Russia, Russia, Russia

Three stories in the news demonstrate Putin’s continued reach and influence in our dysfunctional U.S. politics.

Two useful idiots for Putin, images courtesy of Fox

Russia is in the news in three not great ways.

First, in an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper, House Intelligence Committee Chair, Republican Mike Turner of Ohio, finally agreed with what Democrats and many independents have been warning about for some time: Russian propaganda has made its way into the U.S. and infected a good chunk of the GOP’s base.

Ya’ think?

Second, Turner’s frank statement coincided with a disturbing report by the Washington Post that also confirmed many suspicions. In private conversations, Donald Trump revealed that, if elected, he would seek to end the war in Ukraine by pressuring Kyiv to give up territory. Trump believes that would be a “face saving” move that would satisfy Putin.

Appeasement much?

Third, independent presidential candidate RFK, Jr. went on a podcast and parroted actual Russian war propaganda, including the false narrative that Russia had to invade Ukraine to “de-Nazify” the Ukrainian government. 

This guy, sheesh.

Russia’s disinformation machine is in full swing for this election. Today, I’ll take a closer look at each of these developments.

“Uttered on the House floor.”

There are still a number of Republicans who understand the threat that Russia poses and how it is manipulating the GOP and American public opinion to achieve its goals. Rep. Mike Turner (R-OH) is among them.

It ought to be far bigger news that the chair of the House Intelligence Committee has admitted that Russian propaganda has now seeped into the base of the Republican party. In a CNN interview over the weekend, Rep. Turner agreed with his party’s chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX), who blamed conservative media outlets for the fact that “Russian propaganda has made its way into the United States.” McCaul added that “unfortunately … it’s infected a good chunk of my party’s base.”

“Oh, it’s absolutely true,” Turner said of McCaul’s remarks. “We see, directly coming from Russia, attempts to mask communications that are anti-Ukraine and pro-Russia messages, some of which we even hear being uttered on the House floor.”

“I mean, there are members of Congress today, who still incorrectly say that this conflict between Russia and Ukraine is over NATO, which of course it is not,” Turner said. “Vladimir Putin having made it very clear, both publicly and to his own population, that his view is that this is a conflict of a much broader claim of Russia, to Eastern Europe, and including claiming all of Ukraine territory as Russia’s.”

Turner believes that this is fundamentally a battle between authoritarianism and democracy—and he is correct—but the Russian propaganda, “to the extent that it takes hold,” has made it far more difficult to get Republicans leaders and voters on board. 

This acknowledgement by GOP leaders in the House that Russian propaganda drives much of the Republican foreign policy, while woefully belated, does mark a critical point for the party. To date, the GOP has failed to come to terms with how thoroughly compromised it has become by Russia, from its presidential nominee’s long and shady financial ties to the Russian oligarchy, to Russian agents feeding disinformation to willing purveyors of it in Congress like Rep. James Comer (R-KY), to the parroting of Russian disinformation by its leaders online and, yes, now on the House floor.

“We need to stand up for democracy. We need to make certain that we know that authoritarian regimes never stop when they start an aggression. Ukraine needs our help and assistance now and this is a very critical time for the U.S. Congress to step up and provide that aid,” Turner declared.

He of course is referring to a long-stalled $60 billion Ukrainian aid package, without which President Zelenskyy has warned Ukraine will lose the war to Russia. While big majorities in both chambers of Congress support the aid package, it has been tied up for months as extremists first sought to condition it to increased border security, only to scuttle the entire border deal at the eleventh hour because Trump needed chaos at the border to be a continued political weapon for his presidential campaign.

Now the aid still remains in limbo because Speaker Mike Johnson, at the request of Trump and over threats from the far-right to oust him should he dare to allow a vote, has blocked it for months from coming to the House floor. Johnson may need to turn to Democrats yet again, this time for protection for his position as Speaker, should he permit the Ukraine aid vote when Congress returns from its most recent recess and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (Q-GA) raise her motion to vacate the chair again to set it for a vote. 

This isn’t the first time Turner will have drawn the ire of his fellow Republicans. Earlier this year, he released a cryptic statement about a “serious” threat from Russia, which turned out to be related to Russian plans to put nuclear weapons in space, and demanded the White House declassify all information about it. The far-right accused Turner of stirring the pot to garner support for the war against Russia in Ukraine, and he is sure to face further condemnation for his accusation that they are parroting Russian propaganda talking points in the halls of Congress. 

But someone from within the party finally had to say it, and the twin statements from the chairs of the House Intelligence and House Foreign Affairs Committees ought to carry significant weight.

“They want a way out.”

