Month: October 2023

50 years ago, Kissinger said that Nixon was too drunk to talk to the British Prime Minister when the Yom Kipper War broke out.

During Yom Kippur War fifty years ago this week, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger tells aide Brent Scowcroft that President Nixon is “loaded” and thus cannot speak to British Prime Minister: pic.twitter.com/RgbWnD9Evl

— Michael Beschloss (@BeschlossDC) October 7, 2023

Right wingers are attacking Joe Biden all over the internet for waiting a couple of hours to issue a statement about the Israeli crisis, suggesting that he’s “in his basement” (which would be correct since that’s where the Situation Room is. ) Anyway, I think they need to shut their pieholes.

This could be a syntax problem but that doesn’t make any sense either. Is he saying that “many reports are that American taxpayer dollars helped fund the attacks?” What does that mean? All the “reports” said that the money released recently to Iran was from a frozen account in South Korea that was sent to Qatar and hasn’t been released yet.

In any case, this garbled nonsense is typical for the putative GOP nominee for president.

I’m not going to be commenting too much on the Israel situation today because it’s very hard right now to get real information from social media and the mainstream media is also difficult to sort out. This was obviously a massive intelligence failure which is a condemnation of the current Israeli government as well as those supposed new Middle Eastern allies that Trump is so proud of creating. This is going to turn out to be more complicated than usual and that’s saying something.

Prior to WW II, many U.S. Nazi sympathizers secretly gathered, pushing antisemitic & far-right agendas, with aspirations of creating a Hitler-style dictatorship in the US. In her new book “Prequel,” MSNBC’s Rachel @maddow explores our nation’s ongoing struggle against fascism. pic.twitter.com/z1rBJKLa9P

— CBS Sunday Morning 🌞 (@CBSSunday) October 7, 2023

Inspired by her research for the hit podcast Ultra, in PREQUEL: An American Fight Against Fascism, #1 New York Times bestselling author Rachel Maddow traces the fight to preserve American democracy back to World War II, when a handful of committed public servants and brave private citizens thwarted far-right plotters trying to steer our nation toward an alliance with the Nazis.

I don’t think I would have ever thought I’d see the necessity for understanding this history in 2023 but here we are.

Trump’s endorsement may not be enough

If John Fetterman can wear a hoodie, Jim Jordan should be able to go jacketless as speaker. But he’s not there yet.

“GOP lawmakers are casting doubt on whether former President Trump’s endorsement of House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) will move the needle in the speaker race, Axios has learned.”

One side:

What they’re saying: Moderate lawmakers and those representing districts President Biden won in 2020 are worried that voting for Trump’s hand-picked candidate could hurt them in their elections back home.

• “It likely hurts more than helps. Likely Jordan accelerates getting the votes he was going to get anyway but hardens those he wasn’t getting faster,” another lawmaker said.
• “It probably works both ways. Some will be impressed, some are sick of him and would like him to stay in Florida,” another moderate said. “For me it’s a negative. His brand is toxic.”
• “The real question is can Republicans in districts Biden won vote for a Trump-endorsed Speaker?” one conservative who is backing Jordan questioned. “They will still have to cast a public vote on the House floor.”

On the other hand:

The other side: Others said that it might nudge lawmakers off the fence who represent conservative districts and have good relationships with both Jordan and House Majority Leader Steve Scalise.

• “I think his endorsement helps. But the question is always can you get to to 218? I don’t think it hurts in that regard, but I do think it helps consolidate support, or get people who are maybe undecided to look more favorably at the Jordan camp,” one lawmaker told Axios.

• “Yes [it helps],” Rep. Mike Waltz (R-Fla.) said.
• I think it creates a net gain, but it does pull some others off,” said another lawmaker who is backing Jordan.

As Digby said, this is their problem. Ours is how long are Americans going to hand a book of matches to Republican arsonists and expect Democrats to put out the fires an clean up the mess?

What the left is missing

Ok, my neurons fire funny. Stick with me. Something about bonding is coming.

The last several days, people of all ages from the community here have been building a playground not far from where I sit. Rather, rebuilding a playground:

After two years of fundraising and advocating for a park rebuild, ground was broken Sept. 28 for Candace Pickens Memorial Park, formerly Jones Park Playground, in North Asheville. One of the people holding a shovel was Keesha Martinez, whose daughter, Pickens, was the 22-year-old murdered at the park in May 2016.

