What the hell is going on in the Republican Party?
Trump gutted his own Russia sanctions law, cut a diesel deal with Putin, and is now talking about carving up the world with Putin and Xi. Congress has the power to stop him right now.
Why are Thune and Johnson still on vacation?
Donald Trump told reporters this week that he’s ready to sit down with Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping in Shenzhen next month — apparently, a modern-day Yalta conference to carve up the world — and thatUkraine’s president may not be invited to the meeting that will decide his nation's fate.
That came just three days after Trump spat on the grave of Lindsey Graham by signing an executive order waiving every operative section of the Lindsey Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act that both houses of Congress had passed on an overwhelmingly bipartisan basis.
Gone are the 500 percent tariffs on Russian goods, the secondary sanctions on Putin’s oil customers, and the requirement that the sanctions stay in place until Russia made peace on terms Ukraine accepted. All destroyed on a Friday night while Congress was out of town. And now he’s publicly, shamelessly defending it and essentially daring Republicans in Congress to do anything about it.
This all came a week after one of Trump’s roughly every-two-weeks-since-he-was-sworn-in phone calls with Putin, presumably to get his instructions on how to destroy American democracy, gut our government, and hand Europe over to the revived USSR that Putin fantasizes about.
Putin apparently ordered Trump to end diesel sanctions and thus send him billions of dollars to build more drones and glide bombs to kill more Ukrainian children, and Trump said, “Sir, yes sir!”
The Wall Street Journalnoted that the same call was where Putin suggested the meeting with Trump and Xi, and that a former Russian intelligence officer described it to the paper as a “new Yalta,” three strongmen dividing the planet into spheres of influence.
While Democrats and average Americans are furious, a tiny handful of Republicans have timidly objected.
Graham’s sister Darline, who now holds his Senate seat, says she doesn’t trust Putin and wouldn’t have waived a thing in the law. Ted Cruz called it a “mistake,” as if Trump had made a math error. Don Bacon said Trump is prolonging the war, although the reality is that he may have just handed Putin a victory this winter. Putin and the Russian media certainly think so.
The Australian billionaire Murdochs, through their papers the Wall Street Journal and the New York Post, have objected: the Journal’s editorial boardsaid that Trump had “stuck a shiv” in the back of Graham’s legacy, and the Post warned that a Yalta 2 summit could trigger a full-on Republican revolt that could even end in impeachment.
Which raises the most important question in America today: If Murdoch’s papers can speak the truth to the GOP out loud, can call for action, why can’t a single Republican leader in Congress find a similar ounce of spine?
Tom Nichols, a lifelong Republican and a professor emeritus at the Naval War College, wrote in The Atlantic this weekend that Trump hasconclusively turned America into an ally of the Russian Federation. The Lincoln Project, founded and run by Republicans,is saying the same thing. This should have nothing whatsoever to do with partisan politics.
We’re literally watching the plot of The Manchurian Candidate play out on the evening news, except that in Richard Condon’s story the asset gets stopped before the convention, and in ours he’s sitting in the Oval Office and systematically dismantling our country while handing Ukraine (and probably, soon, the Baltic states) to his master, Putin.
My father’s Republican Party believed that America was good and the USSR was a threat to both peace and democracy. Even the GOP in Reagan’s day, for all its sins, saw the Soviets and other autocrats worldwide for what they were.
The party of Mike Johnson and John Thune, however, appears to have decided that the fate and future of American and European democracy is simply negotiable, and that it’s just fine that Putin is now running our foreign policy.
Look at what the man they’re protecting right now, today, has already done to make America more like Russia.
Federal ICE/HSI agentsraiding the home of a sitting member of Congress, an echo of Putin’s early years, three weeks before an election. Threatening election officials with imprisonment if they don’t do his bidding. He has masked, armed thugs terrorizing people and killing American citizens, just like Putin’s secret police.
Like Hitler, Stalin, and Saddam, he hangs40-foot banners with his face from federal buildings in D.C. (withour tax dollars) and is slapping his grotesque name on anything he can reach. And let’s not forget the threats against broadcasters’ licenses, the defiance of federal court orders, and the open contempt for the Hatch Act: is Trump freelancing as a wannabe dictator, or is Putin coaching him with those regular phone calls?
Putin illegally invaded Ukraine, in violation of international law and common decency. He has no legitimacy, and he was deeply in trouble as Ukraine had been taking down his ability to refine and sell oil. Trump has given him both legitimacy and an economic lifeline, and America got absolutely nothing out of it.
Nothing.
Except that we’ll now get to watch the rape and destruction of the physically largest democratic nation in Europe. Perhaps that excites Hegseth and represents a “great new business opportunity” for Witkoff and Jared, but it should make every American blindingly furious.
This is how Trump’s master, Putin, runs his wars. The UN’s Independent International Commission of Inquiry has documented torture by Russian forces that they callwidespread and systematic.
Rape, they confirmed, was used as a weapon of torture in nearly every Russian detention center in occupied Ukraine that they examined. Both men, women, and children of both genders have been raped by Russian soldiers in occupied villages while their families were forced to listen from the next room: this is part of Putin’s instructions to his men. It’s official Russian policy.
The Ukrainians are terrified, as are many Americans who live and work in that country.Watch this interview with Phil Ittner, a seasoned, hardened professional war correspondent for decades who’s seen the worst of the worst around the world, as he breaks down describing what’s happening in Kyiv right now.
Ukraine has verified the names ofmore than 19,500 children kidnapped and shipped into Russia; Yale’s Humanitarian Research Lab puts the real number closer to 35,000 in a country, Russia, where child pornographyis not a crime.
The International Criminal Court — whichTrump is trying to punish with sanctions right now —issued an arrest warrant for Putin’s abduction and exploitation of these Ukrainian children, but apparently that’s just fine with Trump and the Republicans in the House and Senate.
That’s the guy Donald Trump defers to, sucks up to, and wants to join in Shenzhen to redraw the map of the world.
That’s the monster JD Vance was holding up for admiration when he told a Turning Point crowd in April that cutting off weapons to Ukraine wasone of the proudest moments of his vice presidency. It gives a whole new meaning to the word “vice.”
Meanwhile, writing the checks to finance Trump and his lickspittle Republicans is the richest man on Earth.
Elon Musk hasput $366 million into this midterm cycle, $276 million of it in the last three months alone, all since five corrupt Republicans on the Supreme Court legalized billionaires buying judges and politicians. This is beyond Gilded Age corruption; it’s something entirely new in the American experience.
This is the same Elon Musk the Wall Street Journal reported has beenin regular contact with Putin since late 2022. He once refused to turn on Starlink to prevent Ukraine from hitting Russia’s fleet. It now appears he personally slowed down Starshield to prevent Ukraine from stopping Russia’s torment of Kyiv.
Is this what the five Republicans on the Supreme Court intended when they handed down Citizens United? Justice John Paul Stevens — who’d served in the Navy during World War II —warned in his Citizens United dissent that the decision would’ve given Tokyo Rose’s propaganda broadcasts “free speech” protection; now it’s been extended to Putin and his online trolls.
Stevens’ clerks thought the 2010 reference to 1944 was dated. He was just early.
So, where the hell are the Republicans? The House isn’tscheduled to return until after the election, and the Senate is on vacation, too. Speaker Johnson and Majority Leader Thune could call both bodies back into session tomorrow to impeach this deranged traitor to American values and history, but neither has lifted a finger.
Are they terrified? Or are they in on it with Putin and Trump?
Democrats are essentially powerless; they can give speeches and file bills that Republicans ignore, and write strongly worded letters, but that’s about it. Senator Richard Blumenthal — who co-wrote the Graham Act with Lindsey — was right when he said Trump’s waivers for Russia to sell its oil have nothing to do with national security and “everything to do withsucking up to Vladimir Putin.” But he has no power to stop any of this.
The only people in Washington with the constitutional power to stop this, right now, before the Shenzhen summit and before the next trainload of Ukrainian kids hits the Russian hinterlands and movie studios, are the Republicans who can impeach Trump in the House and convict and remove him from office in the Senate. Now.
Refusing to do so is today’s GOP spitting on the graves of every American who died at Belleau Wood, Omaha Beach, and the Chosin Reservoir so this country would never, ever bend her knee to a dictator.
They can keep calling themselves “Republicans” if they like, but they’ve forfeited the right to call themselves “patriots” or, arguably, even “Americans.”
My dad’s party — and the Republican statesmen of his day like Goldwater and Dirksen — would’ve been on a plane back to Washington the Friday night Trump killed those sanctions, and had an impeachment resolution on the floor by Monday morning.
Even Reagan, who stood in Berlin and told Gorbachev to “tear down that wall,” wouldn’t have recognized a Republican Speaker or Senate leader who let his president hand Moscow a billion-dollar diesel contract paid for with the blood of millions of Ukrainian civilians.
Call Republican legislators — and Johnson and Thune — at 202-224-3121 and demand they explain why they’re not taking this guy out of office the way genuinely patriotic Republicans did with Nixon back in the day.
Ask them if they’re standing with Washington, Lincoln, Eisenhower, Kennedy, and the United States of America, or with Trump’s dear friends Putin, and Xi?
Then ask the same thing of your Republican state legislators, county commissioners, and city council members. If they stay in that party, they’re implicitly endorsing this most historic betrayal of our nation.
