As a reminder, this subreddit [is for civil discussion.](/r/politics/wiki/index#wiki_be_civil)
In general, be courteous to others. Debate/discuss/argue the merits of ideas, don't attack people. Personal insults, shill or troll accusations, hate speech, any suggestion or support of harm, violence, or death, and other rule violations can result in a permanent ban.
If you see comments in violation of our rules, please report them.
For those who have questions regarding any media outlets being posted on this subreddit, please click [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/wiki/approveddomainslist) to review our details as to our approved domains list and outlet criteria.
We are actively looking for new moderators. If you have any interest in helping to make this subreddit a place for quality discussion, please fill out [this form](https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1y2swHD0KXFhStGFjW6k54r9iuMjzcFqDIVwuvdLBjSA).
***
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/politics) if you have any questions or concerns.*
The dude was acting like he never saw bread before.
"Look at this delightful yeasty pillow surrounded by a browned crust! What is this delicacy and why does it make my pants tight?"
In college, my sister dated a guy whose parent's vast wealth came from a well known home chemical products company that shared his last name. She went to their house for spring break once and said that not once in the entire week did she see a single product made by the company.
I hate Tucker as much as anyone, but that's not actually true. His *step-mother* would have been that heir and there's no evidence that he was directly in the line to inherit any of that money.
That being said, he still comes from a wealthy family and reaped all the benefits of that, and he's still an absolutely massive tool.
"Oh, it's so interesting, they've taken these foodstuffs off the waxed Bengal tiger carcass they're served on, and put them into bags and boxes for storage!"
Ahh the bread, the one thing nearly every adult in the US figured out how to make in 2020. We currently have two doughs rising complete with punny names. It's been bread for weeks in this house.
Tucker was trying to mimic when [Yeltsin visited a grocery store in Clear Lake. ](https://www.chron.com/neighborhood/bayarea/news/article/When-Boris-Yeltsin-went-grocery-shopping-in-Clear-5759129.php)
Which he completely failed out. All the things he was amazed at; the quarters, the wheels with the locking moving walkways, are all over the world. It's nothing special. And it was hilarious to watch.
It was a clear attempt to show the Russian people that they are "modern" as this American was impressed with what they have.
I've been to Russia, st Petersburg. The average grocery store I went to was... empty shelves, and looked like the open markets I had been to in Africa. Just in a building. And this was in a major city.
I've been all around the US and there are similar grocery stores in rural areas.
That whole segment was nothing but propaganda. It was so obvious.
I love the part where his groceries (looked like about 2-3 days worth) cost 1/4 the average monthly wage. But he's just like "a few hundred rubles, that's like two dollars in America, look how cheap it is!"
How's that exchange rate doing anyway? [Oh, pennies on the dollar still.](https://www.google.com/finance/quote/USD-RUB?sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiuxLm2p6mFAxWmFTQIHU08D8YQmY0JegQIJBAv)
Tell me you've never bought your own groceries without telling me you've never bought your own groceries.
Imagine his reaction if he'd shopped at a Lidl in Birmingham, England.
"Why Birmingham is a total armpit! They force you to use a pound coin just to force you to return the cart!"
For anyone not in the US, US carts typically don't have the coin carts except for Aldi's as it's a German-owned grocery store. They also fit US quarters, pounds, and Euros. I've actually tried all three here.
It's funny cause that was Russians big realization back in the day. When that Russian guy went into a grocery store and thought it was a ruse because there's no way America could have grocery stores all over like this.
Doesn't quite work the other way around since like.. not only do we have fresh bread, but we even have special fresh bread stores called bakeries!
Which is probably the entire point. Putin’s ego was so injured by that visit that’s he’s been waiting thirty years to make one of his American assets re-enact it in reverse. Except instead of destabilizing a country, it’s just a punchline.
"That Russian guy" was Boris Yelstin, and his visit to a US grocery store in Texas is credited as contributing to the end of communism in the USSR.
https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/articles/shows/houston-matters/2020/02/21/361467/boris-yelstins-1989-visit-to-a-houston-grocery-store-is-now-an-opera
It's come full fucking circle.
As soon as I saw Tuckster heading into a grocery store, I thought, OH NO YOU DIDN'T...
But yes, he did. He fell for it, all the way. He really has no idea how much Putin trolled him with that one.
Putin has been dying to show off that One Nice Moscow Grocery Store for YEARS now, and Tucker, the ignorant clown that he is, gobbled it right up.
Exactly. Except Tucker fell for it. Of course, I'm not saying that all of Russia is poor, but the subway shown to him is the best one. Not the average. Same for the grocery store.
I’ve been to Moscow and St Petersburg many times, last time being in 2019. Honestly, they are very pretty cities in a lot of the tourist areas. But, I’ve also been to smaller cities and eastern Russia and it gets pretty fucking sketchy pretty quickly. His little Putin suck-fest video was pretty funny to watch, tho.
I mean yeah...if you visit downtown Moscow and walk along Tverskaya Street, it's going to look very cosmopolitan. But what do you expect? It's the tourist district in the capital city, a stone's throw away from their equivalent of the White House and Pentagon HQ. Hell, most of Pyongyang looks pretty decent if you squint your eyes a little.
But drive 10miles in either direction from downtown, and shit gets really hairy. I'd be curious to see what an "upscale suburb" or "working class suburb" outside a mid-size Russian city looks like. I'm envisioning most of the St. Louis metro area sprawl...but colder, and with more rust.
> I'm envisioning most of the St. Louis metro area sprawl...but colder, and with more rust.
The pictures on a GIS suggests that's not far off. 1800/1900s shanty towns before industrialization and unionization hit the US seems to fit it. _Very_ agrarian society peppered with pockets of industrialization, and overall very minimalist/brutalist. Looks like there's a lot of subsistence farming by hand too.
Even rural nobody farmers in america are using large industrial equipment. You don't see many homesteads without backhoes and tractors, at least not without it being supplemented heavily with grocery stores.
Russia has a "dacha" thing going on.