[…]

Pickens was killed in 2016 on her then 3-year-old’s son birthday. She had taken him to the park to celebrate, according to previous Citizen Times reporting. Her son, Zachaeus, was also shot, losing his left eye and surviving.

The company that designed and furnished material relies on community volunteers to build out the site under direction from its superintendent and foremen. They supply most tools. Neighbors bring theirs too.

While we were hauling materials around the site last night, Martinez introduced herself as Candace’s mother. An idiot, I didn’t know what to say. But another crew member burst into tears and she and Martinez hugged and cried for several minutes.

Hundreds of people from the neighborhood, from across town, and from Asheville High have pitched in. (As a politico, the first question I ask is where people live — I think in precincts.) I’ve met neighbors whose houses I walk by every day but have never met. The work is somewhat chaotic, frantic even, but joyful. It’s a bonding experience.

Politico yesterday examined how fandom bonds together both Swifties and MAGA. It’s “a shortcut to community.”

Joanna Weiss writes:

Anyone who’s attended a stop on the Eras Tour, as a passionate Swiftie or a casual observer, knows the power of a collective fan experience. A Swift show is part concert, part costume party, part tent revival with sequins. Listening to the music is part of the goal, but so is singing along, word by word, with the strangers beside you. Lynn Zubernis, a clinical psychologist and professor at West Chester University and the author of several books about fan culture, talks about fandom in physical terms: the “collective effervescence” you feel at a joyful group event; the “vicarious achievement” that affects your brain chemistry. When your team scores a touchdown or your favorite celebrity gets an ovation, you get a boost of hormones, too.

That’s because the group identity that makes fandom tick developed as a biological imperative, she says. “Back in the day, speaking in an evolutionary sense, if you didn’t belong to a group you were going to die. So we are really highly motivated to find a group of like-minded people to belong to.”

Singing along to church hymns is a similar experience, although outside Black churches there is less “collective effervescence.”

When I spoke to Zubernis, she had just returned to Philadelphia from a convention for fans of the long-running TV show “Supernatural.” In a Marriott hotel outside of D.C., 1,500 people had gathered to rehash episodes and dissect the show’s fictional lore, their passion unfaded even though the show has been off the air for years. Whenever she watches coverage of Trump rallies on TV, Zubernis told me, she marvels at how Trump supporters behave like those conventioneers. The MAGA hats and Trump gear feel like a kind of political cosplay. The stylized posters that show Trump as a muscular G.I. Joe type, physically fighting for America, function a bit like fan fiction.

Perhaps that community experience found in evangelical churches has crossover reinforcement for the MAGA faithful. On the more secular left, it’s missing.

There’s much more on the psychology of fan communities. And on the downside: doxxing of the celebrity’s critics and even death threats.

When feeling endangered or embattled, Weiss writes, “a threat to group identity can feel like a matter of survival. And while not all fans become trolls, she suspects that fans’ anger toward perceived transgressors might be rising.” Feeling embattled “makes those fan connections even stronger.”

She concludes:

We’ve all seen what those powerful connections can deliver: an upset victory on Election Day, a concert tour that quite literally breathed new life into local economies, an unprecedented attack on the Capitol. When fandoms are at the height of their power, they’re capable of a lot.

This points to a weakness on the left. Perhaps we are not as much joiners, or our in-groups tend to have a narrower, niche focus like outdoor activities. We are activists for this or activists for that. Our communities are smaller. The Achilles heel for many Democratic groups is they are simply older and no fun. Plus, we seem to live more in our heads.

We don’t much sing together on the left.

Building a playground with hundreds of neighbors is a reminder (to me) not to think so much. Community is not built in your head. Or as Rooster says to Maverick, “Don’t think. Just do.”

It’s not too late to vote in Fat Bear Week!

There are now just two competitions left:

Get ready for a jaw-dropping generational joust between the tough tectonic tank 806 Jr and the bomb of a boar, 32 Chunk the hunk. In the game of percentages, cubs can outcompete adult bears in weight gain to body size. The tank grew 7000%. While the hunk…well, just blew up, he’s practically a Chunkasaurus.Will 32 flatten the floof? Or will the tenacious tank dunk on the Chunk?