What the hell is going on in the Republican Party?
Trump gutted his own Russia sanctions law, cut a diesel deal with Putin, and is now talking about carving up the world with Putin and Xi. Congress has the power to stop him right now: why are Thune and Johnson still on vacation?
Yesterday Donald Trump told reporters he’s ready to sit down with Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping in Shenzhen next month — apparently, a modern-day Yalta conference to carve up the world — and thatUkraine’s president may not be invited to the meeting that will decide Ukraine’s fate.
That came just three days after he spit on the grave of Lindsey Graham by signing an executive order waiving every operative section of the Lindsey Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act that both houses of Congress had passed on an overwhelmingly bipartisan basis.
Gone are the 500 percent tariffs on Russian goods, the secondary sanctions on Putin’s oil customers, and the requirement that the sanctions stay in place until Russia made peace on terms Ukraine accepted. All destroyed on a Friday night while Congress was out of town. And now he’s publicly, shamelessly defending it and essentially daring Republicans in Congress to do anything about it.
This all came a week after one of Trump’s roughly every-two-weeks-since-he-was-sworn-in phone calls with Putin, presumably to get his instructions on how to destroy American democracy, gut our government, and hand Europe over to the revived USSR that Putin fantasizes about.
Putin apparently ordered Trump to end diesel sanctions and thus send him billions of dollars to build more drones and glide bombs to kill more Ukrainian children, and Trump said, “Sir, yes sir!”
The Wall Street Journalnoted that the same call was where Putin suggested the meeting with Trump and Xi and that a former Russian intelligence officer described it to the paper as a “new Yalta,” three strongmen dividing the planet into spheres of influence.
While Democrats and average Americans are furious, a tiny handful of Republicans have timidly objected.
Graham’s sister Darline, who now holds his Senate seat, says she doesn’t trust Putin and wouldn’t have waived a thing in the law. Ted Cruz called it a “mistake,” as if Trump had made a math error. Don Bacon said Trump is prolonging the war, although the reality is that he may have just handed Putin a victory this winter. Putin and the Russian media certainly think so.
The Australian billionaire Murdochs, through their papers the Wall Street Journal and the New York Post, have objected: the Journal’s editorial boardsaid that Trump had “stuck a shiv” in the back of Graham’s legacy, and the Post warned that a Yalta 2 summit could trigger a full-on Republican revolt that could even end in impeachment.
Which raises the most important question in America today: If Murdoch’s papers can speak the truth to the GOP out loud, can call for action, why can’t a single Republican leader in Congress find a similar ounce of spine?
Tom Nichols, a lifelong Republican and a professor emeritus at the Naval War College, wrote in The Atlantic this weekend that Trump hasconclusively turned America into an ally of the Russian Federation. The Lincoln Project, founded and run by Republicans,is saying the same thing. This should have nothing whatsoever to do with partisan politics.
We’re literally watching the plot of The Manchurian Candidate play out on the evening news, except that in Richard Condon’s story the asset gets stopped before the convention, and in ours he’s sitting in the Oval Office and systematically dismantling our country while handing Ukraine (and probably, soon, the Baltic states) to his master, Putin.
My father’s Republican Party believed that America was good and the USSR was a threat to both peace and democracy. Even the GOP in Reagan’s day, for all its sins, saw the Soviets and other autocrats worldwide for what they were.
The party of Mike Johnson and John Thune, however, appear to have decided that the fate and future of American and European democracy is simply negotiable, and that it’s just fine that Putin is now running our foreign policy.
Look at what the man they’re protecting right now, today, has already done to make America more like Russia.
Federal ICE/HSI agentsraiding the home of a sitting member of Congress, an echo of Putin’s early years, three weeks before an election. Threatening election officials with imprisonment if they don’t do his bidding. He has masked, armed thugs terrorizing people and killing American citizens, just like Putin’s secret police.
Like Hitler, Stalin, and Saddam he hangs40-foot banners with his face from federal buildings in DC (withour tax dollars) and is slapping his grotesque name on anything he can reach. And let’s not forget the threats against broadcasters’ licenses, the defiance of federal court orders, and the open contempt for the Hatch Act: is Trump freelancing as a wannabe dictator, or is Putin coaching him with those regular phone calls?
Putin illegally invaded Ukraine, in violation of international law and common decency. He has no legitimacy, and he was deeply in trouble as Ukraine had been taking down his ability to refine and sell oil. Trump has given him both legitimacy and an economic lifeline, and America got absolutely nothing out of it.
Nothing.
Except that we’ll now get to watch the rape and destruction of the physically largest democratic nation in Europe. Perhaps that excites Hegseth and represents a “great new business opportunity” for Witkoff and Jared, but it should make every American blindingly furious.