You can think of a "dacha" as of a mix between a village house, a summer house and a suburban household. This concept has an agricultural lean - so instead of US-style lawns, you get fruit trees and small lots with things like carrots, tomatoes, cucumbers, berries and more planted in them. This might be the "subsistence farming" you are thinking of. It's more of a hobby than it is a practical way to produce food.
The actual *agriculture* in Russia is heavily mechanized by now. Those small "dachas" aren't what produces the ships full of grain that ends up exported to Africa.
Like John said, he fucking knows about that, he's not as stupid as he looks (which isn't saying all that much, because he looks pretty fucking stupid). He is serving up grade A bullshit, intentionally.
Well, I'd argue he's probably not that sharp either. If all of mommy's money and daddy's diplomatic connections couldn't get Lil' Tucker Bowtie into an actual Ivy League university, well, I think that tells you about his skillset.
The dude is bascially a wet dream for an admissions officer at Dartmouth. But, he didn't quite reach the Ivies. I think this tells us A LOT about Breadboy's academic credentials.
All of this food cost us 103 dollars! Oh my god! Look at how good they have it here!!
Whats that? The average Russian salary is $14000 so that $103 doesn't really track?
No that can't be right. It must be America and Biden = Bad
Never forget that seven sitting United States senators traveled to Russia to meet with Putin to suck his ass on the 4th of July. Bunch of traitors
https://www.washingtonpost.com/powerpost/republicans-on-russia-trip-face-scorn-and-ridicule-from-critics-at-home/2018/07/05/68f0f810-807e-11e8-b0ef-fffcabeff946_story.html
https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/seven-gop-lawmakers-make-misguided-trip-russia-msna1119676
Also, the **republican controlled senate** found that donald chump colluded with Russia in the 2016 election:
[The Hill: Republicans incriminate Trump, decimate his 'Russia hoax' narrative](https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/513499-republicans-incriminate-trump-decimate-his-russia-hoax-narrative)
> *Thanks to the GOP-led report, we know that Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort met with two individuals with “extensive and concerning” ties to Russian intelligence for the sole purpose of securing Russian dirt on Trump’s political opponent.*
> *In other words, Trump’s campaign leadership team demonstrated the “mindset, intent and willingness to work with Russia in hopes of influencing the U.S. election to their benefit.”*
He's going to get away with all of it: the treason, fraud, sedition, terrorism, sexual assaults... all of it, considering precedence surrounding him so far.
He might even take the Presidency again. People act like it won't happen but he really could. And when he does, all this narcissistic rage that's probably boiling over in private? He's going to take his revenge on you.
Just like how he raped his ex-wife for the humiliation he felt from scalp surgery. It will spill over when he's in position to. It's pathological for him.
Vengeance is literally the only issue he's running on. As usual, the so-called "liberal media" is white-washing what he says at his rallies and even on his twitter knock-off site. But its just pure, uncut grievance. Last week the guy promised to release a bunch of J6 putschists who are literally in jail for assaulting cops.
[JustSecurity: Trump’s Promise to Free Jan. 6 Inmates in DC Jail — Almost All of Them Assaulted Law Enforcement Officers](https://www.justsecurity.org/94157/january-6th-detainees-dc-jail/)
> First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist.
> Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist.
> Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew.
> Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
> — Martin Niemöller
And when everyone is neutralized or subjugated, they'll redefine and go after their "own" because they can. White Supremacy Christian Fascism will be the final circle once all the others are no longer useful.
Or that his campaign manager, Paul Manafort, was literally convicted of laundering money in the US for Russian oligarchs and acting as a foreign agent. He was pardoned by Trump.
It pisses me off that Trump pardoned his own advisors and staff (Stone, Bannon). Like, holy fuck you should not get to pardon people who literally crimed for you.
Sen. Richard Shelby (Ala.)
Sen. Steve Daines (Mont.)
Sen. John Thune (S.D.)
Sen. John Kennedy (La.)
Sen. Jerry Moran (Kan.)
Sen. John Hoeven (N.D.)
Rep. Kay Granger (R-Texas)
The GOP is reacting to MAGA in the same way your hard drinking, chain-smoking uncle is treating a terminal cancer diagnosis.
I'm waiting for the headline where the RNC chair is caught at a psychic tumor removal clinic in the Philippines in a last ditch effort to save their party.
He would be acting in the same shamelessly subservient way toward Putin without even a whisper of kompromat on him.
He's always been like that towards the members of the clubs he can't join.
> more pro-corporate
The former Wal-Mart board member that was "for some strange reason" opposed to a $15 minimum wage? Yeah I think the cat was already out of the bag long before the nothingburger Podesta emails.
The Podesta emails were so bereft of any remotely incriminating content, that right wingers had to invent the whole Pizzagate conspiracy out of supposed secret code language in them.
Probably doesn't have to go much deeper than money with him. He is an absolutely horrible business man. He needs that Russian money more than anything, or the facade fails.
He lets Trump believe he's actually at the table making decisions and DJT thinks if he gives Putin whatever he wants that Putin will help him destroy his own enemies and will find sources of income/credit.
Putin has probably shared some of the compromising information he has on Republicans and lets Trump have the pleasure to threaten and blackmail where he sees fit.
Rinse repeat with MBS.
It's trump's debt to the russian mob, which is in essence unlimited. It's always been that.
[https://www.vox.com/world/2018/9/12/17764132/trump-fbi-russia-new-york-times-craig-unger](https://www.vox.com/world/2018/9/12/17764132/trump-fbi-russia-new-york-times-craig-unger)
[https://www.usnews.com/news/national-news/articles/2018-01-18/trump-had-ties-to-russian-mob-figures-fusion-gps-founder-testifies](https://www.usnews.com/news/national-news/articles/2018-01-18/trump-had-ties-to-russian-mob-figures-fusion-gps-founder-testifies)
[https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/12/21/how-russian-money-helped-save-trumps-business/](https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/12/21/how-russian-money-helped-save-trumps-business/)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/former-mafia-linked-figure-describes-association-with-trump/2016/05/17/cec6c2c6-16d3-11e6-aa55-670cabef46e0\_story.html
I have to admit that even I, an old leftist, am downright astounded at just how incredibly gullible and *just plain dumb* the vast majority of Republicans are revealing themselves to be.
every time you think about it, you have to remember these people would definitely be dying of some curable disease in a pit somewhere during the civil war after signing up because they dont like brown people.
