Posted on 04/19/2024 9:13:17 AM PDT by Kazan
The House speaker’s comments wrecked one of the far right’s most ridiculous, reprehensible tropes.
It was a remarkable moment: After introducing a package of bills that includes military aid to Ukraine, Mike Johnson flatly told reporters on Wednesday that enabling Ukraine to defend itself is in the best interests of America and the world. This surprised a lot of people who had wrongly assumed the House speaker was effectively functioning as a stooge for Vladimir Putin—and Donald Trump—and would thus slow-walk Ukraine aid to death before ever allowing a vote on it.
Johnson’s new stance has attracted a good deal of positive attention. But I want to highlight an aspect of it that’s been overlooked because it’s an important tell about the true state of MAGA ideology and what it’s demanding of Republicans these days.
“I really do believe the intel and the briefings that we’ve gotten,” Johnson said, in a moment that became a mini-speech. “I think that Vladimir Putin would continue to march through Europe if he were allowed. I think he might go to the Balkans next. I think he might have a showdown with Poland, or one of our NATO allies.” If so, he added, we might find ourselves sending troops to defend allies from Putin later.
Did we really hear the speaker say that he believes what our intelligence services have told him about the long-term consequences of cutting off aid to Ukraine?
This is a direct challenge to the MAGA worldview in multiple ways. Johnson is treating Putin as the aggressor in the Russia-Ukraine conflict and acknowledging his broader imperialist designs, which is heresy to some MAGA Republicans. But he’s also flatly declaring that on these matters, the deep state is very much to be believed.
A big MAGA conceit is the idea that a nefarious deep-state network of senior federal bureaucrats, nongovernmental experts, and technocratic and managerial elites lurks behind the push to fund Ukraine—and that it’s making up lies about Russia’s war to create a pretext to fulfill a broader set of sinister globalist aims. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene recently tweeted this:
The Ukraine scam is up.
If our Republican majority in Congress funds Joe Biden’s war against Russia on behalf of Ukraine (because he’s a puppet on strings) then Republicans are tools of the foreign war loving deep state.
This is probably MAGA’s most elaborate exercise in up-is-down totalitarian-style propaganda of all: Biden is being manipulated by a deep-state “scam”—i.e., the idea that Ukraine is worth defending—to carry out a war against Russia, which has been magically transformed from aggressor to victim.
The horrible atrocities against Ukraine the world has witnessed, Putin’s declarations that the sovereign democracy of Ukraine isn’t a real country and shouldn’t exist, the consequent effort to erase it with murderous conquest—all of that disappears in this fog of MAGA propaganda. This sort of thing is why even some senior Republicans suggest that a number of House GOP lawmakers are operating under the influence of Russia.
Johnson’s affirmation that he believes our intelligence services on these matters is a direct rebuke to those MAGA tendencies.
The bills that GOP leaders have introduced—which are scheduled for votes on Saturday—are also surprisingly faithful to the intel agencies’ apparent understanding of this geopolitical moment. They include $61 billion in aid to Ukraine, $26 billion for Israel, funding for Taiwan, and humanitarian assistance, including for victims in Gaza, which is essential to winning the support of Democrats who will be needed when right-wing Republicans oppose the package.
Greene had threatened to hold a motion-to-vacate vote to oust Johnson if he moved forward with Ukraine aid. If so, there are signs that Democrats will vote to save Johnson if Ukraine aid passes. Either way, Johnson appears prepared to brave MAGA’s fury—and the word of U.S intelligence services is a key reason for it.
To be clear, there’s nothing wrong with healthy skepticism of what our intelligence services are saying. That’s reasonable. After all, they contributed to whipping up the ultimately false assertions about weapons of mass destruction that helped justify the Iraq War.
But reasoned skepticism is not what MAGA Republicans are offering. Instead, they’re pushing carefully choreographed propaganda that seeks to entirely erase Russian agency from the story of the conflict and to transform Ukraine’s allies into the true warmongers here.
Greene’s effort at this is obvious. Then you have Donald Trump Jr., who tweeted that the aid bills will “hurt my father’s ability to negotiate an end to the war between Russia and Ukraine” if he’s reelected president, whereas “globalist” Republicans who support the package want indefinite war.
But that’s absurd. As international relations professor Nicholas Grossman shows, the idea behind rhetoric like this—a ruse that other MAGA Republicans regularly employ—is to recast our choice as one between “peace” (which we’d attain by refraining from aiding Ukraine) and “war” (which we’re facilitating with Ukraine aid). In reality, withholding aid is not antiwar at all; it merely makes Russian conquest more likely to continue and succeed (which is perhaps the whole point of this framing).
Even supposedly shrewder MAGA Republicans play a version of this sleazy game. Ohio Senator J.D. Vance recently wrote a New York Times op-ed arguing that Ukraine is losing and our aid won’t give it what it needs in equipment (or soldiers) to prevail. Democrats have effectively rebutted those claims. But Vance also slips into his piece the idea that in providing aid, “we”—meaning the United States—would “prolong a long and bloody war,” and suggests the primary obstacle to peace is President Biden’s unwillingness to negotiate toward it.
But how does Vance himself envision the war ending? Couldn’t it mean Russia gobbles up much or even all of Ukraine? Vance doesn’t say, beyond insisting we should forget about Ukraine regaining all of its stolen territory. Thus he too frames the choice as one between peace (ending aid) and war (continuing it). Presto: Opposing the package suddenly becomes the antiwar position, and being for the package becomes the pro-war one. That’s slippery, dishonest rhetorical trickery that you’d think is below Times standards.
