On Friday night, Rep. Marjorie Taylor-Greene walked out on stage to the chants of “Putin!” “Putin!” “Putin!”
The Georgia Republican was at an event in Orlando sponsored by the America First Political Action Committee, the brainchild of Nick Fuentes, a white nationalist behind the 2017 neo-Nazi march in Charlottesville, Va., and other anti-democratic forums.
To drum up the crowd’s enthusiasm for Taylor-Greene, Fuentes asked the predominately white male audience, “Can we get a round of applause for Russia?” The crowd answered by chanting the dictator’s name.
Taylor-Greene, unfortunately, is not a political outlier. The Congresswoman is the top Republican fundraiser in the House. In the last year, she has raised $7.5 million.
It used to be that politicians shied away from people like Fuentes, a professed anti-semite who disputes the atrocities of the Holocaust, says women should be denied the right to vote, and yearns for the days of Jim Crow.
But Taylor-Greene appears nonplussed, as do her sidekicks, Rep. Matt Gaetz, Florida, and Rep. Paul Gosar, Arizona.
ON TUESDAY, Putin ordered Russian troops to begin “Phase 2” of the assault on Ukraine. According to Russian military experts, this means a shift to unrestricted warfare that will be bloody and brutal.
On Tuesday evening, a 40-mile-long caravan of Russian tanks and heavy artillery was headed toward Kyiv.
Though the stomach-turning news about Ukraine tests our physical limits, it should embolden our moral resolve to stand firm against such despots.
Though Taylor-Greene seems to have no compunction about aligning with Putin, others are backpedaling.
Former President Donald Trump is now saying he has stood by Ukraine all along.
In Tuesday’s Washington Post, columnist Greg Sargent succinctly recounts the timeline of Trump’s transgressions to Ukraine, including his attempt to shift the blame from Russia to Ukraine for interfering with the 2016 election and then threatening to withhold military aid unless its president, Alexander Zelenskyy, “investigated,” the conspiracy theory.
It was Trump’s efforts to coerce Zelenskyy in exchange for aid that led the House to vote for his impeachment in 2019.
Trump remains the frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024.
It’s a toss-up.
