History will record this as the week the GOP formally kowtowed to Vladimir Putin.
This was the week when otherwise sane Republicans, who’d spent months drafting a bipartisan Senate bill that linked major border reforms to more military aid for Ukraine, threw in the towel.
These senators abandoned the bill under heavy pressure from Donald Trump, who prefers to keep the border boiling as an election issue. Far worse, Trump has shown he buys Putin’s rationale for crushing Ukraine.
What’s so disgusting about the cave-in is that most of these senators — unlike the mindless MAGA mob in the House or the blinkered Trump — understand the strategic risk of abandoning Kyiv.
On Monday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell urged his Republican colleagues to show strength by backing the bill — and Ukraine — because “our adversaries, Moscow, Beijing, and Tehran are working together to undermine us.” Yet, he and his colleagues suddenly decided to swallow an aid cutoff with hardly a dissenter.
“We cannot walk away from Ukraine now,” President Joe Biden said on Tuesday.” If we don’t stop Putin’s appetite for power … he won’t limit himself to Ukraine.”
Craven GOP senators effectively responded: “We don’t care. Drop dead, Ukraine.”
If you think I’m exaggerating the cost of the GOP’s kowtow, consider the following: Trump insists he can solve the Ukraine war directly with Putin in 24 hours. He has made clear he supports Russia keeping large parts of Ukraine that it acquired by invading and bombing its neighbor. No doubt, Putin is also delighted at a prospective U.S. aid cutoff at a critical moment when Ukraine is running short of everything.
Displaying total ignorance of Ukrainian history, the former president has said publicly that Russian-speaking areas of Ukraine rightly belong to Russia. Clearly, he has no idea that, before Russia invaded, much of Ukraine was Russian-speaking, having been under Soviet rule for decades. Yet, Putin has bombed Russian-speaking regions relentlessly, killing more Russian speakers than anyone since Hitler, because these Ukrainians do not want to live under harsh Russian imperial rule.
Putin has played Trump for a fool, praising Trump’s 24-hour pledge fulsomely last September. When asked on NBC’s Meet the Press whether he welcomed Putin’s support, Trump said: “Well, I like that he said that. Because that means what I’m saying is right.”
It’s no accident that Trump acolyte Tucker Carlson has been roaming around Moscow this week, apparently invited to interview Putin. Carlson, as you will recall, frequently praises Putin and is often featured on Russian television.
Writing about Carlson’s Moscow visit, the Daily Beast’s Russia expert, Julia Davis, who closely follows all Moscow media, wrote: “Russia’s state TV stooges [talk show hosts] believe a Tucker Carlson-Putin interview will boost Putin at home and help restore Trump to the White House.”
Indeed, the English-language Moscow Times quoted an unnamed Moscow official as saying of the Carlson visit: “Access to an American audience through Carlson during the heated struggle between Biden and Trump is again an opportunity to exert that proverbial influence on the U.S. election, given Carlson’s huge audience.”
No doubt, Putin is also delighted at a prospective U.S. aid cutoff at a critical moment when Ukraine is running short of everything.