This is the sort of deceitfulness that Johnson has effectively taken on. By affirming what abandoning Ukraine would really mean, and stressing that the deep state is telling lawmakers the truth about it, Johnson has for the time being taken a stance against one of MAGA’s most cherished—and most toxic—propaganda tropes. No wonder Greene is beside herself with rage.
“Mike Johnson flatly told reporters on Wednesday that enabling Ukraine to defend itself is in the best interests of America and the world.”
Translates too:
Mike Johnson flatly told reporters on Wednesday that enabling Ukraine to defend itself is in the best interests of “American defense contractors and the new world order”.
“Any support of Ukraine is investing in the greatest Corruption of everything on this planet that has ever existed.
America no longer exports Freedom and Democracy (so-called), all we export now is one and only one thing:
CORRUPTION”
Best statement I have heard in years and years now. Thank you.
“It is time for Biden and/or Zelensky to call for an armistice followed by plebiscites.”
No war profits in that kind of common sense.
Zelensky wanted to come to the peace table. Biden said no.
Blame everyone but the Western globalist elite, Deep State and our corrupt political class...
I thought Christians were supposed to stand on moral principles and virtues even if it causes them persecution and sacrifice?
This man is not a Christian. He has sold his soul for status, greed, and profit.
for now spend our money here and now in America
It's not surprising that TNR wants to straw-man the objections to the endless flow of money into the most corrupt state in Europe with the false dichotomy that a)if you're against pouring a river of US taxpayer money into Zelensky's (and the Biden regime's) pockets that b) you're Putin's stooge!
That's ridiculous, but it's the their story and they're sticking to it.
The fact is, we have urgent, even existential problems right here at home that are going unaddressed, and the very same people who claim that we don't have the funds to secure our borders against an invasion force of millions, are demanding an unending, limitless flow of funds to a foreign power in a war that cannot be won and should never have been fought.
Trump, once again, has it right, though this writer seeks to caricature and mis-state his views, which he made clear less than 24 hours ago. This is the distinction that this writer and the foreign-policy blob in Washington are desperate to obscure is this: Trump isn't pro-Putin, he's pro-America, and wants to put America's interests first.
The other item that the Democrat machine and the legacy media (but I repeat myself) are working so hard to distract from is that the Biden regime owns this mess. It isn't a problem of Johnson's making, nor of Trump's. This all happened on Biden's watch, and the entire apparatus of the uniparty are all spinning furiously to try to muddy up their domestic opposition. It's kinda sorta working on some of the weaker-minded, as we can see here on FR.
Here's the winning message: secure our border first, use our allies and diplomatic power to stifle any irredentist tendencies that Putin or anyone else might have, and return to the peace and prosperity that we enjoyed during Trump's first term.
I was banned for not worshiping this false prophet (elsewhere).
Including the main guy who foolishly exclaimed: “I think he’s a Christian!”
😳😱🤯🙄🙄🙄😱🤯😳
I constantly told people there to reject the cult of personality.
This song was prophetic - sadly I hear that the band didn’t heed their own advice.
There are actually several points made in the lyrics; which fell on deaf ears.
https://youtu.be/7xxgRUyzgs0?si=1cGufUFeE-9P1U1L
Even mentioned “Nobel Prize” which was given to Obama with NO accomplishment.
“I tell you 1+1 makes 3”
Again, spot-on.
Thank you for sharing that.
You’re welcome.
There’s been an avalanche of stupidity especially since then.
And now it’s bearing the easily-predictable expected rotten fruit.
Yeah -and all you Nazi supporters would be the first to demand Biden invade Mexico if China decided to annex it which is exactly what Obama and Biden did with their coup.
If Putin is sooo evil about Ukraine why didn’t he take it when Trump was in office? Because Trump would stop him? Or is it because Trump said NATO was corrupt, needed to pay their fare share and no expansionist policies.
What changed when Xiden - your glorious leader got into office?
Wake up fools - you’re the same ones happy to lock down because of the scary flu!
Well he has Trump’s support
Trump says he stands with Speaker Mike Johnson amid threat to oust him
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/04/12/donald-trump-mike-johnson-meeting/
And the most damning lyric from the song:
“You gave me power in your God’s name!”
Scary, how accurately that foretold the future.
If Putin is AS evil as our corrupt (and DIE infested) intelligence agencies claim then we should be sending troops NOW and sent them at the start of the war to shut this thing down fast.
That’s what a real military person would say to do. Not drain US resources and destroy our economy by mega funding another nation that’s had ZERO progress in repelling Putin and literally destroyed not only their country but their very own government and way of life into a one party totalitarian state.
This is not to stop Putin - this is part and parcel of creating a globalist communist state.
“And now it’s bearing the easily-predictable expected rotten fruit.”
Sure is, and with the full support of the gullible masses. That is the problem. Far too many blinded by unquestioned loyalty and misguided ideology. They just cannot see the forest for the trees. So they beg for their own demise and take everyone else down with them at the same time.
“Scary, how accurately that foretold the future.”
Absolutely!
Well -— Son of a bitch....
We know what’s going on, same shit Biden and others were doing. Money laundering.
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