Trump has long boasted that he could end the war in Ukraine in 24 hours, but he has never provided any specifics about this absurd claim. Now some reporting by the Washington Post confirms what many had assumed: that peace would be bought through massive territorial concession by Ukraine.

As the Post wrote,

Trump’s proposal consists of pushing Ukraine to cede Crimea and the Donbas border region to Russia, according to people who discussed it with Trump or his advisers and spoke on the condition of anonymity because those conversations were confidential. That approach, which has not been previously reported, would dramatically reverse President Biden’s policy, which has emphasized curtailing Russian aggression and providing military aid to Ukraine.

Privately, Trump has said that he thinks both Russia and Ukraine “want to save face, they want a way out,” and that people in parts of Ukraine would be okay with being part of Russia, according to a person who has discussed the matter directly with Trump.

This idea is not only dangerously misguided, because it would actually reward Putin for his aggression (big Neville Chamberlain “Peace in our Time” vibes here), it actually provides Putin with a strong reason to continue to fight on, hoping that there is a change in the Oval Office that will achieve his ends. By undermining Ukraine with irresponsible talk of land concessions, Trump is prolonging the war and the bloodshed.

Trump’s plan would also fall on deaf ears in Ukraine. After all, Russia has already said it plans to annex lands beyond these two regions, and that all of Ukraine is really just part of the motherland. President Zelenskyy has emphasized he would never accept the surrender of any Ukrainian territory to Russia, and in any event, there’s no guarantee that Russia won’t simply regroup and seize even more territory later, just as Hitler did after taking the Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia, even while promising that it was the last territorial demand he would make in Europe.

Uh huh.

Trump has always been part of Putin’s long game, and the Russian despot probably can sense he is tantalizingly close to achieving everything he has always wanted through a weak and realigned America. A Trump presidency might even destroy NATO as an alliance and invite the next war, as Trump has as much as promised by saying he’d allow Russia to “do whatever the hell they want” to any allies who didn’t pay what Trump believes is their fair share. 

So much for Article 5.

With Trump now clearly prepared to sell out the Ukrainian people to appease Putin, it’s no overstatement to say November’s election truly is a choice for international security or an expanded war in Europe.

“He wanted to de-Nazify.”

We’ve known all along that RFK, Jr. is a classic spoiler candidate, whose biggest Super PAC donor is also Trump’s largest Super PAC donor. (Big thanks to Dan Rather, who is still a major source for quality information, for amplifying that disturbing fact to his followers across social media.)

Over the weekend, the director of RFK, Jr.’s campaign in New York state, Rita Palma, said the quiet part out loud, claiming that “Bobby” taking electoral votes from a blue state away from Biden would throw the race to the House of Representatives, which is controlled by the GOP. “So we’re rid of Biden, either way,” she noted with satisfaction.

Now it has become clear that RFK, Jr. has drunk the Kremlin juice, too. In an interview on the Twins Podcast, Kennedy parroted Putin’s key talking points on Ukraine:

“Putin said ‘Look I don’t want to go into Crimea. Let's negotiate a peace,’” Kennedy said. “Alright, and the three things he wanted — he wanted to keep NATO out of Ukraine. That was number one. He wanted to de-Nazify the Ukrainian government….”

Record scratch. De-Nazify?

That sure sounds just like Vladimir Putin’s own “big lie.” The Russian leader had appeared on television in February 2022 stating that his goal was to “demilitarize and de-Nazify Ukraine, as well as bring to trial those who perpetrated numerous bloody crimes against civilians, including against citizens of the Russian Federation.”

This falsely and dangerously equated an independent Ukrainian government—one led by a Jewish president—with the perpetrators of the Holocaust. It both vastly overstated the presence and power of certain far-right extremists in Ukrainian politics while minimizing the horror of the genocidal camps in World War II. 

Now Putin has another useful idiot amplifying that lie.

There are low information Democrats who are attracted to the Kennedy name and his earlier work as an environmental activist. But RFK, Jr. has shown himself repeatedly to be a conspiracy theorist and peddler, especially around vaccine safety and alleged government surveillance using 5G technology and microchips. And now he has also, sadly unsurprisingly, revealed himself as a target and amplifier of harmful Russian propaganda about the war in Ukraine.

An easy mark is an easy mark, and we need to sound the alarm about this one. Like the man he hopes to spoil the election for, RJK, Jr. belongs nowhere near the White House.

Indeed, it’s high time to consider all of the useful fools, willing Russian sock puppets, and U.S. (and European) politicos compromised or otherwise in the pocket of the Kremlin for what they really looking are: domestic assets of a foreign enemy.