Or better yet, terrorism
These people are very stupid, so you can’t expect most of them to know history or understand basic governing requirements. The ones that do obviously don’t give a damn. They’ve been taking hostages for years on budget deals. Now they are using the security of the United States and the world as a weapon to get their way:
It is not unusual for Washington Republicans to receive visitors — candidates, lobbyists, political donors — who boast about their commitment to securing the border and cutting taxes.
It’s not every day that one of those visitors used to run Denmark.
Yet on a recent Thursday afternoon, several hard-line members of the House found themselves listening to Anders Fogh Rasmussen as the former Danish prime minister emphasized his small-government values. As a head of government, Rasmussen told them, he had restricted migration and held down taxes — stances even the conservative Freedom Caucus might admire.
“He was trying to draw parallels with Republican ideology,” recalled Rep. Ken Buck of Colorado, who helped convene the meeting.
Then Rasmussen addressed his real agenda: a passionate appeal for aiding Ukraine.
The meeting between a statesman of the West and outspoken voices of the American right captured the tensions at the heart of the transatlantic security relationship — and served, perhaps, as a preview of just how strained old alliances could grow under a second Trump presidency. For Rasmussen, who is also a former head of NATO, it was a brief immersion in the brute transactional politics that now governs the U.S. Congress, even on the most sensitive matters of national security.
The group that met with Rasmussen, which included at least two Freedom Caucus members, heard him out politely and even sympathetically, according to Buck and others in the room. They liked his argument that holding the line against Russia would send a message to China about American resolve. Even more resonant was Rasmussen’s scathing criticism of the Biden administration’s pullout from Afghanistan — a costly error, he said, that emboldened the enemies of democracy and invited the invasion of Ukraine.
Then the pushback came.
Rep. Greg Murphy of North Carolina, a 60-year-old urologist by training, was the most direct voice in the room, laying out his raw political calculus in unperfumed terms.
Murphy told Rasmussen that the price for backing Ukraine must be a crackdown at the border with Mexico. Murphy said he agreed with Rasmussen about the Ukraine war, on the merits, but saw war funding as crucial leverage in a separate policy negotiation with President Joe Biden.
When I spoke with Murphy about the meeting, he echoed those lines. Blaming Biden for having “invited his own country to be invaded” by migrants, he said the Ukraine issue was the best tool for forcing the president’s hand.
“When you have fulcrums, you have to use them,” he said. “We have to use what we can — sadly enough, with the conflict in Ukraine.”
That theory of governing is not new to Washington. It has been a regular feature of legislative politics for decades. But this mode of brinkmanship has become more ordinary and more dangerous. The demands of recalcitrant lawmakers have grown. So have the risks they are willing to take with the real-world consequences of their actions.
It used to be considered radical to shut down the government over a spending dispute. Now, the future of European security is a bargaining chip in an unrelated policy battle.
Now these people are refusing to take yes for an answer. Joe Biden could agree to enact the entire Trump immigration agenda including his stupid wall and they would still not do it. Trump wants the issue for the election and they agree with him.
But lets face facts, they are also objectively pro-Russia and they hate Europe and would be fine if it fell to Vladimir Putin. It’s impossible now to see any other explanation.
As it stands today, they are tanking the border bill and have no plans to pass Ukraine aide despite their demands being met on the former but Speaker Johnson is rushing to put a stand alone Israel aid bill on the floor. They are 100% bad faith actors in every way.
Luckily Biden is calling their bluff on that last one: