Thom Hartmann connects the dots: the Republican Party is now controlled by Vladimir Putin. The Republicans do only what is in the interest of Putin. His goal, as it was in 2016 and 2020, is to get Trump elected. Trump is subservient to Putin. Trump wants to block American aid to Putin. So does House Speaker Mike Johnson, who called a two-week recess as Ukrainian forces are running out of ammunition. How do you define GOP these days? Guardians of Putin? Goons of Putin? Other ideas?
There’s little doubt that Russian President Vladimir Putin has succeeded in achieving near-total control over the Republican Party. They’re gutting aid to Ukraine (and have been for over a year), working to kneecap our economy, whipping up hatred among Americans against each other, promoting civil war, and openly embracing replacing American democracy with authoritarian autocracy.
Putin has declared war on queer people, proclaimed Russia a “Christian nation,” and shut down all the media he called “fake news.” Check, check, check.
Over the past two years, as America was using Russia’s terrorist attacks on Ukraine to degrade the power and influence of Russia’s military, Putin was using social media, Republican politicians, and rightwing American commentators to get Republican politicians on his side and thus kill off US aid to Ukraine.
The war in Gaza is making it even easier, with Putin-aligned politicians like Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) tweeting: “Any funding for Ukraine should be redirected to Israel immediately.”
Most recently, the three-year “Biden bribery” hysteria Republicans in the House have been running — including thousands of hits on Fox “News” and all over rightwing hate radio — turns out to have been a Russian intelligence operation originally designed to help Trump win the 2020 election. The Russian spy who’d been feeding this phony info to “Gym” Jordan and James “Gomer Pyle” Comer is now in jail.
Russia’s battlefield, in other words, has now shifted from Ukraine to the US political system and our homes via radio, TV, and the internet, all in the hopes of ending US aid to the democracy they’ve brutally attacked.
And the momentum is following that shift: Russia is close to having the upper hand in Ukraine because of Putin’s ability — via Trump and Johnson — to get Republican politicians to mouth his talking points and propaganda.
Now, with Speaker “Moscow Mike” Johnson shutting down the House of Representatives so nobody can offer a discharge petition that would force a vote on Ukraine aid (and aid for Palestinian refugees, Taiwan, and our southern border), it’s becoming more and more clear that Vladimir Putin is running the Republican party via his well-paid stooge, Donald Trump.
I say “well paid” because Donald Trump would have been reduced to homelessness in the early 1990s if it weren’t for Russian money, as both of his sons have said at different times. He’d burned through all of his father’s estate, even stealing a large part of it from his siblings. He’d lost or hidden almost two billion dollars running a casino.
As Michael Hirsch noted for Foreign Policymagazine:
“By the early 1990s he had burned through his portion of his father Fred’s fortune with a series of reckless business decisions. Two of his businesses had declared bankruptcy, the Trump Taj Mahal Casino in Atlantic City and the Plaza Hotel in New York, and the money pit that was the Trump Shuttle went out of business in 1992. Trump companies would ultimately declare Chapter 11 bankruptcy two more times.”
He’d been forced to repeatedly declare bankruptcy — sticking American banks for over a billion dollars in unpaid bills — after draining his businesses of free cash and stashing the money in places he hoped nobody would ever find.
No American bank would touch him, and property developers in New York were waiting for his entire little empire to collapse. Instead, a desperate Trump reached out to foreign dictators and mobsters, who were more than happy to supply funds to an influential New York businessman…for a price to be paid in the future.
He sold over $100 million worth of condos to more than sixty Russian citizens during that era, and partnered with professional criminals and money launderers to raise money for Trump properties in Azerbaijan and Panama. According to Trump himself, he sold $40 to $50 million worth of apartments to the Saudis.
He then partnered with a former high Soviet official, Tevfik Arif, and a Russian businessman, Felix Sater, who’d been found guilty of running a “huge stock-fraud scheme involving the Russian mafia.”
As the founders of Fusion GPS wrote for The New York Times in 2018:
“The Trump family’s business entanglements are of more than historical significance. Americans need to be sure that major foreign policy decisions are made in the national interest — not because of foreign ties forged by the president’s business ventures.”
Thus, when it came time to run for president, Trump had to pay the price. He and the people around him were inundated with offers of “help” from Russians, most associated directly with Putin or the Russian mafia.
Trump’s campaign manager, Paul Manafort, had been paid millions by Putin’s oligarchs and ran Trump’s campaign for free. Reporters found over a dozen connections between Russia and the Trump campaign, and during the 2016 campaign Trump was secretly negotiating a deal to open a Trump tower in Moscow. Trump’s son and his lawyer met with Putin’s agents in Trump Tower.
Putin’s personal troll army, the Internet Research Agency (IRA) based out of St. Petersburg but operating worldwide, began a major campaign in 2016 to get Trump elected president.
Manafort fed Russian intelligence raw data from internal Republican polling that identified a few hundred thousand individuals in a half-dozen or so swing states the GOP thought could be persuaded to vote for Trump (or against Hillary), and the IRA immediately went to work, reaching out to them via mostly Facebook.
Mueller’s report and multiple journalistic investigations have noted that the most common message out of Russia then was directed at Democratic-leaning voters and was, essentially, “both parties are the same so it’s a waste of time to vote.”
A report from Texas-based cybersecurity company New Knowledge, working with researchers at Columbia University, concluded, as reported by The New York Times:
“‘The most prolific I.R.A. efforts on Facebook and Instagram specifically targeted black American communities and appear to have been focused on developing black audiences and recruiting black Americans as assets,’ the report says. Using Gmail accounts with American-sounding names, the Russians recruited and sometimes paid unwitting American activists of all races to stage rallies and spread content, but there was a disproportionate pursuit of African-Americans, it concludes.
“The report says that while ‘other distinct ethnic and religious groups were the focus of one or two Facebook Pages or Instagram accounts, the black community was targeted extensively by dozens.’ In some cases, Facebook ads were targeted at users who had shown interest in particular topics, including black history, the Black Panther Party and Malcolm X. The most popular of the Russian Instagram accounts was @blackstagram, with 303,663 followers.
“The Internet Research Agency also created a dozen websites disguised as African-American in origin, with names like blackmattersus.com, blacktivist.info, blacktolive.org and blacksoul.us.”
And it appears to have worked in suppressing the potential Black Democratic vote in swing states.
A 2018 bipartisan Senate report found the Russian efforts consequential, as the BBC headline on that analysis summarizes:
“Russian trolls’ chief target was ‘black US voters’ in 2016.”
The news story summarizes:
“A Senate inquiry has concluded that a Russian fake-news campaign targeted ‘no single group… more than African-Americans.’ …
“Thousands of Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and You Tube accounts created by the St. Petersburg-based Internet Research Agency (IRA) were aimed at harming Hillary Clinton’s campaign and supporting Donald Trump, the committee concludes.
“More than 66% of Facebook adverts posted by the Russian troll farm contained a term related to race.
“African-American community voters were discouraged from voting, and from supporting Hillary Clinton.”
Between the information compiled by Oxford Analytica and the details passed along from the GOP to Prigozhin via Manafort, a mere margin of 43,000 votes across a handful of swing states —all mictotargeted by Russia — handed the electoral college to Trump, even though he lost the nationwide vote to Hillary Clinton by almost 3 million ballots.
So now Trump has succeeded in making the entire GOP a party to his long-term debt to Putin and his oligarchs. “Moscow Mike” Johnson has blocked any aid to Ukraine for over a year; the last congressional appropriation for foreign aid was passed in 2022, when Nancy Pelosi ran the House.
Meanwhile, under Trump’s and Putin’s direction, Republicans in Congress are doing everything they can to damage the people of the United States.
They believe it will help them in the 2024 election if they can ruin the US economy while convincing American voters that our system of government is so corrupt (“deep state”) that we should consider replacing democracy with an autocratic strongman form of government like Putin’s Russia. Tucker Carlson is even suggesting that Russia is a better place to live than the US.
They revel in pitting racial, religious, and gender groups against each other while embracing a form of fascism that pretends to be grounded in Christianity, all while welcoming Putin’s social media trolls who are promoting these divisions.
Republican-aligned think tanks are working on Project 2025, a naked attempt to consolidate power in the White House to support a strongman president who can override the will of the people, privatize Social Security and Medicare, shut down our public school system, fully criminalize abortion and homosexuality (Sam Alito called for something like that this week), and abandon our democratic allies in favor of a realignment with Russia, China, and North Korea.
Trump got us here by openly playing to the fears and prejudices of white people who are freaked out by the rapid post-1964 “browning” of America. Putin jumped in to help amplify the message a thousandfold with his social media trolls, who are posting thousands of times a day as you read these words.
Now that Putin largely controls the GOP, today’s question is how far Republicans are willing to go in their campaign to bring the USA to her knees on behalf of Putin and Trump.
— When Congress comes back into session next week, will they take up Ukraine aid?
— Will they continue their opposition to comprehensive immigration and border reform?
— Will they keep pushing to privatize Social Security with their new “commission”?
— Will they work as hard to kneecap Taiwan on behalf of President Xi as they have Ukraine on behalf of Putin?
— Will they continue to quote Russian Intelligence propaganda in their effort to smear President Biden?
— Instead of just 7 Republicans going to Moscow to “celebrate” the Fourth of July, will the entire party move their event to that city like the NRA did? Or to Budapest, like CPAC did?
Or will the GOP suddenly start listening to the rational voices left in their party, the Mitt Romneys and Liz Cheneys who still believe in democracy (even if they want to gut the social safety net and turn loose the polluters)?
Ghouls Of Putin
you heard it here first —
In the first paragraph it says, “Trump wants to block American aid to Putin.” I think you meant to say to block American aid to Ukraine.
One of the first things I noticed about the Hamas attack on Israel is that it was like moving a bishop into position to put the king in check: you know your opponent has to take the bishop. So why did Hamas decide to act when they did? They must have known there was no possibility of checkmate. Who assured them that this was a good move?
I have wondered if there was not a Putin influence here, meant to create havoc and mayhem on Biden’s watch instead of later after the election. Could he have offered Hamas some outcome that is hidden from us? Anyone could have foreseen the Israeli response and the worldwide reaction to it.
All of this smacks of conspiracy, but we must admit to the existence of conspiracy, especially where oligarchy is concerned. I do not like to wonder out loud at possible conspiracies, but there is a lot of smoke.
I kind of thought something similar. Trump would say he had the ability to stop the war….after all, Jared got along with NuttyYahoo very well? The whole timing of events seemed purposeful.
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div dir=”ltr”>Educati
Thanks for this great post, Diane!
YES, Dump and so many of his cronies are getting Rubles from Putin.
“Rational” is not a term applicable to Republicans. “Mendacious”, “acquisitive” and “vulgar” DO come in handy when describing them.
Accuracy, people, always strive for accuracy.
How very peculiar- A post touting Hartmann’s skill at connecting the dots between Putin and Project 2025 and, we learn in another post today that mainstream media isn’t covering things in the right way.
Half of the money for Project 2025 (total funding for the project is $22 mil.)
is reportedly from Leonard Leo. Roger Serverino (his wife heads the Judicial Crisis Network) is VP for Domestic Policy at the Koch’s Heritage Foundation. The person who leads the Heritage Foundation was formerly the President of the conservative Wyoming Catholic College. Severino was described yesterday by the Hill as planning to be back in the WH with Trump (he was an official in Trump’s Dept of Health and Human Services).
Severino’s goal is policy that expands restrictions on abortion.
Project 2025 is described as a plan to attack birth control and, to surveil women.
Between 2022 and 23, the Catholic Church spent $14 mil in Kansas and Ohio to defeat referendums protecting abortion.
Now- the peculiar (and, highly offensive) part- I get ridiculed for connecting the dots between Koch and politicized, right wing Catholics.
And, btw, Severino is involved in Project 2025.
Liberal Catholics, who support their church, should create and pay to run an ad that informs the public that Project 2025 is the antitheses of Christianity.
The ad should call out the Catholic Conferences’ politicking and make clear the policies and laws align with authoritarianism, with more money for the rich and the libertarian view that people should die in the gutter like feral dogs. The ad should show the words of solace that Biden gives to the suffering taken from his religious faith which is at odds with right wing politics. As, contrast, the ad should follow-up, with a screen showing Trump holding an upside Bible and walking the red carpet at the Knights of Columbus shrine. Then, the ad should communicate that the long-time former Knight Supreme Commander was a legislative aid to a racist.
The last line could be Jefferson’s warning about despots and religion aligning in all ages and in all countries.
In case you’ve missed this article, Linda.
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/5050/knights-of-columbus-crisis-pregnancy-centres-anti-abortion-us-daf/
Just as with vouchers and charter schools, some people are hauling in the cash.
Thanks Christine
Before I go to bed this evening, I’ve promised myself I will forward the report to 40 individuals. It’s the least that I can do for women today.
The report is stunning it its perversity- the amount of money spent to destroy reproductive liberty.
To tell women that if they get an abortion, it will turn their partners, gay. WTH?
I noted the report mentioned American Principles Project (co-founded by Robert P George). APP was one of the top spenders in Ohio in Aug. attempting to destroy democracy via ballot box.
Each time a church member or anyone defends the American Catholic Church or its right wing-affiliated organizations, they embolden activities that destroy democracy and rob women and gay people of their rights and dignity.
There is an article in The Washington Post that covers a former Congressman who is now living in France in what is calls a “safe house” away from Trump. He is there, basically, because he fears as others do what will happen in this country if Trump is re-elected. It is worth the read at the following Url.
https://apple.news/ANNmCjlLBT5S010sICOJ2Fw.
