protect the Bosnians from Russia’s friends, the Serbs.
The Kremlin would then sit on this piece of NATO territory, daring America and Europe to respond, in order to prove that NATO lacks the courage to fight for its members, and that whatever the strength of the alliance between, say, Washington and London, no one is going to die—or risk nuclear war—for some town in Estonia.
Should Putin actually do any of this, however, he would be making a drastic mistake. Dictators continually misunderstand democracies, believing them to be weak and unwilling to fight. Democracies, including the United States, do hate to fight—until roused to action. Republicans might soon succeed in forcing the United States to abandon Ukraine, but if fighting breaks out in Europe between Russia and America’s closest allies—old and new—no one, not even a President Trump, who has expressed his hostility to NATO and professed his admiration for Putin, is going to be able to keep the United States out of the battle, not least because U.S. forces will inevitably be among NATO’s casualties.
And at that point, anything could happen.
The world, should Russia win, will face remarkable new dangers—and for what? Because in 2024 some astonishingly venal and ambitious politicians wanted to hedge their bets and kiss Trump’s ring one more time? Perhaps enough Republicans will come to their senses in time to avert these possible outcomes. If they do not, future historians—that is, if anyone is left to record what happened—will be perplexed at how a small coterie of American politicians were so willing to trade the safety of the planet for a few more years of power.
Tucker Carlson speaks at the Turning Point
Action USA conference in West Palm Beach, Florida, on July 15, 2023.
(photo: Giorgio Viera/AFP)
09 February 24
In an interview with Tucker Carlson, the Russian president barely broke a sweat, conceded little, and controlled the conversation from its beginning
Tucker Carlson’s interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin went exactly how everyone expected, as not so much of an interview, but a demonstration by Putin of the ease with which he could utterly overpower one of the United States’ most prominent media figures.
Carlson opened the interview by directly addressing viewers, stating that he felt Putin was “sincere” in his belief that “Russia has a historic claim” to the portions of Ukraine he wishes to seize through military might.
“Are we having a talk show or a serious conversation?” Putin asked Carlson in their very first exchange, after denying that he’d justified his incursion into Ukraine to prevent a “surprise attack” by the U.S. and NATO against allies.
Putin then launched into a 30-minute lecture on Russian and Ukrainian history, starting in 862, through the creation and fall of the Soviet Union, and to the modern era. Carlson stared blankly and nodded along as Putin claimed Ukraine had no independent national identity to justify its sovereignty, a claim historians and Russian propaganda experts have categorically rejected. Carlson halfheartedly attempted to move Putin onto another topic, only to be brushed off by the autocrat who — one must assume — is not particularly receptive to being told what to do.
“It’s not boring; I just don’t know how it’s relevant,” Carlson said.
“Good,” Putin replied, before resuming his oral report.
The exchange was representative of the more than two-hour-long interview as a whole; Putin barely broke a sweat, conceded little when directly questioned, and seemed to control the tone and pace of the conversation from its beginning. He felt so comfortable that he even made fun of Carlson for getting rejected by the CIA before beginning his career in media.
In making his interviewer play by his rules — and in Carlson relinquishing the reigns of the dialogue — Putin used Carlson as the vehicle to ship his carefully crafted state propaganda to American audiences.
The interview continued to center around the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine. The Russian president reiterated many of the arguments he’s already made regarding his motives for invading their neighbor — with little critical pushback from Carlson.
Putin spoke at length about his wish to bring “de-Nazification” to Ukraine, and while the nation does have a dark history of association with Nazism and neo-Nazi factions, particularly in the context of WWII, experts widely agree this is a propaganda ploy used as justification for the invasion.
Putin at one point told Carlson that the United States had better things to do than help Ukraine fight a war. “Thousands of miles away from your national territory, don’t you have anything better to do?” Putin said. “You have issues on the border, issues with migration, issues with the national debt … you have nothing better to do, so you fight in Ukraine?”
