Donald Trump has so many pending criminal cases that he has to decide which ones offer him the greatest opportunity to grandstand on the courthouse steps on a given day. Yesterday, he attended the closed hearing on classified documents down in Florida and didn’t hold any press events afterwards which was odd since it was certainly not a hearing he needed to attend. I suspect he wanted to be there to hear about which witnesses were cooperating with the special counsel so he could find away to send his goons out to intimidate them. I would also guess he’s wanted to sink at his Trumpie judge and give her some sugar from across the room.
And there were rumors that he would attend Fani Willis’ potential prosecution disqualification hearing in Georgia and/or the Manhattan case regarding his illegal payments to Stormy Daniels. He’s decided on the Manhattan case apparently.
Each of Trump’s four criminal cases is set to reach a clarifying inflection point over the next few days as he barrels toward a rematch with President Joe Biden.
In Trump’s New York case, a judge is slated to finalize the timetable for his trial on charges that he falsified business records to cover up an affair with a porn star in the closing weeks of the 2016 election.
In his Washington, D.C., case, the Supreme Court may signal whether it will quickly resolve Trump’s claim that he is “immune” from federal charges stemming from his effort to subvert the 2020 election.
In his Georgia case, where Trump is also facing state charges related to the 2020 election, a judge has scheduled a Thursday hearing to examine an effort by Trump and several co-defendants to disqualify the prosecutors.
And in his Florida case, a judge is weighing Trump’s latest motion to postpone key deadlines — a likely precursor to delaying the May 20 trial on charges of hoarding classified records at his Mar-a-Lago home.
The Supremes gave Jack Smith until next Tuesday to answer the Trump request for an appeal. I would assume Smith was prepared and will be filing it before then.
I’m not sure that Trump appearing at his various cases works as well for him as he thinks it does. Sure, his rubes send money. But all he really has to do is ask. I would think he’d do better with the swing voters by ignoring all these legal problems. The more they realize just how much legal trouble he’s in the more they are unlikely to sign on.
At least I think so. Maybe everyone is so blinded by his dazzling vigor and youthful appearance that nothing anyone says or does will change their minds.
Greg Sargent discusses one of the most disturbing poll results I’ve seen yet. It’s completely inexplicable:
You’ve probably heard that Donald Trump has “tightened his grip on the Republican Party,” or that he’s “bent the party to his will.” Pundits repeat such formulations constantly, because, well, it’s true: Trump is exerting a level of influence over his party in a way that’s unprecedented in a former president.
But what if voters aren’t aware of it?
That’s one possible takeaway from a new ABC News-Ipsos survey, which has a maddening finding: Trump gets substantially less blame for killing the bipartisan border security deal last week than any other major actor in that drama:
Americans find there is blame to go around on Congress’ failure to pass legislation intended to decrease the number of illegal crossings at the U.S.-Mexico border—with about the same number blaming the Republicans in Congress (53%), the Democrats (51%) and Biden (49%). Fewer, 39%, blame Trump.
Biden strongly supported the deal, while Trump explicitly and repeatedly called on Republicans to kill it. He expressly asked for the blame for its death to be directed at him. As the measure appeared to be dying, numerous Republicans said openly that Trump was the reason for it, even suggesting that he demanded its demise to give himself an issue against President Biden. Trump himself didn’t bother trying to hide this motive.
What’s more, Democrats get almost identical blame to Republicans, even though virtually all Senate Democrats voted for the deal, while virtually all Republicans opposed it. That’s after Democrats made the bulk of the concessions required to broker the compromise, which would have made it much harder to apply for asylum, channeled vast expenditures into fortifying the border, expanded detention of migrants, and expedited processing of asylum-seekers, including faster removal of those who don’t qualify.
What??? It’s insane. But as Sargent goes on to discuss, the president often gets blamed for immigration problems even when it’s the congress that fails to make the laws that would give him the tools to make the system better.
As for the poll, it may be an outlier or be skewed because of Trump cultists blindly following their Dear Leader and understanding the game is to blame Biden.