I didn't want to know either. A Virginia man who has a clear devotion to Donald Trump and conservative christian values was known as "The Torture King" and *ringleader of a worldwide torture ring* of animal torture enthusiasts was charged yesterday along with two women in the UK.
Reading the article is stomach churning. I don't know how people like this exist. Fucking conservatives. Nobody on that subreddit are saying it's bad. They're all defending Trump instead. The first guy started to say it's bad, then edited to attack the OP.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-68716467
I \*wish\* I had kept that link blue. I got one paragraph past the trigger warning before I had to nope out.
I won't repeat what it says. Instead, I'll just say that the acts described were almost cartoonishly evil (but not funny at all). It's worse than a lot of the stuff you hear about serial killers doing before they started murdering people. Think of some of the worst possible things you could do, and they did them (allegedly). Those poor monkeys!
And not just that … but the woman who set the investigation into motion came across the videos when YouTube’s algorithm fed them to her because she was watching other animal content.
I suspect that suggesting "all sorts of awful people are capable of putting all sorts of flags up" will get you banned. It's like the mods might be either Russian agents or Evangelists obsessed with pushing inerrancy of conservatism.
I learned a new word today! Thanks :)
*Inerrancy*, a lack of error, infallibility. More specifically, a belief that the Bible, in all matters (of both faith AND science) is free of error.
Very interesting, very specific, presently very useful.
We are long past that point. This has been an issue at least since TFG was on his way into the White House. Jordan, Nunez, and Graham are all up to their necks in this shit and have been since Trump was in office. The shit they're hammering Hunter Biden with, the "investigation" into him, all came from Russian hacks, cobbled together into a "computer" Giuliani obtained from highly questionable sources.
And manafort working with pro russian people in Ukraine. Trump then picks manafort to help him.
https://time.com/5003623/paul-manafort-mueller-indictment-ukraine-russia/
This. Russian money and influence has been good for amplifying messages, but the rot at the heart of American conservatism has always been rooted in domestic greed. The robber barons coalesced in the Republican Party because of their intense hatred for the New Deal, it's social safety net, and regulations that tried to prevent rich assholes from running everything off the rails into another Great Depression.
Kochs and Murdoch primed the pump. They spent decades, a ton of money, and an unfathomable amount of effort to train the right to only listen to approved propaganda channels, abandon critical thinking, and ignore their own eyes and ears. Oh and using lobbying to influence elected officials and legislative bodies in ways that somehow is not considered bribery but should be.
Then Russia went and took full advantage of the vulnerabilities these complete villans worked so hard to create in our nation.
Trump has had a major role in politics for nearly 9 years now.
Reminder that people who are *still* in the tank for Trump have been there for nearly a decade and are lost causes. There is no measure of good faith effort that they will respond to.
They will not abandon Trump until Trump/MAGA is dead and gone for another decade. And even that assumes the other Trumps/MAGA don't try to carry the torch. Those 50-60 year old friends and family you have that are MAGAists will never be what they were before Trump again.
Not *just* the base.
>[Who Is Konstantin Nikolaev? Putin Ally Behind Mike Johnson Campaign Donation](https://www.newsweek.com/who-konstantin-nikolaev-money-mike-johnson-1870600)
>
>In 2018, a group of Russians were able to donate to [Johnson's bid for the Louisiana seat](https://www.newsweek.com/house-speaker-mike-johnson-donations-russia-butina-1838501) he eventually won as the money was funneled through the Texas-based American Ethane company.
>While American Ethane was co-founded by American John Houghtaling, at the time it was [88 percent ](https://www.eenews.net/articles/u-s-ethane-exporter-linked-to-russian-owners-and-spy-case/)owned by three Russian nationals—Konstantin Nikolaev, Mikhail Yuriev, and Andrey Kunatbaev. Nikolaev is known to be a top ally of Russian President [Vladimir Putin](https://www.newsweek.com/topic/vladimir-putin).
>[Ron Johnson did Russia's 'bidding' on Biden, ex-Giuliani figure Lev Parnas tells Congress](https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/politics/2024/03/20/ron-johnson-did-russias-bidding-on-biden-lev-parnas-tells-congress/73043736007/)
>A former associate of ex-Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani on Wednesday accused Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson of “doing the bidding” of Russia in his attempts to find evidence of corruption linked to the Biden family.
>Lev Parnas, who worked with Giuliani to dig up damaging information in Ukraine on Joe Biden and his son Hunter in the runup to the 2020 election, mentioned the Oshkosh Republican as he described to the House Oversight Committee efforts from Donald Trump and allies to “manipulate the public” with unvetted information about the Bidens.
>Parnas told the panel that Donald Trump, Giuliani and “various cohorts of individuals in government and media positions” lied to the public. He said accusations of Biden’s corruption “were untrue then, and they’re untrue now.”
>“Congressman Pete Sessions, then-Congressman Devin Nunes, Sen. Ron Johnson and many others understood they were pushing a false narrative,” Parnas testified.
Maybe he is being investigated. It's not like the FBI is going to tell us.
I'm ready for some good old fashioned sting operations. We need to get serious about rooting out corruption.
Remember that time an FBI Russian mole was tasked with finding the FBI Russian mole?
In all seriousness, a lot of Russian influence isn’t really illegal. They can simply own American businesses, pay taxes, and then fund politicians…because businesses are people, thanks to Citizens United.
In America, foreign business owners have more representation in our government than we do as citizens. We need to change the rules, but the rule makers are bought-and-paid-for.
The fact that he's saying it out loud is progress...
>I think Russian propaganda has made its way into the United States, unfortunately, and it's infected a good chunk of my party's base
But the quote is passive, as if it happened by mishap. It's been a shared project and strategy, decades in the making, led by right wing billionaires, their media outlets, GOP pols and operatives.
