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On Wednesday, NPR reported that the American Conservative Union, a prominent GOP lobby group, is about to travel to Hungary to hold a Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) event in the domain of an authoritarian strongman who supports Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Viktor Orban, the report noted, has "clamped down on democratic institutions and targeted minority groups" — and is set to give the keynote speech.
Moreover, according to a Reuters report from when the event was initially confirmed, Orban is "a longtime supporter of Russian President Vladimir Putin" and "the European Union has accused Orban, who won re-election by a large margin... of curbing media and judicial independence, enriching associates with public funds and recasting election laws to entrench his power."
Making matters worse, Orban has resisted EU efforts to embargo Russia during the invasion of Ukraine, demanding that Hungary be carved out of any restrictions on importing Russian oil.
Former President Donald Trump himself has praised Orban. Meanwhile, Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson, who has frequently been accused of laundering white supremacist propaganda to a mainstream audience, traveled to Hungary and has defended Orban's authoritarian regime.
CPAC is an important gathering for the American right, with prominent Republican politicians and right-wing media figures frequently in attendance.
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‘Pretty savvy’ DOJ just sidestepped legal battles that have slowed Jan. 6 committee’s probe: legal expert
May 18, 2022
The Department of Justice may have sidestepped the legal battles that have slowed the House Select Committee's investigation of the Jan. 6 insurrection.
Federal authorities opened a new direction in their criminal probe by requesting transcripts of interviews conducted by congressional investigators, and MSNBC legal analyst Glenn Kirschner explained why that move was "savvy."
"I think we've all experienced some frustration because it doesn't look like the Department of Justice has been investigating this the way it would ordinarily investigate, you know, even large-scale conspiracy cases because they don't appear to have been sort of carpet-bombing folks with grand jury subpoenas the way we ordinarily would," Kirschner said.
Kirschner praised DOJ investigators for waiting until the Select Committee had conducted its interviews instead of pursuing the same witnesses.
"If the Department of Justice had gone after everybody with grand jury subpoenas, they probably would have been battling witness after witness after witness, these thousand-plus witnesses," he said. "They would have been battling Congress, who gets which witness first and who has the greater priority. Now what the Department of Justice can do is take a thousand-plus transcripts and they can use that to build their criminal investigation.
"I actually think whether this was by design or happenstance, this may turn out to be a pretty savvy way about investigating the case," Kirschner added, "and let's not forget that the chief investigative counsel for the Jan. 6 committee is frankly a very accomplished prosecutor in his open own right when he served as U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, and I expect this is a really savvy investigation put together by the Jan. 6 Committee."
Watch the video below or at this link.
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New York Times columnist Thomas Edsall on Wednesday shined a light on the conspiratorial religious nationalism that has overwhelmed the Republican Party thanks in large part to former President Donald Trump.
In describing the Trump movement as a "chilling amalgam of Christian Nationalism, white replacement theory and conspiratorial zeal," Edsall argued that their overall goal is "to restore what they see as the original racial and religious foundation of America."
Edsall then quotes a series of experts on Christian Nationalism in the United States who note there are several different strands of it, and that not all of them are explicitly about white supremacy.
Ruth Braunstein, a professor of sociology at the University of Connecticut, tells Edsall that there is a difference between what she calls "white Christian nationalism," which "explicitly fuses whiteness, Christianity, and Americanness," and “colorblind Judeo-Christian nationalism," which "either ignores race or uses colorblind language to describe ideal Americanness."
READ MORE: DOJ transcript request shows criminal probe of Trump allies just moved into the open: legal expert
Robert Jones, chief executive of the Public Religion Research Institute, tells Edsall that Christian Nationalist attitudes show up most clearly in polling on immigration, where they're mostly likely to describe immigrants as "invading" the United States.
"Among all voters, according to Jones, 29 percent believe that immigrants are invading our county; among Republicans, it’s 60 percent; among Democrats, 11 percent; among QAnon believers, 65 percent; among white evangelicals, 50 percent; and among white non-college voters, as pollsters put it, 43 percent," writes Edsall.
Edsall concludes with a warning about Christian Nationalists potentially resorting to violence, and he cites "their ambition to restore an imagined past, by any means necessary."
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