Sargent wonders whether swing voters are understand how Trump ordered the GOP to tank the bill. I don’t know but I suspect they don’t know much. I’ve heard several of my civilian friends in the last few days say they barely follow the news because it’s so depressing. But they are aware of the drumbeat that Biden is old and think most of the problems stem from that.
Sargent has some advice for the Democrats:
The border deal’s demise shows yet again that for a former president, Trump wields unprecedented influence over his party. Yet how aware are swing voters of this level of influence?
Democrats must do more to communicate that Republicans are sabotaging the country because Trump told them to. Democrats spent a few days pointing out that Republicans themselves admitted they iced the deal to help Trump politically. But they mustn’t let this drop. Keep saying it. What if Biden did more in coming days to highlight the fact that the Border Patrol—which endorsed Trump—supported the deal that Trump killed?
The party could also be making far better use of a stable of young, energetic Democrats from southwestern and border states, who could act as surrogates. Now is the time to do exactly that.
Right now, Trump may be enjoying the best of two worlds—he can get Republicans to do his political bidding without getting the blame for the result. Sure, it’s infuriating. But Democrats must channel that anger into action, so the public places the blame for this debacle exactly where it belongs.
All that sounds good. But in the end I think the people are going to have to be forced to see both Biden and Trump in action, with all that that entails, in order to truly understand the dynamics at play. It’s going to take all hands on deck.
Ken, your criminal defense lawyers are calling to suggest you spend less time pushing Russian propaganda and more time defending longstanding felony charges against you in Houston, as well as ongoing federal grand jury proceedings in San Antonio that will probably result in… https://t.co/6dfvvqJSfV
The Senate stayed in session all night to pass the Ukraine funding bill. Now Mike Johnson says he won’t bring it to the House floor because it doesn’t have border funding.
I know it’s hard to believe. But it shouldn’t be. They have discovered that nothing matters to their people except owning the libs and licking Trump’s boots.
They’re very busy anyway. There’s a lot of important business on the agenda:
House Republicans have reached out to special counsel Robert Hur to discuss having him testify in front of the House Judiciary Committee about his report on President Joe Biden’s handling of classified documents, according to three sources with direct knowledge of the matter.
Hur’s report released last week did not charge the president with a crime, but it painted a picture of a forgetful commander in chief who failed to properly protect highly sensitive classified information – a depiction that could hurt Biden politically and that Republicans have seized on.
Hur has retained Bill Burck as his personal attorney. While there is no date on the calendar, they are looking toward the end of February, one of the sources told CNN. The Justice Department declined to comment.
This should be a real shitshow. But the earlier the better. Get it out of the way.
Tired: Benghazi-Benghazi-Benghazi. “But her emails.” Wired:Ageism.
“Joe Biden is better on his worst day than Donald Trump is on his best day,” Lawrence O’Donnell noted Monday night, referencing Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s accomplishments in office and physical condition when he ran for a fourth presidential term.
There are serious stakes for these United States in this fall’s elections, particularly regarding who wins the White House. But Republicans are proving themselves no more serious today than they were in 2016, 2018, 2020 or 2022. They plan to campaign on ageism.
But watching the frenzy over President Biden’s age, I am, for the first time, profoundly concerned about the nation’s future. It now seems entirely possible that within the next year, American democracy could be irretrievably altered.
And the final blow won’t be the rise of political extremism — that rise certainly created the preconditions for disaster, but it has been part of the landscape for some time now. No, what may turn this menace into catastrophe is the way the hand-wringing over Biden’s age has overshadowed the real stakes in the 2024 election. It reminds me, as it reminds everyone I know, of the 2016 furor over Hillary Clinton’s email server, which was a minor issue that may well have wound up swinging the election to Donald Trump.
Over the weekend, the same Trump who invited Russia to publish hacked Hillary Clinton emails in 2016 invited Russia to invade any NATO country he felt hadn’t paid enough for alliance defense (as though he was being personally cheated). Trump told a MAGA crowd in South Carolina that under a Trump presidency he would not defend that NATO country. He pledged, in essence, to violate U.S. law for which Trump has serially demonstrated his disdain. And for which Trump faces 91 felony counts in multiple jurisdictions.