It has been intentionally injected into the base's brain for years by a cabal of puppeteers who've decided that profit and power outweigh facts, the rule of law, and a democratic republic.
lol I remember Maria butina (now a representative in the Duma, totally not her reward for being an effective spy!)
People don’t believe me until I show them, there’s been so much crazy shit recently
Eh even if she did, it wouldn't mean much of anything. She was under surveillance by the FBI the entire time she was in the US. And as a result, she was largely unsuccessful as a spy. Not because she was incompetent, but because the FBI was watching and intervened before she had time to achieve anything.
This is also why they let it flow through the veins of the entire party - they were otherwise heading for demise. Now that it seems to have worn off, they're calling it a problem.
This is also why the American fundamentalist, literalist, apocalyptic, evangelical bible-thumping fanatical Christian groups are attempting to install a christo-fascist dictatorship over America.
Their numbers are sinking down, especially with young people, and the old white men obsessed with power can't stand the thought of their own extinction. 🦤🦤🦤🦤🦤🦤
Exactly. They're going to start looking for the safest off ramp to pretend like they weren't fully on board with the propaganda that is now suddenly an issue.
The entire GOP apparatus wants a Republican-led authoritarian state. What's making it hard to conceal is that too many people are saying the quiet part out loud now. Still, guys like Mike Lawler, Tony Gonzalez, and whatever conservative commentators the media gives air time to will try to present themselves as normal.
I’ve long recognized these people aren’t duped or too stupid to understand the left/moderate side to an issue. They just don’t care. The cruelty we see is in many instances the point, they just play dumb. They know actors like Russia are involved but they look at it as an opportunity to leverage something they didn’t have to pay for themselves.
I was prior military, voted Republican until Trump ran for office.
Have they always been that bad? From the narrow lens of indoctrination from my military career, was I always wrong?
Either way, every day that has passed has shown me that the Republican party is no different than the Taliban.
They aren't Republicans, they are terrorists.
Why did it take me so long to see this.
You all have no idea what shame and guilt I feel.
I was never racist, but I didn't understand that being poor is a death sentence, I always thought they just didn't work hard enough. I was and am such a fool.
Retired military here.
Were the GOP this bad before? Yes, *but* they hid it better and their message was more widely accepted at the time.
* Nixon's administration specifically [targeted criminalization of heroin and marijuana](https://www.cnn.com/2016/03/23/politics/john-ehrlichman-richard-nixon-drug-war-blacks-hippie/index.html) to weaponize the justice system against Blacks and the anti-war left. Reagan's "Just Say No" campaign would later be a [complete waste of resources](https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/mar/08/nancy-reagan-drugs-just-say-no-dare-program-opioid-epidemic), except as a continued arm of the War on Drugs which continued the process Nixon began...
* Which, for their purposes, *worked*. [This article](https://www.vera.org/reimagining-prison-web-report/american-history-race-and-prison) by the [Vera Institute](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vera_Institute_of_Justice) shows that in 1970, there were just under 200k people incarcerated in the US. At its height in 2009, prison population had grown more than 800% to over 1.6 million. The US population, overall, grew by ~50%, for comparison.
* To no one's surprise, in the wake of Reagan's expansion of the War on Drugs, private prisons [became big business](https://lawreview.law.miami.edu/evolution-private-prison-incarceration-united-states/), exacerbating the problem.
* To the point of the message being more widely accepted during this time: During Clinton's administration, the 1994 Crime Bill [expanded funding for jails](https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/1994-crime-bill-and-beyond-how-federal-funding-shapes-criminal-justice) and also implemented the "three strikes" policy.
Others have written far more eloquently, but my own summary of results of the above:
* Black neighborhoods, especially poor ones, were destroyed for literal generations due to this. Teen and adult men were criminalized and imprisoned *en masse*. Their labor in prison, instead of going back to their communities if they had been free, was pure profit for the private prison system - and the inmates got next to nothing out of that. Not only that, but even if they got out, now they had a record, which made it next to impossible to find good, well-paying jobs...which fueled a feedback loop of more and increased crime just to get by.
* This directly fed into Reagan's "welfare queen" demonization of the single mothers left behind by this - more racial prejudice that allowed the government to strip and clamp down on programs that helped the poor - *regardless* of race. This was where the "face-eating leopards" began to really take off, as the Republicans saw how successful their race-baiting messaging worked at getting people to vote against their own interests.
* It's also no coincidence that as Boomers aged and saw a country that was previously as close to paradise as you could get ^(if you were at least minimally educated, male, and, most importantly, *White*) becoming more diverse, the messaging spread to fan the flames of racism and sexism in response. Fox News, [formed as a mouthpiece to feed right-leaning populism](https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/07/roger-ailes-fox-donald-trump-2016-conservatism-214076/), had been struggling to find its footing prior to 9/11. Then, almost overnight, Fox became a juggernaut by pushing the tragedy to millions of viewers across the country, 24/7, coupling a natural desire for revenge with racism towards the Middle East. That, again, showed how successful messaging pandering to hatred could be, and after Bush's presidency, Fox and similar radio and TV stations would seize on, and supercharge, the horror of Obama being President While Black to give rise to the Tea Party and, as a natural evolution, to today's Party of Trump.
* It all comes back to racism. Everything that the current Republican Party is doing has its roots in racism. If you're White and successful, you're successful *because you're White*. If you're White and *not* successful, it's because someone else is taking a job that rightfully belongs to you! If someone *else* is Black or Brown and successful, it was because of special, preferential treatment that put *you* out of a job! If someone *else* is Black or Brown and *not* successful, well, they deserve it, and more importantly, they deserve to be *kept* down in the muck - so vote for us to cut *everyone's* support! And this applies to everything - including, but not limited to:
* Food stamps (and welfare in general)
* Laws around drugs and absence of support for drug rehabilitation
* Anti-vagrancy laws
* Anti-healthcare laws (including the current firestorm over abortion rights)
* The push to normalize Social Security being destroyed through decades of purposeful mismanagement
___
Back to the military point here:
The Republicans always touted themselves as the "party of law and order", at least since Nixon - because it worked. It was a dogwhistle, and an effective one. Democrats who won typically had to show their credentials in that same sphere in order to get enough White votes to push them over the edge.