And:

This match is a battle of the survivors!Massive mama 901 survived a series of firsts: The 2022 #FatBearWeek competition as runner-up and her first year as “a single mom who works two jobs, who loves her kids and never stops.” 9480 Otis the GOATis has survived more #FatBearWeek competitions than any other bear with 4 wins under his belt. Despite his late arrival and scrawny size, he lost no time going from gaunt to gargantuan!Select your survivor.

Click the following link to vote!

https://explore.org/fat-bear-week

Today’s news on Trump’s national security crimes:

Trump Leaked Nuclear Sub Secrets To Australian Businessman
Susie Madrak, Oct 6, 2023 Crooks and Liars

I dropped my Photoshopped illustration in the comments section of Suzie’s article at Crooks and Liars. I then popped over to Salon to read their article titled, “Tip of the iceberg”: Experts sound the alarm after Trump blabbed nuclear secrets at Mar-a-Lago by Igor Derysh where I read the various excuses given by Trump’s spokespeople:

A Trump spokesperson told ABC News that the report lacks “proper context and relevant information.”

“President Trump did nothing wrong, has always insisted on truth and transparency, and acted in a proper manner, according to the law,” the spokesperson said.

Igor Derysh, Salon, Oct 6, 2023

The story also included excuses from the Australian billionaire, Anthony Pratt, why it was okay that he got this information they included:
1) It might not be accurate info, because he never saw any documents
2) We are allies and share this stuff anyway
3) Even if the enemies did find out the details they already know them, so it’s no big deal.
4) Bottom line. Trump helped secure a $40 billion dollar contract, so America got the money instead of France.

The story also talked about how Pratt talked to Jack Smith about this, but it wasn’t part of the charges against Trump.

Tonight on Cable News we’ll hear from experts on the national security violations. But what I want to hear are NOT the excuses used by Trump’s spokespeople, the Australian billionaire, the intelligence community, or the DOJ explainers on TV why this wasn’t part of Trump’s charges from Jack Smith.

What I want to talk about is how the media gives Trump time to throw up excuses over and over without cutting them down, in advance! Right now they follow this process, they are first taken seriously, then debunked and then finally mocked by the late night comedy shows.
(He’s my mocking image of Trump’s lie that he declassified the documents before he left the White House.)

“We’re no longer arguing of whether Donald Trump committed crimes, we’re arguing over how to let him get away with it because he’s Donald Trump.”

MediumDave

Some of the MSM understand the pattern that Trump is using with the MSM. But Team Trump KNOWS that the MSM will duly report each excuses, they will have on an expert to explain it’s BS and then Trump will throw out another. They repeat this process for years, as if they can’t break out of it.

Chris Hayes: “They have just been frantically cycling through excuses…trying to come up with some explanation for why Trump had 11 sets of classified documents…they have abandoned, however, each excuse almost as soon as they put it out because they have all been so implausible.”

I went looking for articles on the excuses that Trump uses and found a bunch.

At this point, these pieces should be like the story of prisoners giving the numbers of a joke instead of the joke itself.
“Then Trump gave a number 3 excuse, followed by numbers 5, 6, 7 and 9 excuse. “

The DOJ doesn’t want to appear “political” when they are prosecuting a crime. The slightly good news is they have stopped bending over backwards to give Trump the “benefit of the doubt” when he comes out and threatens witnesses and judicial staff. Jack Smith now destroys Trump’s excuses in their latest motion. But the media aren’t using this same tactic with new stories they break. One of the reasons that the MSM continues to use this method of giving Trump and his people the opportunity to throw out all their lame excuses, is they won’t write stories in an adversarial fashion AT THE TIME they are talking to people. Instead they take down what the spokesperson says, repeat it, thereby letting the BS get out. What could they do instead? I envision someone like Mehdi Hasan replying to their response (with a few swear words). It would look a little like this.

“So, a Trump spokesperson told me that the report lacks “proper context and relevant information.” I said, ‘ARE YOU F*CKING KIDDING ME?” What kind of context would make this okay? Seriously, please tell me. And be specific. “

And when they say, “President Trump did nothing wrong, has always insisted on truth and transparency, and acted in a proper manner, according to the law,”
My swearing Mehdi would reply with, “COME ON MAN! Are you really still pushing the line that sharing National Security Information with someone NOT in the government, in forum that is open dozens of unvetted people is proper? What is your basis in fact, that this is according to the law, because I’ve got the legal statutes this violates right here in my hand.”