Trump is “utterly deranged,” tweets Georgetown historian Thomas Zimmer.
Trump told NRA Friday his mass deportation program would begin "within moments" of taking office. To do at scale would likely require 150-200k law enforcement officers, including a private army of red state ntl guard he'd deploy into blue states More here. https://t.co/khc6t72xmH
Cool Hand Luke once said, “Sometimes nothing can be a real cool hand.” And nothing is what Republicans have to offer. So they hope hearings on Joe Biden’s age will do to him what Benghazi and “But her emails” hearings did to Hillary Clinton.
Axios tells us what we already know about the GOP’s fall strategy:
House Republicans are activating a weekslong, perhaps monthslong, plan to keep questions about President Biden’s mental state in the spotlight, Axios has learned.
The big picture: The GOP planning includes hearings and possibly even subpoenas for documents and recordings.
Why it matters: Sources close to House GOP leaders are blunt that they don’t think it even matters what they find. These sources think that any fight will make the White House look bad — and keep a huge Biden vulnerability in the headlines.
Next, we’re told, House Republicans plan to seek testimony from Hur — and would ask him both about how Biden’s storage of sensitive documents could have hurt national security, and about the president’s mental acuity in the interview.
If I was as conspiracy-minded as MAGA Republicans, I might believe they were complicit in Hur’s dropping those comments into his report for just this purpose. They knew the press would pounce or at the very least both-sides Trump’s and Biden’s ages. The New York Times and other news outlets are today as willing to help the GOP as they were to promote George W. Bush’s disastrous Iraq invasion. It’s no wonder Krugman is worried.
The Senate passed a $95 billion national security package to aid Israel, Ukraine and other U.S. allies early Tuesday morning after a monthslong debate that has deeply divided congressional Republicans.
The bill passed 70 to 29, after 22 Republicans joined Democrats in approving the aid.
God immediately told House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) to reject the Israel aid because the package wasn’t harsh enough on strangers in the land. Johnson dismissed it premptively Monday night.
“In the absence of having received any single border policy change from the Senate, the House will have to continue to work its own will o these important matters,” Johnson said in a statement. “America deserves better than the Senate’s status quo.”
Johnson’s statement comes after he and other House leaders helped torpedo an earlier version of the legislation that includes sweeping border security measures and other reforms.
Romney: Now, I know that the shock jocks and online instigators have riled up many in the far reaches of my party. But if your position is being cheered by Vladimir Putin, it's time to reconsider your position. pic.twitter.com/5c0haSFwi9
The whiny voice of God Johnson is hearing is Donald Trump’s, if not Russian President Vladimir Putin’s speaking through Donald Trump.
“These past few months have been a great test for the US Senate, to see if we could escape the centrifugal pull of partisanship and summon the will to defend Western Democracy when it mattered most,” Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) said after the bill passed. “Today, the Senate has resoundingly passed the test.”
That’s a test MAGA Republicans in the House mean to fail. Deliberately.
Ukraine funding has become unpopular among GOP base voters, and Trump said at a recent rally he would encourage Russia to do “whatever the hell they want” to NATO nations that he views are not spending enough money on defense. Trump also explicitly opposed the foreign aid package, saying in a recent social media post that he believes aid should be given as a loan.
That’s because profit and loss, winners and losers, are the only lenses through which Trump the Shallow views the world: What’s in it for me?
Bolton: I would say to Marco, if you don't think trump is serious about getting out of NATO, then why did you recently co-sponsor legislation requiring approval by two thirds of the house and the senate before president can withdraw from NATO? pic.twitter.com/zpWnD5Hm3e
House Democrats are exploring using a discharge petition to go around Johnson’s announced blockade, the Post reports. They would need “at least four signatures from Republicans supportive of Ukraine funding” to introduce the petition before the end of the month.