It comes as no surprise to anyone who’s watched Carlson’s coverage of Ukraine that the line of argument overlapped almost completely with the former Fox News host’s own view on the matter. Carlson was among the first public advocates to push Republicans to make aid to Ukraine contingent on increased resources for border enforcement.
The overlap is likely why Carlson didn’t respond or engage further with Putin on the question, instead pivoting to questioning the president about who blew up the Nord Stream pipeline.
“You, for sure,” Putin joked.
Carlson countered that he was busy that day.
“You may personally have an alibi, but the CIA has no such alibi,” the Russian president replied, reiterating his claims that the blast that crippled the major natural gas pipeline was likely orchestrated by the U.S. and its NATO allies. Investigations have yet to determine who was behind the sabotage, but in 2022 Carlson publicly hinted at his belief that the U.S. may have been responsible for the pipeline’s destruction. The comments were notable enough that last year, Russian state TV attempted to link Carlson’s firing from Fox News to his coverage of Nord Stream.
Carlson announced on Tuesday that he would be releasing an interview with the Russian autocrat he has long defended. The former Fox News host claimed that English-speaking news outlets are too “corrupt” and “lie” too often to be trusted to accurately portray Russia’s leader — not that Carlson has ever lied to his audience.
The announcement was immediately controversial, in great part because of the ongoing crackdown against journalistic freedom within Russia, including the detainment of foreign reporters by Russian authorities.
One such journalist is Evan Gershkovich, a Wall Street Journal reporter who was detained by Russian authorities while on assignment in Russia last year. Gershkovich has been held in the notorious Lefortovo prison since March 2023 on trumped-up charges of espionage.
Toward the end of the interview, Carlson finally found his spine, asking Putin about Gershkovich’s imprisonment, and proposing that the president — in a show of his “decency” — release Gershkovich into the custody of Carlson’s team, who would return him to the United States.
“The guy is obviously not a spy, he’s a kid, and maybe he was breaking your law in some way, but he’s not a super-spy and everyone knows that, and he’s being held hostage,” Carlson said.
Putin refused to commit to Gershkovich’s release and maintained the Russian government’s allegations that the reporter had been illegally collecting confidential information constituting espionage. “We’ve done so many gestures of goodwill, out of decency, that I think we’ve run out of them,” Putin said, adding that he would entertain the possibility of Gershkovich’s release when he saw “reciprocal” actions from the U.S.
On Tuesday, Carlson asserted that “not a single Western journalist has bothered to interview the president of” Russia since the nation launched its offensive against Ukraine in February 2022. The lie was so blatant that even the Kremlin felt the need to address it.
“Mr. Carlson is not correct,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said in a statement on Wednesday, adding that they have received “numerous requests for interviews with the president, but mostly, as far as countries in the collective West are concerned, these are from major network media: traditional TV channels and large newspapers.”
CNN chief international anchor Christine Amanpour responded to the claim on X (formerly Twitter). “Does Tucker really think we journalists haven’t been trying to interview President Putin every day since his full-scale invasion of Ukraine?” she wrote.
Other prominent journalists echoed the sentiment. “It is most striking to see Carlson justify his interview with Putin and trip to Russia as the work of a journalist at a time when Western journalists are literally sitting in jail for having done nothing wrong other than seeking to report independently in Putin’s Russia, not to mention the many Russian journalists who face imprisonment or exile in the effort to continue their work,” New York Times writer and former Washington Post Moscow Bureau Chief Susan Glasser told CNN.
Russian journalist Yevgenia Albats wrote on X that the situation is “unbelievable,” adding that she — like many other Russian journalists — “have had to go into exile to keep reporting about the Kremlin’s war against Ukraine. The alternative was to go to jail. And now this SoB is teaching us about good journalism, shooting from the $1000 Ritz suite in Moscow.”