Then after watching the spokesperson babble with whataboutism and non-answers I’d then turn to the experts who and move to the NEXT level question:

I’d ask the experts to explain, “What are the forces that are HELPING Trump say out of jail for this? Are we in the media and you in the expert community PART of the process that keeps Trump out of jail? Then I’d ask a DIFFERENT kind of Expert. Like maybe a media political and social media communications expert and ask,
What can we on the left do to bust these Forces that help keep Trump out of jail?
As an example, I’d ask them to bring up as an example, the next lame excuse that will be floated. I’d ask, “How it can this excuse be destroyed BEFORE it is used?”

This is the PROACTIVE move that someone should be doing. But nobody is. The MSM don’t see it as their job. The communications experts won’t tell the Democrats to go on the attack because of the instant whining from the right. “SEE? The Democrats are attacking us for totally political reasons! Trump didn’t break any laws! (Which is just what they do now, and what they‘ll do if they get Trump back in power. )


I’ve been a consultant, and when I tell a client, “He is what you should do.” I also say, “And here is what you should do when they reply like this.”

Keep anticipating their BS and delay tactics. Learn and USE their history of lies against them. USE their constant escalation and doubling down on threats and violence against them. Show the world, not just the court, how their action hurt people.

I know how the media is played by the RW. I know how the norms of the MSM still haven’t totally adjusted to Trump’s methods. I know that the Dems still haven’t adjusted to the gaming of messages and control of social media platforms by the RW. We can use jokes as well as messages, but we need to keep pushing the message of the crimes of Trump. No more excuses.

Cross posted to Spocko’s Brain
It’s time for the media to destroy Trump’s old excuse list instantly, then preempt new ones @spocko@mastodon.online

When he was mocked on the cable networks for getting the lowest vote count in history, he pulled the plug.

ABC’s Jonathan Karl writes:

In reporting for my upcoming book, “Tired of Winning: Donald Trump and the End of the Grand Old Party,” I learned that Trump had secretly plotted to be elected speaker back in January, when he was publicly supporting Rep. Kevin McCarthy, who was struggling to get the votes he needed.

The idea of Donald Trump serving as speaker was first proposed on the day he left the White House — Jan. 20, 2021 — by a pro-Trump activist named Rogan O’Handley, who went by the name “@DC_Draino” on social media. The idea was soon aggressively pushed by Steve Bannon, Trump’s former chief strategist in the White House. At first Trump had no interest in the job, but that all changed as he watched McCarthy fail in vote after vote on the House floor in early January of this year.

The prime-time drama surrounding the seemingly endless voting for House speaker in January caught the attention of the former president, who was soaking up every minute of coverage from his perch in Mar‑a‑Lago. The must-see television spectacle briefly revived an idea Trump had dismissed long ago: that he could become speaker of the House, the only congressional leadership post you can be elected to even if you are not a member of Congress.

“He saw the power of television,” a close Trump adviser told me. “[He saw] how galvanizing it was, how mesmerizing it was — everybody was watching it, right? That’s when Trump realizes it’s the biggest reality show in America. He could sit up there like The Celebrity Apprentice. It’d be ‘The Apprentice’ with him with a big-ass gavel.”

Although the idea of Trump as speaker of the House had been kicking around for months, Trump had previously expressed no interest in it.

He considered the role to be beneath him. Why would he want to leave Palm Beach to spend his days in Congress? The only time anybody paid attention to what was going on in the House, he figured, was during the State of the Union address — and even then, all eyes are on the president, not the speaker. “It never got any traction,” a Trump adviser said of the idea. “He had literally no interest.”

But with the nation’s attention focused on the McCarthy drama on the House floor, Trump began to have second thoughts. And when, on the seventh ballot, Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz stood up and announced his vote for speaker — “Donald John Trump” — the former president was mildly amused. Until, that is, he saw the final vote tally being broadcast on all the news networks:

-212 votes for Hakeem Jeffries

-201 votes for Kevin McCarthy

-19 votes for Byron Donalds

-1 vote for Donald Trump

Gaetz called Trump after the balloting concluded, congratulating him on becoming the first former president since John Quincy Adams to receive a vote for speaker. But Trump wasn’t pleased — he was embarrassed. When the House clerk read off the vote totals at the end of the round — “the Honorable Donald J. Trump of Florida has received one” — laughter could be heard in the House chamber. Democratic lawmakers and progressive commentators were mercilessly mocking his lackluster support.