Any Republican who signs would draw a primary challenge this time around or next. Still, Democrats have about 14 Republicans not seeking reelection they might persuade to take a principled stand before leaving. But signing would end whatever future political plans they might have in the Republican Party, not to mention attract death threats against them and their families from an unforgiving MAGA cult.
Democrats’ dishcarge efforts, the Post explains, could also face reservations from their own caucus.
Its path would still be tricky in the House, given that some Democrats have objected to the Israeli government’s handling of the war in Gaza, where most homes have been destroyed or damaged, more than 12,300 children have been killed and a quarter of the population is starving, according to the United Nations. Enough Republicans would need to support the bill to make up for those Democrats who would not vote for the bill over the aid to Israel.
Bringing the legislation to the floor through a discharge petition — which requires 218 members to support it — would avoid Johnson having his fingerprints on the proposal amid calls by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and others to remove him as speaker if he puts a Ukraine funding bill on the House floor for a vote.
Greg Sargent points to a new ABC News-Ipsos survey in which Donald Trump “gets substantially less blame for killing the bipartisan border security deal” Republicans killed last week “than any other major actor in that drama” (The New Republic):
Biden strongly supported the deal, while Trump explicitly and repeatedly called on Republicans to kill it. He expressly asked for the blame for its death to be directed at him. As the measure appeared to be dying, numerous Republicans said openly that Trump was the reason for it, even suggesting that he demanded its demise to give himself an issue against President Biden. Trump himself didn’t bother trying to hide this motive.
Unreconstructed royalists
Yet as president Biden will get the blame, Trump knows. He wants his weapon for the fall campaign. A booming economy and falling inflation no longer work for him. But fear of the Other? It’s as reliable as a knife when your pistol runs out of bullets.
That same Ipsos poll finds Americans trust Trump over Biden to handle immigration by 44 percent to 26 percent: Here Biden gets blame for what’s happening at the border and also for the failure of Congress to improve the situation after Trump commanded Republicans not to.
[…]
No matter how many times Republicans insist the executive can “shut down the border” by himself, the Great and Glorious Donald J. Trump also presided over numerous border crises and even released huge numbers of migrants. Congress largely created this situation. It could make all this better, but as last week showed, it won’t.
Johnson and his caucus of unreconstructed royalists are not serious either about the border or aid to Ukraine and Israel. Fealty to their liege-lord is everything for the power they believe Trump will bring them in a second term. His subjects will need new red hats with ’47’ on them. Trump himself seeks a crown and the immunity from prosecution he believes comes with it.
Update: See Ryan Grim’s account of the Senate vote, of Chris Van Hollen’s speech (he voted yes), and the dire conditions in Gaza created by the far-right extremists in the Netanyahu government. Whatever pressure Washington is applying to Israel to allow humanitarian aid into Gaza is not working. Children are already starving to death.
This isn’t on some obscure corner of the internet. It’s on Newsmax which is watched by many MAGA Republicans and on which many GOP elected politicians appear:
Salcedo: Americans witnessed what some are dubbing the Satanic Super Bowl, including this moment where someone called Ice Spice made what some call satanic hand gestures pic.twitter.com/SRKOBzB25m
Here is their first video. Highlights the best of President Biden & that it launched on Super Bowl day is perfect. Give them a follow below and share the link with all the young people you know. This is is how we’re going to win. Brilliant move.
People are worried about Biden’s mental acuity but this man is on the Armed Services Committee
Steve Benen points out that this man has access to very important defense information. I think that’s a big mistake:
Over the course of just three years, Sen. Tommy Tuberville has made quite a name for himself. The Alabama Republican is perhaps best known for launching an unprecedented, 10-month blockade, preventing confirmation of U.S. military leaders, but that’s not the right-wing senator’s only notable contribution.
But let’s also not forget that Tuberville has shared a variety of curious thoughts about foreign policy in general and Russia’s attack on Ukraine in specific. Two years ago this month, the Alabaman insisted that Vladimir Putin launched an invasion in order to acquire “more farmland,” because “he can’t feed his people.” The idea that Russia was incapable of feeding its population was plainly wrong, though the GOP senator apparently didn’t know that. (In the same public appearance, Tuberville complained that China’s economy has surpassed the United States’, which also wasn’t even close to being true.)