According to the Moscow Times, an independent Russian news outlet that was forced to leave the country in 2022 and whose articles are censored within territorial Russia, more than 1,000 independent journalists have been forced to flee the country as Putin’s regime cracks down on freedom of the press.
So how on earth did Carlson land an interview with Putin amidst the Russian government’s full-frontal assault on journalistic freedom? It’s a moment years in the making for the former Fox News host, who across large swaths of his career has acted as the propagandist for Putin — with particular emphasis on the Russia-Ukrainian war.
Carlson has a long history of espousing pro-Russian talking points regarding the war, even going so far as to claim in 2019 that he was actively “[rooting] for Russia” as tensions escalated between the two nations.
Days before Russia launched the invasion, Carlson told Fox News viewers that Americans had no good reason to “hate” Putin, and attempted to link President Joe Biden’s support for Ukraine to unproven allegations that the president accepted millions of dollars from the Ukrainian nationals.
As the war unfolded, Carlson ramped up his pro-Kremlin rhetoric and criticism of support for the Ukrainian government, to the point that his broadcasts were repeatedly lauded by Russian state television. In March 2022, Mother Jones obtained a Kremlin memo that encouraged state-controlled media outlets to “use as much as possible fragments of broadcasts of the popular Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who sharply criticizes the actions of the United States [and] NATO, their negative role in unleashing the conflict in Ukraine, [and] the defiantly provocative behavior from the leadership of the Western countries and NATO towards the Russian Federation and towards President Putin, personally.”
Aside from his track record espousing pro-Russian propaganda, Carlson has established a reputation among autocratic heads of state as a soft interviewer. In his quest to develop a conservative ideological exchange between American conservatives and international right-wing governments, Carlson has given friendly, lauding interviews to Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele, and Argentina’s Javier Milei.
In his interviews and coverage of these right-wing political leaders, Carlson often lauds the use of executive power to reshape nations toward conservative principles — regardless of the methods implemented and the cost to civil society and democratic institutions. It’s clear that Carlson’s fascination with these figures reflects his long-professed desires to implement similar transformation within the United States. With Putin now added to his roster, Carlson has solidified his position as the main access point between the propaganda of autocrats and the American public.
Which hand holds kidnapped Ukranian children? You're right - it's both hands.By Dartagnan
Community
REPUBLISHED BY:
From a domestic perspective, the Republican Party’s embarrassing failure to follow through on its Fox News-goaded attempt to impeach Homeland Security chief Alejandro Mayorkas proved to be a blessing. It was wholly performative theater, without any legitimacy. The party’s abrupt, equally embarrassing turnabout on immigration—an issue that Republicans had planned on wielding against Democrats going into 2024—was just more evidence of the GOP’s terminal dysfunction.
As schadenfreude-y as it may have been for Democrats to watch as the Republicans immolated themselves on the altar of immigration, the rest of the world was far more concerned about how the U.S. would follow through on its prior strategic commitments to Ukraine and Israel. By Wednesday morning, aid packages to both nations were hopelessly consigned to the quicksand of GOP intransigence and finger-pointing. Since aid to those countries was tied—at Republicans’ insistence—to border legislation, the Republicans’ pathetic submission of their much-vaunted immigration concerns to Donald Trump’s electoral whims may have doomed the prospects of further aid to Ukraine and Israel for the remainder of the fiscal year.
(Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer is now crafting separate packages, without immigration reform included, but their likelihood of success appears murky.)
From the perspective of our allies, however, what occurred this week is seen less as habitual Republican dysfunction and more as the total abandonment of American resolve. In a week’s time, we have proved ourselves, as Anne Applebaum presciently warned last month in The Atlantic, worse than an unreliable ally: We’ve become “a silly ally”—one that can no longer be taken seriously by the rest of the world.
Applebaum isn’t alone in that assessment. Tom Friedman’s Tuesday opinion piece in The New York Times, acidly titled “The G.O.P. Bumper Sticker: Trump First. Putin Second. America Third,” explains just how damaging and consequential the Republicans’ actions this week have been to the nation.