The ridicule only grew louder when Gaetz pulled the same stunt in the next round and the result was the same. “One vote,” tweeted Don Lemon, who was then a CNN anchor. “That’s it. That’s all #Trump got for speaker of the House. #onevote.”

Gaetz eventually realized his stunt was upsetting the former president and switched his vote to GOP Rep. Kevin Hern of Oklahoma for the next two rounds of balloting. But during that time, Trump, still stewing, told at least two people the real problem was that Gaetz had not formally nominated him for speaker. If Republicans realized he was a real candidate for speaker, Trump thought, they would have overwhelmingly voted for him.

Word of Trump’s thinking quickly reached Gaetz, and the Florida Republican acted accordingly.

“For what purpose does the gentleman from Florida rise?” the House clerk asked Gaetz before the eleventh round of balloting kicked off.

“To place a name in nomination for the position of speaker of the House,” he replied.

And with that, Trump was officially nominated as a candidate for speaker. One Republican close to both Gaetz and Trump later told me Gaetz ran the idea by the former president and got his approval before making the move. Another said Trump had proactively asked Gaetz to do it. Either way, the former president’s name was formally placed in contention — with Trump’s blessing.

With that all sorted out, Gaetz had a speech to give. “My friends, when Donald Trump was president, taxes were cut, regulations were slashed, energy was abundant, wages were rising, capital was returning from overseas to fund the dreams and ambitions of our fellow Americans, and the economy was roaring,” Gaetz began. As he spoke, the murmuring and heckling — mostly from Democrats — grew so loud the clerk had to bring down her gavel and demand the House be in order.

But Gaetz kept going: “I nominate President Trump because we must make our country great again. And he can start by making the House of Representatives great again.”

When Gaetz finished his speech, Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado was the only person in the entire chamber to applaud.

The result was exactly the same. Donald Trump received just one vote — from Matt Gaetz — for speaker of the House. And once again, the cable networks rubbed it in, plastering a measly “1” next to Trump’s name as commentators mocked the former president’s pathetic vote total.

That was the final straw. “Once CNN and MSNBC started mocking him, that he had the lowest vote count in history,” a Trump confidant — who was in touch with the former president throughout the process — told me, “all of a sudden, he was like, ‘Get me out of there!’ “

He is the greatest sore loser in history. Nobody comes close. And so he lies and the right wing media enable it. It’s actually more their fault than his.

Karl was on Deadline White House today and also revealed that Trump screamed at the top brass of the military “I know more about nuclear than you do!!!” because his uncle taught at MIT.

He is insane.

He’s been spilling even more nuclear secrets but his hand-picked judge in Florida continues to protect him by slow-walking the trial

A delay to consider how long to delay the trial. Trump’s documents case, in Judge Cannon’s hands, is going nowhere fast. https://t.co/GxcTZhkqK0

— Steven Mazie (@stevenmazie) October 6, 2023

We just learned that Donald Trump has been whispering American nuclear secrets in the ears of his Mar-a-lago members and they’ve been spreading them around to anyone who will listen.

Torri Otten at TNR reminds us of all the other times he’s done this:

Trump allegedly told Australian billionaire Anthony Pratt in April 2021 that Australia should start buying its submarines from the U.S. Trump then told Pratt the supposed exact number of nuclear warheads a U.S. sub can carry, and how close it can supposedly get to a Russian sub without being detected, ABC News reported late Thursday, citing anonymous sources.

Pratt then told at least 45 other people—including six journalists, 11 employees at his company, 10 Australian officials, and three former Australian prime ministers—about Trump’s comments before he was approached by special counsel Jack Smith’s team.

Smith’s team was looking into whether Trump had mishandled national security secrets after leaving the White House. Pratt told investigators he didn’t know if Trump’s comments were true or just showing off, but investigators told him to stop sharing the numbers, “suggesting the information could be too sensitive to relay further,” ABC wrote.