Two years later, Tuberville is taking a firm stand against U.S. security aid to our Ukrainian allies, and he turned to social media last week to explain why:
“Last night’s [Tucker Carlson’s] interview with Putin shows that Russia is open to a peace agreement, while it is DC warmongers who want to prolong the war. That is why I’m voting to stop 60 BILLION MORE of our tax dollars to this conflict.”
Right off the bat, it’s worth pausing to appreciate the apparent fact that Tuberville considers Russia’s authoritarian leader a credible source. Putin said he’s open to peace, and Tuberville, relying on his vast expertise, is inclined to take the dictator’s rhetoric at face value and give him the benefit of the doubt.
As truly ridiculous as this was, however, let’s not brush past the fact that, according to the senior senator from Alabama, “it is DC warmongers,” and not the Kremlin, “who want to prolong the war.” In other words, Tuberville could hold Putin responsible for Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, but instead, the Republican is inclined to blame officials in his own country.
All of which leaves me with a lingering question: Why, exactly, is Tommy Tuberville still on the Senate Armed Services Committee?
The man is intellectually challenged and I’m not just being snarky. He’s really dumb and he seems to get dumber every day. I honestly think he’s capable of anything simply because he’s clueless. He’s not the first brain dead Senator but I think he may be the first one who is completely uncontrollable by his staff or any of the other Senators. What can be done about it I don’t know but this is a bad situation.
JV Last has a very interesting look at the “age problem” in today’s Bulwark that you should read in its entirety if you have the time. He points out all the usual stuff about Biden, who has always been gaffe prone, the stutter etc and points out that Trump is having many similar gaffes and “senior moments” on the trail so the issue in reality is a wash. We have two old candidates and that’s just how it is. But then he explores why this has become such a focus of the campaign, even before the Hur report:
Again, the issue is not the discussion of Biden’s age but the disproportionate focus on it. It’s worth speaking clearly about the reasons for this dynamic among Republicans, among Democrats, and in the press.
For Republicans, Biden’s age is just about the only true thing they can attack him on. In early 2023, it looked like the economy would be a liability for the president. But with solid growth, low unemployment, rising wages, and tamed inflation, it’s looking strong enough now that Trump is preposterously trying to claim credit for the stock market reaching new highs.
Immigration and the border will be a major Republican line of attack this year. But Biden recently agreed to tougher border security and asylum laws, and congressional Republicans rejected it at the behest of Donald Trump. The political attack relies on lying that Biden wants “open borders.”
Meanwhile, attacks on Biden’s son Hunter have fallen flat, because he’s not in government, has no apparent influence, and the accusations against him basically amount to Imagine Hunter did what Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump actually did.
Biden’s age, however, offers Republicans a line of attack with a basis in fact, and it plays into voters’ existing concerns.
Age talk is a double-edged sword: In emphasizing Biden’s age, Republicans also inherently lower expectations for Biden, including for debates. Typically, campaigns try to lower expectations for their own candidate, setting up post-event spin that they outperformed. With Biden, his opponents insist he’s a drooling dementia patient who can’t string a sentence together, then he waltzes over that low bar, as in the 2020 debates.
I think that’s worth looking at. Here’s Biden today, employing something that’s going to be vitally important: humor:
He also discusses the Democrats who are currently calling for the smelling salts like a bunch of Aunt Pittypats:
Some elements of the Democratic coalition have always disliked Biden and they now wish he’d step aside for a more progressive candidate. Some worry about Biden’s re-electability, and wish he’d step aside for a younger candidate. But there’s nothing close to a consensus alternative among Democrats, Vice President Kamala Harris’s net approval is even lower than Biden’s, and he’s running, so it’s moot anyway.
As a result, Democrats’ Biden age discourse is often second- or third-order. There’s concern about his age among voters, yes, but more expressions of concern about that concern. There isn’t enough, there’s too much, you’re not allowed to say it, you won’t shut up about it, etc.