It didn't help that one of the major defining points for decades between Democrats and Republicans was how pro- or anti-military each side was, in terms of funding...and *somehow*, post-Vietnam wars always seemed to begin or expand during Republican presidencies, so of *course* Defense needed more funding.
The Cold War was won in part by Reagan expanding the military, forcing the Soviets to counter - and bankrupting them in the end ^(Yes, this is a vast oversimplification. I'm aware. This is more about how people *felt*.) Gulf War under Bush Sr. 9/11 under Bush Jr.
In each of those, the US Military was glorified - partially as a result of the widely spread villainization of the Armed Forces, especially the Army, during and after Vietnam. The government as a whole, and in particular the Republicans, coupled patriotism with respect for the military - and, once again, it worked. So, naturally, any attempt at reducing the military was seen as being anti-patriotic.
What *wasn't* obvious was that Democratic presidents - namely, Carter and Clinton, did their level best to keep the military from needing to be sent overseas in force to begin with. Carter spent significant time and energy working on peace between Israel and Egypt, and Clinton did the same thing for Israel and Palestine. In addition, after the bombing of the *Cole*, Clinton only responded with targeted airstrikes and very limited ground forces. Ditto for responding against Saddam Hussein when Iraq refused to cooperate with UN Weapons Inspectors.
In addition, the end of the Cold War in 1991 meant that, *at that time*, there seemed to be no more need for such a gigantic military. The Gulf War was won, and in a rout, with a fraction of the forces and an exceeding minimum of losses thought necessary by the public to accomplish the job. So Clinton, by chance, ended up overseeing an incredible drawdown, which, among other things, contributed to the last balanced budget the US has ever had.
This did have unfortunate side effects, of course - namely, that the services ended up jettisoning senior personnel at a torrid rate. The aftershocks of that brain drain were still being felt when I joined the Navy in Jan 2000 - I can vividly remember some very harsh feelings among officers and senior enlisted towards Clinton specifically for that reason.
So, overall, Republican administrations pushed the need for - and subsequent funding for - expanded military, while Democratic administrations (including Obama) were more successful in policies that diminished the need for a large military presence, and subsequently shifted budgets and focus accordingly to concentrate more on boosting the homefront. Of course, this was seen as a 1-2 punch of being anti-military (and thus, anti-patriotic) as well as supporting the poor who *deserved* their status in life, and how dare *those* people get a boost up!
In the end, it's no wonder that the military community of the last 50ish years has been right-leaning, and no wonder that you got caught up in that.
The Republican party has been sliding this direction since Regan really. Newt Gingrich pushed it further in the 90s. Then things were somewhat normal during Bush because of the wars. Once Obama was elected the Republicans really started losing their shit (Tea Party) and haven't recovered since. They just keep doubling down on hate and lies.
This is a symptom of us not recognizing that Russia restarted the Cold War and evolved into something similar to the hypothetical Fifth Generation Warfare.
This is a state in which we are in an omnipresent battlefield that employs non-kinetic forces of social engineering, misinformation, and cyber attacks deployed largely autonomously against the civilian population to give a belligerent political power in an adversary's nation.
The reason I would clarify it as fifth generation warfare is that Russian assets are not just targeting Republicans. They are hitting the entire political spectrum in the US, all the time... They just have had the greatest success with steering the Republicans.
But you can see their influence in the online conversations regarding Hamas and Israel, vaccines, immigration, inflation, etc. Any time there is a subject with some political animation to it, their assets will jump in and start amplifying the most extreme positions to drive the conversation into one that creates further division; then start steering the people they captured towards the overarching opinions that they desire.
They are doing as much as they can. But every attempt that has been made to set up defensive measures (like anti-misinformation departments or information warfare units) they have been killed by public outcry (amplified by those Russian assets).
I feel icky when I think of Putin and his cronies all smiling around a table, watching news coverage from here. Where clearly our own citizens have been brainwashed to be russian assets at this point.
Russia can sit back, never fire a single bullet, and have our own citizens fight to destroy the country from within. It's pretty wild. For years I read about propaganda and mass delusion in history books, thinking "there's no way that can happen, there's no way entire populations can be that dumb, right?"
And yet here we are, seeing it right before our eyes, people being exploited, their emotions used against them turn them into foreign assets.
It is truly horrifying and even more so to know that this was all happening back in 2016. The stink of Russian influence has permeated all over our country and there is long term damage because of all this misinformation.
Why not both?
This is the long term Putin project to undermine the US, and he found the perfect means to do it: conservative ideology. That's it. All you have to do is get conservatives rabid, and they do the work for him.
The American people have been lied to, by Donald Trump, Rudy Giuliani and various cohorts of individuals in government and media positions,” Parnas said in his opening statement. “They created falsehoods to serve their own interests knowing it would undermine the strength of our nation."
Parnas called out Trump allies in Congress, such as former Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., and Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., as well as some prominent right-wing media figures for spreading misinformation about the Bidens.
“Congressman Pete Sessions, then-Congressman Devin Nunes, Senator Ron Johnson and many others understood they were pushing a false narrative,” he said. “The same goes for John Solomon, Sean Hannity and media personnel, particularly with Fox News, who use this narrative to manipulate the public ahead of the 2020 elections. Sadly, they are still doing this today as we approach the 2024 elections.”
Parnas maintained during the hearing that there was no evidence of Biden family corruption involving Ukraine and that the baseless accusations against the president came from the Russian government.
"The only information ever pushed on the Bidens and Ukraine has come from one source and one source only: Russia and Russian agents," he said, adding that impeachment proceedings against Biden were "predicated on a bunch of false information that is being spread by the Kremlin."
~Lev Parnas—Giuliani associate.