This is how Trump’s master, Putin, runs his wars. The UN’s Independent International Commission of Inquiry has documented torture by Russian forces that they callwidespread and systematic.
Rape, they confirmed, was used as a weapon of torture in nearly every Russian detention center in occupied Ukraine that they examined. Men, women, and children of both genders have been raped by Russian soldiers in occupied villages while their families were forced to listen from the next room: this is part of Putin’s instructions to his men. It’s official Russian policy.
The Ukrainians are terrified, as are many Americans who live and work in that country.Watch this interview with Phil Ittner, a seasoned, hardened professional war correspondent for decades who’s seen the worst of the worst around the world as he breaks down describing what’s happening in Kyiv right now.
Ukraine has verified the names ofmore than 19,500 children kidnapped and shipped into Russia; Yale’s Humanitarian Research Lab puts the real number closer to 35,000 in a country, Russia, where child pornographyis not a crime.
The International Criminal Court — whichTrump is trying to punish with sanctions right now —issued an arrest warrant for Putin’s abduction and exploitation of these Ukrainian children, but apparently that’s just fine with Trump and the Republicans in the House and Senate.
That’s the guy Donald Trump defers to, sucks up to, and wants to join in Shenzhen to redraw the map of the world.
That’s the monster JD Vance was holding up for admiration when he told a Turning Point crowd in April that cutting off weapons to Ukraine wasone of the proudest moments of his vice presidency. It gives a whole new meaning to the word “vice.”
Meanwhile, writing the checks to finance Trump and his lickspittle Republicans is the richest man on Earth.
Elon Musk hasput $366 million into this midterm cycle, $276 million of it in the last three months alone, all since five corrupt Republicans on the Supreme Court legalized billionaires buying judges and politicians. This is beyond gilded age corruption; it’s something entirely new in the American experience.
This is the same Elon Musk the Wall Street Journal reported has beenin regular contact with Putin since late 2022. He once refused to turn on Starlink to prevent Ukraine from hitting Russia’s fleet. Who it now appears personally slowed down Starshield to prevent Ukraine from stopping Russia’s torment of Kyiv.
Is this what the five Republicans on the Supreme Court intended when they handed down Citizens United? Justice John Paul Stevens — who’d served in the Navy during World War II —warned in his Citizens United dissent that the decision would’ve given Tokyo Rose’s propaganda broadcasts “free speech” protection; now it’s been extended to Putin and his online trolls.
Stevens’ clerks thought the 2010 reference to 1944 was dated. He was just early.
So, where the hell are the Republicans? The House isn’tscheduled to return until after the election, and the Senate is on vacation, too. Speaker Johnson and Majority Leader Thune could call both bodies back into session tomorrow to impeach this deranged traitor to American values and history, but neither has lifted a finger.
Are they terrified? Or are they in on it with Putin and Trump?
Democrats are essentially powerless; they can give speeches and file bills that Republicans ignore, and write strongly worded letters, but that’s about it. Senator Richard Blumenthal — who co-wrote the Graham Act with Lindsey — was right when he said Trump’s waivers for Russia to sell its oil have nothing to do with national security and “everything to do withsucking up to Vladimir Putin.” But he has no power to stop any of this.
The only people in Washington with the constitutional power to stop this, right now, before the Shenzhen summit and before the next trainload of Ukrainian kids hits the Russian hinterlands, are the Republicans who can impeach Trump in the House and convict and remove him from office in the Senate. Now.
Refusing to do so is today’s GOP spitting on the graves of every American who died at Belleau Wood, Omaha Beach, and the Chosin Reservoir so this country would never, ever bend her knee to a dictator.
They can keep calling themselves “Republicans” if they like, but they’ve forfeited the right to call themselves “patriots” or, arguably, even “Americans.”
My dad’s party — and the Republican statesmen of his day like Goldwater and Dirksen — would’ve been on a plane back to Washington the Friday night Trump killed those sanctions, and had an impeachment resolution on the floor by Monday morning.
Even Reagan, who stood in Berlin and told Gorbachev to “tear down that wall,” wouldn’t have recognized a Republican Speaker or Senate leader who let his president hand Moscow a billion-dollar diesel contract paid for with the blood of millions of Ukrainian civilians.
Call Republican legislators — and Johnson and Thune — at 202-224-3121 and demand they explain why they’re not taking this guy out of office the way genuinely patriotic Republicans did with Nixon back in the day.
Ask them if they’re standing with Washington, Lincoln, Eisenhower, Kennedy, and the United States of America, or with Trump’s dear friends Putin and Xi?
Then ask the same thing of your Republican state legislators, county commissioners, and city council members. If they stay in that party, they’re implicitly endorsing this historic betrayal of our nation.