For example, the New York Times quotes Obama strategist David Axelrod lamenting that the special counsel’s comments on Biden’s memory go “to the core of what is plaguing Biden politically.” Interestingly, the Times article introduces Axelrod as “one of the Democratic Party’s leading figures warning about how voters view Mr. Biden’s age.” Note the language: not warning that Biden’s age means he might not be up to the job, but warning that voters see it as a negative.
Last excuses Axelrod and his ilk here for simply saying what democratic strategists need to be concerned about but I disagree. it’s Axelrod and his ilk self-righteously trying to place themselves above the petty concerns of Democratic strategists to preen for the public about what dispassionate observers they are. They are running with the media pack. There are always Democrats who for personal or professional reasons are ready to puff themselves up as being smarter than the alleged hacks who are trying to get the candidate elected.
I don’t know what David Axelrod has against Biden but he’s been hostile to him his whole term. Maybe his old boss Barack could have a chat with him. This is about the future of the world.
This brings up the media and he makes a smart observation. The sheer volume of Trump scandals creates a distortion. Since the media thinks being fair and balanced means they have to offer equal negative coverage to each candidate this is what happens:
To make the levels of negative coverage remotely similar, Biden’s age and mental acuity have to, on their own, balance out many things (including Trump’s age and mental acuity). Think of it this way:
So coverage in the press often inflates Biden’s age as an issue and effectively downplays the importance of Trump’s malfeasance, since there’s so much of it.
That’s absolutely the case. But I also believe that the media is subject to right wing propaganda, particularly if it is snarky and nasty. It just turns them on and you can feel it when it happens. Trump’s schtick long ago stop having that effect but Biden’s “age problem” is fertile ground for this febrile type of pile-on and it creates a group think that many of them seemingly can’t resist. You saw it in living color at the disgraceful press conference last Friday.
The fact is that barring some unpredictable health event, these are the two candidates. And as Last writes:
[I]f you think old and sometimes forgetful is worse than or equal to old, sometimes forgetful, corrupt, bigoted, anti-democracy, criminal, serially lying, and encouraging political violence, or that these things deserve approximately equal attention, that’s nuts.
He’s right. It’s nuts. And it’s going to take some unnecessary heavy lifting to get past the Democratic hand-wringers and the press to make that clear. It should be necessary but it is.
Thank goodness Trump’s going to build a big dome over the whole country so we won’t need any
As we all, know, the biggest story in the world is the breaking news that President Joe Biden is old. Sure 9/11 was something of a big deal and the war in Iraq and the global pandemic required all of our attention for a time, but this is the most important news of our lifetime, maybe anyone’s lifetime and there’s no telling when, or if, the nation will ever recover. Still, it’s probably important to at least pay a tiny bit of attention to other things that are happening in the world just in case they might also be affected by Biden’s age in some way.
In fact, we probably should be just a little bit curious about what the former Fox News celebrity Tucker Carlson was doing in Moscow last week interviewing Russian president Vladimir Putin. Carlson has demonstrated his affinity for Putin for years now and is commonly extolled on the Russian state television channels as a model American with all the right ideas. Back in March of 2022, Mother Jones obtained a copy of a Kremlin memo with talking points for the media:
“It is essential 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,” advises the 12-page document written in Russian. It sums up Carlson’s position: “Russia is only protecting its interests and security.” The memo includes a quote from Carlson: “And how would the US behave if such a situation developed in neighboring Mexico or Canada?”
(People like Carlson used to be called “useful idiots.”) Russian state media has followed those instructions and for the past two years has featured Carlson’s commentary regularly. It’s therefore not all that surprising that he would be granted the coveted interview with Putin.
As it turns out the interview ended up mostly being a twisted history lesson from Putin with Carlson sitting there like a potted plant with a feigned fascinated expression on his face. The point of Putin’s tutorial was to explain why Russia has every right to invade Ukraine and anywhere else he might fancy.