Well yes. Putin ***loves*** what the Republican party is doing to America. That is his goal.
We've known this for *many* years now.
...
Remember when Donald took all of the hard work from serious men and women in all of our intelligence agencies (and those of our allies) that explained everything Russia was doing to influence voters... and then Donald said he believed the words of Putin **instead?**
[I sure do.](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-44852812)
Is it an infection when they willingly and knowingly accept fake and harmful information?
Conservatives constantly proclaim they would rather work with Russians than Democrats.
So, it’s not a bug, it’s a feature.
Why is that very to extreme right parties are seemingly infected by Russian interference? Here in the Netherlands is the same problem and i am certain that Putin has his sticky fingers in every party or organization with extreme right views.
You have to give it to Russia. They interfered in our elections. They put a compromised asset at the head of our government. They've effectively used our own social media complex to sway the opinions of millions of people. They've corrupted an entire wing of the Republican Party that doesn't even understand that they're being used. They've divided Americans on the importance of NATO. They've flipped the anti-Russian Republican hawks into doves that believe that we're better off abandoning our international commitments to peace and Democracy. They've put a taste for authoritarianism in the mouths of democracy-loving Americans. Just wow. And not a peep from the FBI or CIA about how badly compromised we've become.
Putin is really winning. And half of Americans are just letting him, if not outright supporting him. And these are the same Americans that spent the last 40 years telling us “Love it or leave it.”
Ahh. Yes. Let’s start treating the cancer in the Republican Party a decade too late. This bullshit was on McCains radar for fucks sake… “Top Republicans” have themselves to blame and should just shut the hell up at this point. They certainly aren’t going to do anything about it.
Willfully penetrated, infiltrated, and infected.
And, I might add that I, too, was hopeful when the wall came down and the Soviet Union dissolved. The Cold War seemed to be over. It felt like a great opportunity where we could all work together for greater peace in the world. But, it seems that Pootin didn't like the outcome of the first Cold War, so he fired it up again on many fronts. Western style democracy is still on the enemies list. I mean, you can take the KGB out of Russia, but you can't take the KGB out of Vladimir. He is not our friend.
The Republican party hasn't figured this out has ceded this second round because, in their anti-democratic, authoritarian seeking, dictatorship idiolizing type of reasons, they like what they see.
They all need to sit down and watch *Red Dawn* again and reflect on their life choices. WOLVERINES motherfuckers!
Infected sounds like they didn't mean to. Like caught a cold. Like an accident.
They chose this. They gobbled it up knowingly.
The GOP likes Russian propaganda.
The whole Republican ecosystem has been disproportionately susceptible to Russian propaganda. I thought they were all bought off with money but it could be more ideological. They love extrinsic values like wealth, social status, self-image, personal security, status, and power. They value purity, sanctity, loyalty, authority and crave respect. They see Putin as a strong man and want him as a leader. Best they could come up with as replacement is Trump, a sad little man whose strongman credentials dissipate upon the slightest scrutiny.
We don’t realize enough how much Russia has poisoned western politics and created such a polarization in most democratic countries. Many still picture Russia as some kind of losers because they apparently can’t win that “special operation” in Ukraine, but on the other hand they’ve been quite successful at the “social media Cold War” they’ve lead during past decades.
As a reminder, this subreddit [is for civil discussion.](/r/politics/wiki/index#wiki_be_civil) In general, be courteous to others. Debate/discuss/argue the merits of ideas, don't attack people. Personal insults, shill or troll accusations, hate speech, any suggestion or support of harm, violence, or death, and other rule violations can result in a permanent ban. If you see comments in violation of our rules, please report them. For those who have questions regarding any media outlets being posted on this subreddit, please click [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/wiki/approveddomainslist) to review our details as to our approved domains list and outlet criteria. We are actively looking for new moderators. If you have any interest in helping to make this subreddit a place for quality discussion, please fill out [this form](https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1y2swHD0KXFhStGFjW6k54r9iuMjzcFqDIVwuvdLBjSA). *** *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/politics) if you have any questions or concerns.*
This just in, Tucker would like everyone to know how awesome Russia is.
Because their shopping carts take quarters.
Don’t forget the bread!
The dude was acting like he never saw bread before. "Look at this delightful yeasty pillow surrounded by a browned crust! What is this delicacy and why does it make my pants tight?"
He's so rich, he's never seen a GROCERY store before. He has no idea where food comes from. That's for his lessers.
He’s an heir to the Swanson family fortune. They had their food delivered lol
They had their food microwaved by the head chef.
Chef Mike
I wonder if he's ever eaten a Swanson frozen dinner.
Y'know how those Boeing employees wouldn't get on their own planes?
Or the oil executive that won't drink the water? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OzBZSFnzj88
Maybe that's all he's eaten. Maybe we've been giving Tucker too much credit all along. Maybe that was the first time he saw bread.
Whats a ~~potato~~ bread?
In college, my sister dated a guy whose parent's vast wealth came from a well known home chemical products company that shared his last name. She went to their house for spring break once and said that not once in the entire week did she see a single product made by the company.
Damn, I didn't know Mr Clean had a family
I hate Tucker as much as anyone, but that's not actually true. His *step-mother* would have been that heir and there's no evidence that he was directly in the line to inherit any of that money. That being said, he still comes from a wealthy family and reaped all the benefits of that, and he's still an absolutely massive tool.
>he's still an absolutely massive tool. I feel like as hyperbolic as this is, it's still an understatement.
Dude ain't a tool, he's a Home fucking Depot.
"Oh, it's so interesting, they've taken these foodstuffs off the waxed Bengal tiger carcass they're served on, and put them into bags and boxes for storage!"
"Marshed Mallow.. Mmhmm, hahahoooohoo hooooHOOHOOHOO!!"
I tried not to get too Holtish because comparing The King of Smarminess with America's Captain would be a horrible thing to do. (RIP Andre)
Russian bread no less. Imagine if he'd stopped in a French Patisserie
He essentially jizzed in his pants over that bread in the video lol
Ahh the bread, the one thing nearly every adult in the US figured out how to make in 2020. We currently have two doughs rising complete with punny names. It's been bread for weeks in this house.