Smith indicted Trump two years later for hoarding classified documents at Mar-a-Lago. Of the 40 total charges against Trump, 32 are for willful retention of national defense information. He is accused of keeping an array of classified national security material after leaving the White House, despite being unauthorized to do so.

The incident with Pratt is far from the first time that Trump shared classified information with people unauthorized to hear it. In May 2017, Trump shared highly classified information with the Russian foreign minister and the Russian ambassador to the United States that the U.S. hasn’t shared with some of its closest allies. Current and former U.S. officials warned that Trump had jeopardized a crucial intelligence source on the Islamic State group.

Later that month, Trump told then-Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte that the U.S. had positioned two nuclear submarines off the Korean peninsula. The locations of nuclear subs are meant to be kept secret, as a matter of national security. In fact, only the captains and crews know the sub’s exact location.

Then, in July 2017, CNN reported that the U.S. was forced to extract a spy embedded in the Russian government after concerns that Trump had shared classified information that could have exposed them.

Rather than learn his lesson, Trump met privately with Russian President Vladimir Putin during the G20 summit (also in July 2017). Trump confiscated the interpreter’s notes at the end of the meeting, an unusual move that led intelligence officials to believe he had shared more classified information.

Trump tweeted a video in December 2018 of the Al Asad Airbase in Iraq, exposing a SEAL team’s faces and location. The next year, he bragged about U.S. nuclear weapons capabilities to reporter Bob Woodward and tweeted photos that revealed the location of U.S. spy satellites.

And of course, it didn’t stop after he left office. One of the documents he allegedly kept detailed a plan to attack Iran. He is accused of waving the paper around in front of people.

I guess it’s pointless to mention that he’s the putative GOP nominee for president again which suggest that his voters think this is all just fine. Either they think everyone is lying about these incidents or they believe that Dear Leader knows best and that sharing nuclear secrets with an Australian rando is some kind of savvy, high level strategy. Or maybe they just don’t give a damn about American national security.

Either way, it’s pretty frightening. Their idol is simply too stupid to keep his mouth shut and may very well have given/sold equally valuable secrets to those “friends” of his who have a keen interest in getting them. And there doesn’t seem to be any way to persuade them that this is a problem despite their shrill, shrieking denunciations of Hillary Clinton for sending emails of far, far less value to our adversaries over a private email server. But then, they are shameless so that argument is completely pointless too.

Speaking of which, the right wing is having a full-blown meltdown over her comments yesterday suggesting that the right may need a “formal de-programming.” She’s right. It’s a cult. Nothing shows it more than the Republican party’s indifference to the fact that their leader is under indictment for 91 felonies, is on trial for fraud, has been found liable for rape, is credibly accused of stealing classified information and sharing it with unauthorized people and trying to overturn a legitimate election. If that isn’t a cult, I don’t know what is.

The dynamics in the House make it very difficult to see how they get the funding bill passed. The best hope may be that Trump wants to save the issue for himself.

It’s been quite a week in the US House with MAGA superstar Matt Gaetz, R-Fl., leading a small band of incoherent revolutionaries to topple Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy just to show they could. Then all day Thursday the media was overwhelmingly excited at the rumor that Donald Trump was going to heroically run to the rescue of the House Republicans and save them from themselves by stepping in as the House Speaker. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene enthusiastically endorsed him and it was announced that he would be travelling to the Capitol for the first time since January 6th, 2021 within days.

Sadly, late last night, Trump himself stuck a shiv in that trial balloon by announcing that he was endorsing Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio for the job which will likely assure his victory.

Before McCarthy was defenstrated he managed to get an extension on the budget deadline passed, averting another government shutdown, but with all the fireworks around his ousting and the jostling to replace him, not to mention the enormous ill will Gaetz and his friends have caused in the caucus, it appears that clock may tick all the way down again without much being resolved before the next deadline. The House Republicans have a long wish list of extreme policies they want to pass in this new budget and nobody seems to have told them that they don’t have a majority in the Senate nor do they have the White House, which means that their dream agenda is dead on arrival anyway.