Thom Hartmann’s neo-McCarthyite rants are soooooo twentieth century.
Explain. I thought Trump the natural heir to tail gunner Joe.
Vladimir Putin’s efforts to destroy the United States are hardly “soooo twentieth century”. They are very much a present and ongoing threat, 24 years into this century.
Jrstheta,
For sure, Putin is meddling again in our elections. The Republicans relied on a source for their impeachment activities. The source said that the Ukraine energy company Burisma gave both Joe and Hunter Biden $5 million. But the FBI recently arrested the source and said he was carrying out instructions from Russian intelligence agents. It was that claim that was central to attacks on “the Biden crime family.” The claim was a Putin plant in his effort to rely his puppet, Trump.
Oh, 100%
What still amazes me is how Republicans, who spent the 1950s and 1960s
calling people “commies”, shrug off the obvious fact that they are
aiding and abetting the enemy.
They really hate the U.S.
Not like in my youth at all.
Thom Hartmann conjures the same ol’ Red Scare tropes familiar to those living during the Cold War in an effort to marginalize/silence anti-war voices opposing the excalation of tensions between the U.S./NATO and Russia. We need de-escalation, diplomacy, and detente, not more pro-war propaganda. (BTW, Russiagate was a hoax implemented by the Clinton campaign to avoid accountability for losing to Trump. Clinton’s “pied piper strategy” backfired. Russian interference had no effect on the outcome of the 2016 election.)
You would’ve loved appeasing Hitler, too.
Putin’s a thug who is pals with the other thugs across the globe. Putin invaded a sovereign nation and he’s still there, killing the population. Want to do business with thugs? Would you do business with the mob?
No end to this UNTIL
The Russian marauders are driven from every square centimeter of Ukraine, including the Crimea and Donbas, and Putin, his Mafia State henchmen are standing in the doc at the International Court of Criminal Justice, and Russian assets have been seized wherever possible to rebuild and repay Ukrainians for the depredations and destruction of hospitals, schools, apartments, cultural monuments, civilian infrastructure, and so much more.
No negotiation. No retreat.
Slava Ukraini! Heroyam slava!
THE fundamental basis of international law is at stake.
Oh, and it is WAY PAST TIME for NATO and the US to bomb the Kerch Strait Bridge into the ocean.
BTW, RUSSIAGATE barely captured a tiny portion of the traitorousness of the decades long work that Donald Trump has done as an active asset of the Russian government, going all the way back to 1984.
A name for these GOP-MAGA traitors? Benedict Donalds?
I like the moniker!
Arnold moved to England. When can we book tickets to Russia for trump’s nuclear family and for Tucker Carlson?
Volume V of the Senate Intelligence Committee investigative report on the 2016 election:
“the Russian government engaged in an aggressive, multifaceted effort to influence, or attempt to influence, the outcome of the 2016 presidential election…Manafort’s presence on the Campaign and proximity to Trump created opportunities for Russian intelligence services to exert influence over, and acquire confidential information on, the Trump Campaign. Taken as a whole, Manafort’s highlevel access and willingness to share information with individuals closely affiliated with the Russian intelligence services, particularly Kilimnik and associates of Oleg Deripaska, represented a grave counterintelligence threat…”
“Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the Russian effort to hack computer networks and accounts affiliated with the Democratic Party and leak information damaging to Hillary Clinton and her campaign for president. Moscow’s intent was to harm the Clinton Campaign, tarnish an expected Clinton presidential administration, help the Trump Campaign after Trump became the presumptive Republican nominee, and undermine the U.S. democratic process…While the GRU and WikiLeaks were releasing hacked documents, the Trump Campaign sought to maximize the impact of those leaks to aid Trump’s electoral prospects. Staff on the Trump Campaign sought advance notice about WikiLeaks releases, created messaging strategies to promote and share the materials in anticipation of and following their release, and encouraged further leaks. The Trump Campaign publicly undermined the attribution of the hack-and-leak campaign to Russia and was indifferent to whether it and WikiLeaks were furthering a Russian election interference effort.”
Click to access report_volume5.pdf
And if you’ve not read it before, here’s Adam Silverman, a national security expert, on that investigative report:
https://www.balloon-juice.com/2020/08/19/the-real-takeaway-from-the-senate-select-committee-on-intelligences-bipartisan-report-on-russias-active-measures-campaign-and-interference-in-the-2016-election-they-all-knew-before-they-voted-to/
It’s quite clear…Trump and Republicans (and the NRA) are enthralled by and beholden to Putin.
What’s the penalty for TRE45ON?
Not much is new. The GOP has a penchant for selling out to European dictators. They were Hitler’s party in 1940 and they’re Putin’s party today.