Putin went to great pains to explain why it was the victims in WWII who made Hitler do what he did, specifically the people of Poland whom he blamed for balking at Hitler’s invasion of its country. The entire thrust of the conversation was a very thinly veiled threat to invade Poland. The Polish government certainly heard it that way. The foreign minister posted this on Friday:
It's not the first time the Russian dictator V. Putin blames 🇵🇱, invaded by the USSR on 17.09.1939, for the outbreak of the #WWII. We are used to paranoid justifications for Russia's invasion of 🇺🇦 in 2022. What’s shocking is that this time they are enabled by an 🇺🇸 journalist.
He’s right. It isn’t the first time. He’s been saying it for years now and it’s one reason why the NATO alliance has not only been more unified than ever, they’ve welcomed in Finland — another country that shares a border with Russia and is definitely on Putin’s wish list. Sweden has also applied for membership but is still being held up by Russia-friendly Hungary under the leadership of authoritarian dreamboat, Viktor Orban. (There is some hope that this last impediment will be lifted in the near future.) These are countries which had long resisted joining the alliance but moved quickly to do it when Putin expanded his invasion of Ukraine in 2022. They see the writing on the wall.
There’s been a ton written about the right’s attraction to Putin for reasons that range from affinity with his macho whiteness and adherence to “traditional values” (homophobia and misogyny) to an appreciation of his willingness to crack down on dissent. He’s their kind of guy. And we know that the man who leads their party, Donald Trump, admires him greatly because he says so all the time. When Putin invaded Ukraine in 2022, Trump was very impressed:
Here’s a guy who’s very savvy … I know him very well. Very, very well. By the way, this never would have happened with us. Had I been in office, not even thinkable. This would never have happened. But here’s a guy that says, you know, ‘I’m gonna declare a big portion of Ukraine independent’ – he used the word ‘independent’ – ‘and we’re gonna go out and we’re gonna go in and we’re gonna help keep peace.’ You gotta say that’s pretty savvy.”
He pays lip service to the idea that Putin is so afraid of Trump that he would never make a move without his permission but the truth is that Trump not only doesn’t care that Putin invaded a sovereign country, he is actively hostile to Ukraine, which he has been persuaded to hate for a variety of reasons many of which were likely put in his head by Putin himself. And as we know, he’s even more hostile to the NATO countries at least partly for the same reason.
He’s been opposed to the alliance for years, mainly because he never understood what it does and why the US should be a part of it. He even admitted it on the trail once back in 2016, saying “I said here’s the problem with NATO: it’s obsolete. Big statement to make when you don’t know that much about it, but I learn quickly.”
Whatever he may have learned came up against his unwillingness to ever admit he was wrong so he transformed his critique to the only thing he understands: money. He has repeatedly threatened to pull out of NATO because the other countries aren’t “making their payments” as if they’re members of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago beach club in arrears on their membership dues rather than a mutual defense alliance in which each country has agreed to spend a certain amount on its national defense.
Over the weekend he went further,however, and said something truly dangerous and unhinged:
Trump: One of the presidents of a big country stood up and said, Well, sir, if we don't pay and were attacked by Russia, will you protect us? I said.. No I would not protect you. In fact, I would encourage them to do whatever the hell they want. pic.twitter.com/2RPVDFZIXy
This kind of loose talk is dangerous and stupid coming from a man who was once president of he United States and is running again. People believe him when he says something like that, not because they can’t take a joke or don’t know that he’s full of hot air, but because it’s entirely believable that he would do exactly that. Everyone knows he doesn’t care about America’s allies and he has made it clear over and over again that he sees no real benefit to them beyond a possible pay out. He posted this on Sunday:
That’s a completely meaningless demand which indicates that even after four years as president, Trump is still as shallow and vacuous as he was the day he was inaugurated.
It’s no doubt a coincidence that he made these comments within days of the Carlson interview with Putin. I find it hard to believe that Trump slogged through that tedious conversation or understood what Putin was talking about. But you can bet that Putin heard Trump and rubbed his hands together with glee. If only the American people heard him just as clearly.