They want radical cuts in spending, process changes that are unconstitutional, a total reversal of American foreign policy and they seem determined to hold their breath until they blow up the country if they don’t get their way. There’s little reason to believe that Trump’s endorsee Jim Jordan will be able to deal with this insoluble problem any better than McCarthy did and even less reason to believe he wants to. He may not have joined the rebels in this instance but he’s just as extreme as they are.

The most pressing of all the issues on the table is the continuation of American aid to Ukraine. There is still a bipartisan majority in congress that supports the policy but a large and growing faction with the GOP is against it and with that small number of hard right troublemakers determined to have their way, McCarthy was apparently only able to get the extension passed by eliminating that funding.

That was a huge victory for McCarthy’s favorite wingnut, Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has made the defunding of Ukraine aid her signature issue. According to this voluminous fact check, she is very confused about the recent history of the region and seems to have absorbed a lot of Russian talking points to back up her opinions. Last spring she spoke at a white nationalist event where they cheered the Russian invasion with chants of “Putin, Putin, Putin!” so perhaps that’s where she got some of her ideas on the subject. But the most likely influence is former Fox News celebrity Tucker Carlson who has been leading the American opposition to Ukraine.

Russia has shown its appreciation by featuring him heavily on their state owned propaganda media:

As a result, there has been a non-stop drumbeat coming mostly from the right, but also some voices on the left, suggesting that the US should withdraw support for the Ukrainian war effort. It’s said by some that we can no longer afford it because we need the money to start a war with Mexico while others believe that it would be more compassionate to allow Russia to take over the country in the hopes that they will stop bombing, committing war crimes and abducting Ukrainian children. Some think the US caused the problem by promoting NATO expansion so it’s wrong for it to help Ukraine, the logic of which is still obscure to me.

Public opinion has shifted a bit as a result of these arguments. According to the Reuters/Ipsos poll, six months ago 46% supported sending arms to Ukraine while 29% opposed and the rest were unsure. As of this week, only 41% support it, 35% disagree and the rest are unsure. It’s not exactly a groundswell but the opposition is growing among Republicans especially and it’s giving oxygen to people like Greene in the House and Senators like Tommy Tuberville, R-Al., and Missouri’s Josh Hawley who parrots Trump’ tiresome line that Europe is freeloading (which is not true at all) and insists we need the money for our own border war.

At the moment it’s just a handful in the Senate but last week 117 members of the House voted against training and equipping Ukrainian military. As Greene reminded everyone, the Hastert Rule (named after the disgraced, Republican pedophile speaker Dennis Hastert) requires that no bill can be allowed to come to the floor if it does not have a GOP majority. Since Jim Jordan was one of those who voted against it, it’s hard to see how this funding is going to happen if he does become Speaker. (He told the media that he wouldn’t support bringing it to a vote but his office “clarified” it later, so who knows?)

Those of us who oppose military invasions of other countries, whether it’s by Russia or the United States, are morally clear on America’s obligation to help Ukraine. It’s not even a hard call. And the stakes of allowing an emboldened Vladimir Putin successfully expanding Russia’s borders by force in the region are enormous. As the NY Times’ Paul Krugman points out the amount the US is spending on humanitarian aid and military equipment is nominal and the positive consequences of doing so are already being felt.

So why are these right wingers, who not so long ago were ready to send American troops abroad at the drop of a hat suddenly refusniks when it comes to helping Ukraine? Some of it is an affinity with Vladimir Putin and the Russian system he currently oversees. It’s an authoritarian, white, Christian regime that has no use for gays or racial minorities or dissent. It’s their kind of place.

And it also springs from a trollish pretense that fatuously declares that Democrats are the warmongers while they just want to give peace a chance. (It’s not the first time they’ve done this. They did it in the 1990s during the Balkan War as well. )It’s nonsense of course. They’re more bloodthirsty today than they’ve ever been. Whatever the motives, at this moment it’s hard to see how anyone can thread this needle and it’s particularly difficult to see how Jim Jordan can do it. He’s an ideologue not a deal maker.

Perhaps the best hope those of us who don’t want to abandon Ukraine have is that Donald Trump will tell Jordan and Greene and the rest of his House sycophants that they need to fund Ukraine until the election. He has a secret plan to end the war you know, and it’s the best plan in the history of secret plans. They should at least keep things going until the very stable genius can get back in the White House and fix the whole thing up properly, don’t you think? Not even Marjorie Taylor Greene could object to that.

Salon