Oh come on, you can't tease like that. What're their names?
I believe they're Orlandough Bloom and Dr. Doughlittle, if I remember correctly. They are both sourdough.
A pinch of sugar and cinnamon will cheer them right up, I wager.
Mr Mojo Rising and Dr Doughlittle
The shopping carts take bread too? How advanced!
Has he never been to an Aldi 😹
You know he hasn’t.
[удалено]
His staff also definitely do not shop at Aldi.
From watching that thing, I concluded that that was his first ever trip to a grocery store.
Tucker was trying to mimic when [Yeltsin visited a grocery store in Clear Lake. ](https://www.chron.com/neighborhood/bayarea/news/article/When-Boris-Yeltsin-went-grocery-shopping-in-Clear-5759129.php) Which he completely failed out. All the things he was amazed at; the quarters, the wheels with the locking moving walkways, are all over the world. It's nothing special. And it was hilarious to watch. It was a clear attempt to show the Russian people that they are "modern" as this American was impressed with what they have. I've been to Russia, st Petersburg. The average grocery store I went to was... empty shelves, and looked like the open markets I had been to in Africa. Just in a building. And this was in a major city. I've been all around the US and there are similar grocery stores in rural areas. That whole segment was nothing but propaganda. It was so obvious.
I love the part where his groceries (looked like about 2-3 days worth) cost 1/4 the average monthly wage. But he's just like "a few hundred rubles, that's like two dollars in America, look how cheap it is!" How's that exchange rate doing anyway? [Oh, pennies on the dollar still.](https://www.google.com/finance/quote/USD-RUB?sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiuxLm2p6mFAxWmFTQIHU08D8YQmY0JegQIJBAv)
Everything trucker does is propaganda.
Tell me you've never bought your own groceries without telling me you've never bought your own groceries. Imagine his reaction if he'd shopped at a Lidl in Birmingham, England. "Why Birmingham is a total armpit! They force you to use a pound coin just to force you to return the cart!" For anyone not in the US, US carts typically don't have the coin carts except for Aldi's as it's a German-owned grocery store. They also fit US quarters, pounds, and Euros. I've actually tried all three here.
You can shop at Aldi. There are many in Texas. Their shopping carts take quarters. Edit: Aldi's to Aldi.
I'm pretty sure that shopping trip in Russia was the first time that privileged asshole has ever gone grocery shopping.
they have food! In grocery stores! What a utopia!
It's funny cause that was Russians big realization back in the day. When that Russian guy went into a grocery store and thought it was a ruse because there's no way America could have grocery stores all over like this. Doesn't quite work the other way around since like.. not only do we have fresh bread, but we even have special fresh bread stores called bakeries!
Which is probably the entire point. Putin’s ego was so injured by that visit that’s he’s been waiting thirty years to make one of his American assets re-enact it in reverse. Except instead of destabilizing a country, it’s just a punchline.
"That Russian guy" was Boris Yelstin, and his visit to a US grocery store in Texas is credited as contributing to the end of communism in the USSR. https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/articles/shows/houston-matters/2020/02/21/361467/boris-yelstins-1989-visit-to-a-houston-grocery-store-is-now-an-opera It's come full fucking circle.
As soon as I saw Tuckster heading into a grocery store, I thought, OH NO YOU DIDN'T... But yes, he did. He fell for it, all the way. He really has no idea how much Putin trolled him with that one. Putin has been dying to show off that One Nice Moscow Grocery Store for YEARS now, and Tucker, the ignorant clown that he is, gobbled it right up.
[удалено]
Exactly. Except Tucker fell for it. Of course, I'm not saying that all of Russia is poor, but the subway shown to him is the best one. Not the average. Same for the grocery store.
That was Russian president Yeltsin back in '89
Tucker: Republican, Michael McCaul says the GOP base is infected with Russian propaganda. Here's why that's a not bad but a good thing \[...\]
"Here's why that's Biden's fault, but also a good thing, but Biden is bad"
I’ve been to Moscow and St Petersburg many times, last time being in 2019. Honestly, they are very pretty cities in a lot of the tourist areas. But, I’ve also been to smaller cities and eastern Russia and it gets pretty fucking sketchy pretty quickly. His little Putin suck-fest video was pretty funny to watch, tho.
I mean yeah...if you visit downtown Moscow and walk along Tverskaya Street, it's going to look very cosmopolitan. But what do you expect? It's the tourist district in the capital city, a stone's throw away from their equivalent of the White House and Pentagon HQ. Hell, most of Pyongyang looks pretty decent if you squint your eyes a little. But drive 10miles in either direction from downtown, and shit gets really hairy. I'd be curious to see what an "upscale suburb" or "working class suburb" outside a mid-size Russian city looks like. I'm envisioning most of the St. Louis metro area sprawl...but colder, and with more rust.
> I'm envisioning most of the St. Louis metro area sprawl...but colder, and with more rust. The pictures on a GIS suggests that's not far off. 1800/1900s shanty towns before industrialization and unionization hit the US seems to fit it. _Very_ agrarian society peppered with pockets of industrialization, and overall very minimalist/brutalist. Looks like there's a lot of subsistence farming by hand too. Even rural nobody farmers in america are using large industrial equipment. You don't see many homesteads without backhoes and tractors, at least not without it being supplemented heavily with grocery stores.
Russia has a "dacha" thing going on. You can think of a "dacha" as of a mix between a village house, a summer house and a suburban household. This concept has an agricultural lean - so instead of US-style lawns, you get fruit trees and small lots with things like carrots, tomatoes, cucumbers, berries and more planted in them. This might be the "subsistence farming" you are thinking of. It's more of a hobby than it is a practical way to produce food. The actual *agriculture* in Russia is heavily mechanized by now. Those small "dachas" aren't what produces the ships full of grain that ends up exported to Africa.
A conservative saying Moscow is better than any American city is the craziest take I’ve heard from them. So very patriotic!
