Republicans are putting democracy and Ukraine in danger again while helping Vladimir Putin, refusing to pass Ukraine aid in 2023. At what point will the media finally call out what’s behind the Republican pro-Russia stances?
Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), who told a private crowd he is Moses and proudly announced his plot to obstruct justice by blurring the faces of Capitol insurrectionists to avoid prosecution by the DOJ, is sending the House home on December 15th for Christmas. Lawmakers have told a reporter “there is no way House will pass Ukraine aid in 2023,” so they will not pass aid to Ukraine before the holiday break.
“UKRAINE: Lawmakers tell me there is no way House will pass Ukraine aid in 2023. @SpeakerJohnson
is firm on House leaving by Dec. 15 and no Senate deal in sight,” Bloomberg Congressional reporter Erik Wasson shared.
This move is being widely criticized. It is “grossly irresponsible. The GOP is making the world more dangerous and strengthen our enemies with each passing day,” host of Deep State Radio David Rothkopf wrote while “Jay in Kyiv” observed, “The value of being a US ally is collapsing.”
Why Are Republicans Opposing Ukraine Aid?
The question is, WHY. What’s behind this? Because it’s not new. House Republicans have given a lot of excuses for their lack of support for Ukraine, including trying to suggest that the U.S. can’t possibly take care of its own and thus can’t afford to help Ukraine, which begs the question what bills are they putting forth to actually help non-wealthy people with kitchen table issues? The answer to that is none.
On Tuesday, there were reports that Republican Senators Mitt Romney and Lindsey Graham melted down into a shouting frenzy over their insistence that their border policy be tied to aid to Ukraine. Then migrants were shown to have found failures in the wall between Mexico and the U.S., leading to easy access (a point which might justify why Democrats don’t want to take Republicans’ border policy on board). But it’s also noteworthy that Republicans have refused to fund the border to the levels the Biden administration has requested, and then have used the ensuing chaos to justify using the border as a “negotiating” tactic.
What’s behind all of the smoke and mirrors? For the Republican Party, it points in one direction. It has since 2016. And yet it’s not even an issue being brought up in the media discussions about 2024.
Russia And The Republican Party
It wasn’t enough, apparently, for Donald Trump to get the Republican Party platform changed in 2016 to be less helpful to Ukraine all the while his campaign was hanging out and employing affiliates of Russia and coquettishly “admitting” that their June 2016 Trump Tower meeting with a Russian lawyer, arranged by Donald Trump Jr., was about getting dirt on Hillary Clinton.
Russiagate was a “hoax,” they said.
Then Trump Attorney General Bill Barr issued a memo he suggested summarized Robert Mueller’s investigation into the 2016 Trump campaign’s relationship with Russia, but the memo did not actually summarize Mueller’s report. In fact, the memo was misleading. But you know what they say about a lie getting around the world before the truth can catch up.
The actual Mueller Report was damning and confounding, given that Donald Trump is somehow running for president again openly pushing pro-Putin positions.
Mueller found substantial evidence that Trump obstructed justice in the Russia investigation, but he concluded that a sitting president cannot be charged with a crime, making achieving the office of the presidency catnip for would-be or already-busted criminals, which doesn’t seem great for democracy.
During the 2016 campaign, Republican operative Jesse Benton used $100,000 from a Russian national and funneling $25,000 to the Trump campaign, for which he was sentenced to 18 months in prison. There was no evidence that the Trump campaign went along with this plot.
A Senate report determined that Russia used the NRA to provide access to Republicans.</> Additionally, a Senate Democrat report suggested that the Russians used the NRA to funnel money to Trump in 2016.
There’s a lot more where that came from, which indicates gaping holes just inviting foreign influence due to U.S. campaign finance laws. This vulnerability could and does impact both parties. It’s bad for democracy no matter what.
But as House Republicans head home refusing to fund Ukraine’s fight for Western democracy, it’s relevant that the Republican party and its operatives have been rolling in foreign money, Russia especially, in the last decade. Their unwillingness to fund Ukraine while their party leader champions Putin shouldn’t be this hard to add together. At the very least, this party is compromised and acting against Western democracy.
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