Rep. Issa Joins the Chorus of Putin Apologists
Congressman Darrell Issa (R-Moscow) rose early today (4:47 am) to send a message of support on Twitter. Unfortunately, it wasn’t a message of support for the people of Ukraine. It wasn’t a message of support for the Eastern European countries living through flashbacks of Soviet occupation.
Nope. It was a message of support for Dear Leader’s position holding that a military assault ordered by an authoritarian leader on an elected democracy (flawed, but at least trying) was President Joe Biden’s fault.
Shortly after it became public knowledge that Russia was invading Ukraine Donald Trump immediately called in to Fox News to blame the invasion on “a rigged election.”
That’s right, folks. No matter what the crisis, the Former Guy always says it’s because the 2020 election was stolen from him.
While the invasion is a “very sad thing for the world and the country,” Trump said, claiming that he’d been in the White House, “this would not have happened
Later Wednesday evening, speaking at a fundraiser at Mar-a-Lago, Trump said of Putin, “I mean, he’s taking over a country for $2 worth of sanctions. I’d say that’s pretty smart.”
Here’s Laura Clauson:
Trump’s fawning take on Putin has strongly influenced his entire party’s position on the Russian dictator, which is coming strongly into play in Republican responses to the invasion of Ukraine. Trump may be out front on calling Putin “smart” for invading, but the official Republican position, laid out in a statement from House Republican leaders, is to blame Biden.
”Vladimir Putin’s decision to launch a renewed invasion of Ukraine is reprehensible,” the statement opened, before moving directly to their real interest. “Sadly, President Biden consistently chose appeasement and his tough talk on Russia was never followed by strong action.”
Oh, I see. Because the President of the United States didn’t stand at the border of Ukraine and Poland beating his breast, he was appeasing Putin. Or, maybe, the President was supposed to slip the Russians a bunch of classified information to aid in their quest.
The fact is that President Biden’s take on the Russian build up, which was to organize European countries into a united front (remember, they all hated the former guy), draw up a plan of increasing responses short of military intervention, and to publicize every move by Putin detected by the world’s intelligence services, was nothing short of smart. Really smart.
With Trump at the helm, NATO would be in tatters, Russian psyops would have been rebroadcast by the White House, and backroom deals would be in progress to safely park the ill-gotten gains of oligarchs in U.S. real estate.
Again, Laura Clauson:
This is a horrific and frightening moment, and Donald Trump is doing his level best to make it worse—with the Republican Party following just a few steps behind. They’re using Trump’s extreme statements as cover for turning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine into a domestic partisan issue, not out of deep convictions about the invasion in question but out of simple opportunism, the ruthless view that anything and everything is cause to maneuver for political power..
One final word: There are trolls-a-plenty on social media, spewing comments designed to distract, disrupt, or deny. The time for arguing about this ended when the first Russian cruise missile landed in Kyiv.
Both sides-ing, what-about-ism, and repeating Tucker Carlson’s claims about Ukraine not being worthy aren’t to be engaged with.
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