As Friedman wrote, even before the immigration and foreign aid bill collapsed under the weight of Republican cowardice:
There are hinges in history, and this is one of them. What Washington does — or does not do — this year to support its allies and secure our border will say so much about our approach to security and stability in this new post-post-Cold War era. Will America carry the red, white and blue flag into the future or just a white flag? Given the pessimistic talk coming out of the Capitol, it is looking more and more like the white flag, autographed by Donald Trump.
There is no serious doubt that House Republicans rejected the Senate’s painstakingly crafted immigration legislation, which satisfied nearly all prior GOP demands for border enforcement, at the behest of Donald Trump. Trump prefers to do nothing, effectively maintaining the status quo at the border for another full year so he can use it as a campaign talking point, assuming he's still eligible to hold public office.
Fearing Trump's wrath, House Republicans swiftly pronounced the immigration and foreign aid package "dead on arrival" before most had even read it. Meanwhile, Republican senators began to quaver at the prospect of being primaried by Trump-chosen challengers for the audacity of trying to actually pass meaningful legislation. Faced with Trump’s continued vise-like grip on their party, upper chamber Republicans opted to jettison the legislation altogether.
But, as Friedman observes, there’s another key player in the mix: Vladimir Putin. Putin is well-aware that Trump will abandon Ukraine—and likely NATO—the instant he returns to power. Friedman recognizes that Trump’s interests—and thus the interests of a supine Republican Party intent on enabling Trump’s dictatorial ambitions—now necessarily dovetail with Putin’s.
After Ukraine inflicted a terrible defeat on the Russian Army — thanks to U.S. and NATO funding and weapons — without costing a single American soldier’s life, Putin now has to be licking his chops at the thought that we will walk away from Ukraine, leaving him surely counting the days until Kyiv’s missile stocks run out and he will own the skies. Then it’s bombs away.
This week, one of Putin’s primary assets, the propagandist and “useful idiot” Tucker Carlson, is purportedly being wined and dined in Moscow so he can provide cover for Republicans to gut Ukrainian aid. Carlson’s paywalled, one-on-one interview with Putin, and how it might enable the murderous dictator’s “outreach” to Republicans, is already the talk of Russian state television.
As reported Wednesday by The Washington Post’s Robyn Dixon and Natalia Abbakumova:
State television propagandist Vladimir Solovyov, one of the Kremlin’s anti-Western attack dogs, seemed to suggest that Carlson’s interview would torpedo any last hope for approval of new American military aid for Ukraine.
Solovyov said Carlson’s visit came “at the worst possible time for the West,” and he begged Carlson to join the Russian Union of Journalists, which Solovyov heads.
As Friedman points out, this eagerness of Republicans to betray American strategic interests in order to satisfy both Trump and Putin transforms America’s credibility with our allies into a mere afterthought.
If this is the future and our friends from Europe to the Middle East to Asia sense that we are going into hibernation, they will all start to cut deals — European allies with Putin, Arab allies with Iran, Asian allies with China. We won’t feel the change overnight, but, unless we pass this bill or something close to it, we will feel it over time.
America’s ability to assemble alliances against the probes of Russia, China and Iran will gradually be diminished. Our ability to sustain sanctions on pariah nations like North Korea will erode. The rules governing trade, banking and the sanctity of borders being violated by force — rules that America set, enforced and benefited from since World War II — will increasingly be set by others and by their interests.
The saddest fact is that no one should really be surprised by Republicans’ behavior. For a substantial segment of their caucus, their order of loyalty really is “Trump first, Putin second, America third.” Evidently they feel that the risk of betraying their own constituents on the immigration issue is well worth the effort and impact, if it means pleasing their two masters. And if they have so small a regard for their own constituents, there’s little doubt they feel even less toward the American republic writ large.
