As Putin smiles
As a child of the 1960s, I hate sounding like a Cold Warrior here, but c’mon.
Moscow is gleeful. As gleeful as Stephen Miller pondering loading immigrants onto rail cars. As gleeful as a cheering MAGA rally at the idea of police shooting looters and brown-skinned migrants. Russian operatives had to get their hand dirty to help Donald Trump win election in 2016. Since then, MAGA Republicans have internalized Vladimir Putin’s thirst for the kind of chaos and insurrection that might tear apart the U.S.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott is pleased to toss more fuel on the fire. The Supreme Court vacated an appeals court decision that allowed Texas to deny federal officials from accessing a portion of the Texas border with Mexico. In response, writes Jonathan Last:
… the Texas attorney general, Ken Paxton, responded that the Supreme Court’s order “allows Biden to continue his illegal effort to aid the foreign invasion of America.” Which is a perfectly normal statement for an officer of the court to make, I guess?
It’s not clear what Texas Republicans think they are doing. Are they trying to trigger the libs? Or hurt Biden? Or help Trump? Whatever the case, what they are actually doing is putting in motion the most serious conflict between federal and state power since the integration standoff at Little Rock in 1954.
And Texas Republicans seem to think that such a constitutional crisis would be a good thing.
America’s foreign adversaries do as well.
And Republican social media is right there with them.
The post above from the Republican National Committee provoked this response from Seth Abramson:
Crazy that I even need to say this, but not a *scintilla*—not an iota, not a morsel, not a soupçon, not a scrap, not a particle, not a whit, not a pixel, not a bit—of the Trump-Russia collusion scandal has been debunked or proven a hoax, and in fact everything ever written about it in major media, New York Times-bestselling books like the Proof Trilogy and US intelligence reports has turned out to be correct. Donald Trump and his inner circle colluded with Russia in almost every way imaginable.
Now collusion is unnecessary. Like Trump lackeys knowing to do what Donald wants without his giving a direct order, the GOP is doing what the Russians want without needing any more reinforcement than Moscow cheering them on.