Congressman Mike Turner, R-Ohio, chair of the U.S House Intelligence Committee, recently stated that members of his own caucus (MAGA/Republican) have repeated Russian propaganda on the floor of the United States House of Representatives. Congressman Mike McCaul,R-Texas, has seconded that view.
Congresswoman Margorie Taylor Greene (Performance Artist-Georgia), otherwise known as “Moscow Marge” by former congresswoman Liz Cheney, along with others of the Putin/Trump wing of the GOP repeat Vladimir Putin’s words verbatim. No filter. Between Trump and Putin, Greene and her comrades are lost in a wilderness of lies.
That the Republican Party, once the home of Ronald Reagan and other staunch opponents of the Soviet Union would now be the home of a bevy of what the old Soviet KGB called “useful idiots” is astonishing.
Now you have former president, currently private citizen Donald Trump heavily influencing U.S. foreign policy (a violation of the Logan Act?) through his congressional toadies on behalf of his Russian puppet master, Vladimir Putin.
What Trump and other MAGAs like Greene, Matt Gaetz and our own Neville Chamberlain wannabe, Joe Kent, seem to miss entirely is the fact that when historians and analysts say Putin would not stop with Ukraine they are basing that view on the fact that Russian imperialism is a perennial thing. Just when you think it might be dead, like Rasputin, it blooms again.
Russians have asserted for hundreds of years their right to rule over pretty much the known world. Putin’s claim to rule is just the latest incarnation. He is serious about it. Russians have always been brutally serious about it, a fact not lost on their newly free neighbors who sought the protection of NATO soon after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Russian disinformation is dangerous enough, but the homegrown, Donald Trump variety is even more perilous. Repeated claims of “election fraud” regarding the 2020 election have undermined public confidence in U.S. elections by half the population. As the late Sen. John McCain said, “They’re doing Vladimir Putin’s work for him.”
Trump and his MAGA pals are now mongering the fear that illegal aliens are pouring over the southern border to cast votes in the 2024 election for Joe Biden. A study of 23 million votes in the 2016 election cited by the conservative CATO Institute in their April 11, 2024, commentary “The Right’s Bogus Claims about Noncitizen Voting Fraud” revealed a possible but not proven 30 cases of noncitizen voting.
MAGA letter writers to The Chronicle defend Trump as a victim who would “drain the swamp.” Far from Trump being persecuted, if any other American stood accused of breaking the laws Trump has been accused of breaking they would be in jail. Yet he shows nothing but contempt for the grace he has been given.
Lewis County voters might pay attention to the chorus of former Trump Administration officials who worked closely with him and have repudiated him, warning “he is not fit for the office” of president. They all say the same thing.
“Donald Trump is the swamp.”
Marty Ansley
Cinebar