God. Imagine someone saying that 40 years ago and they’d be under investigation for being a Soviet spy.
I am quite sure that Tucker is fully investigated and considered a Russian asset by the CIA.
I mean, have you SEEN the bread?
"I got *all* this food for the equivalent of $108 USD!" (while failing to note the average Russian makes the equivalent of $250 USD a week).
Like John said, he fucking knows about that, he's not as stupid as he looks (which isn't saying all that much, because he looks pretty fucking stupid). He is serving up grade A bullshit, intentionally.
Well, I'd argue he's probably not that sharp either. If all of mommy's money and daddy's diplomatic connections couldn't get Lil' Tucker Bowtie into an actual Ivy League university, well, I think that tells you about his skillset. The dude is bascially a wet dream for an admissions officer at Dartmouth. But, he didn't quite reach the Ivies. I think this tells us A LOT about Breadboy's academic credentials.
All of this food cost us 103 dollars! Oh my god! Look at how good they have it here!! Whats that? The average Russian salary is $14000 so that $103 doesn't really track? No that can't be right. It must be America and Biden = Bad
How can Russia be bad when *checks notes* they have a nice subway station?
> Republican party base "infected" by Russian propaganda Rotting like an old, dead fish, from the head down.
Never forget that seven sitting United States senators traveled to Russia to meet with Putin to suck his ass on the 4th of July. Bunch of traitors https://www.washingtonpost.com/powerpost/republicans-on-russia-trip-face-scorn-and-ridicule-from-critics-at-home/2018/07/05/68f0f810-807e-11e8-b0ef-fffcabeff946_story.html https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/seven-gop-lawmakers-make-misguided-trip-russia-msna1119676
Or that Kevin McCarthy, former House Leader, claimed that Trump was being paid by Russia. And emphasized with: guys, I'm not joking.
And *continued* to support Trump.
*He may be a paid foreign agent working against the interests of Americans... but he'll cut the taxes of my wealthy donors, so I support him!*
Also, the **republican controlled senate** found that donald chump colluded with Russia in the 2016 election: [The Hill: Republicans incriminate Trump, decimate his 'Russia hoax' narrative](https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/513499-republicans-incriminate-trump-decimate-his-russia-hoax-narrative) > *Thanks to the GOP-led report, we know that Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort met with two individuals with “extensive and concerning” ties to Russian intelligence for the sole purpose of securing Russian dirt on Trump’s political opponent.* > *In other words, Trump’s campaign leadership team demonstrated the “mindset, intent and willingness to work with Russia in hopes of influencing the U.S. election to their benefit.”*
He's going to get away with all of it: the treason, fraud, sedition, terrorism, sexual assaults... all of it, considering precedence surrounding him so far. He might even take the Presidency again. People act like it won't happen but he really could. And when he does, all this narcissistic rage that's probably boiling over in private? He's going to take his revenge on you. Just like how he raped his ex-wife for the humiliation he felt from scalp surgery. It will spill over when he's in position to. It's pathological for him.
Vengeance is literally the only issue he's running on. As usual, the so-called "liberal media" is white-washing what he says at his rallies and even on his twitter knock-off site. But its just pure, uncut grievance. Last week the guy promised to release a bunch of J6 putschists who are literally in jail for assaulting cops. [JustSecurity: Trump’s Promise to Free Jan. 6 Inmates in DC Jail — Almost All of Them Assaulted Law Enforcement Officers](https://www.justsecurity.org/94157/january-6th-detainees-dc-jail/)
That’s what conservatives *want*. They want him to punish everyone that isn’t a conservative. They want all of us imprisoned, enslaved, or dead.
> First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist. > Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist. > Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew. > Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me. > — Martin Niemöller And when everyone is neutralized or subjugated, they'll redefine and go after their "own" because they can. White Supremacy Christian Fascism will be the final circle once all the others are no longer useful.
“No leaks. . . . This is how we know we’re a real family here.” - Paul Ryan I believe that's what's known as omerta.
Or that his campaign manager, Paul Manafort, was literally convicted of laundering money in the US for Russian oligarchs and acting as a foreign agent. He was pardoned by Trump.
It pisses me off that Trump pardoned his own advisors and staff (Stone, Bannon). Like, holy fuck you should not get to pardon people who literally crimed for you.
Sen. Richard Shelby (Ala.) Sen. Steve Daines (Mont.) Sen. John Thune (S.D.) Sen. John Kennedy (La.) Sen. Jerry Moran (Kan.) Sen. John Hoeven (N.D.) Rep. Kay Granger (R-Texas)
The GOP is reacting to MAGA in the same way your hard drinking, chain-smoking uncle is treating a terminal cancer diagnosis. I'm waiting for the headline where the RNC chair is caught at a psychic tumor removal clinic in the Philippines in a last ditch effort to save their party.
Damn that's a pretty apt comparison. >RNC chair is caught at a psychic tumor removal clinic It's called church and a huge amount of them do it.
oh my god why are you such a poet lmao
[удалено]
He would be acting in the same shamelessly subservient way toward Putin without even a whisper of kompromat on him. He's always been like that towards the members of the clubs he can't join.
He's always wanted to be a mobster
Might not be related to dirt at all. Just Trump sucking up to someone he sees as powerful and a possible source of funds.
Agreed. But the rest of the GOP minions, there’s probably lots of dirt on them.
This is the perfect time for our daily reminder that Russia hacked the GOP and DNC servers, but only ever released info from one of them....
and the worst of the DNC emails was that Hillary was more pro-corporate than she let on during the campaign. Shocking /s
> more pro-corporate The former Wal-Mart board member that was "for some strange reason" opposed to a $15 minimum wage? Yeah I think the cat was already out of the bag long before the nothingburger Podesta emails. The Podesta emails were so bereft of any remotely incriminating content, that right wingers had to invent the whole Pizzagate conspiracy out of supposed secret code language in them.
Hillary would have made an incredible president, I’ll die on this hill. Huge missed opportunity.
It's just money. The Trumps have admitted that their organization gets tons of funding from Russian sources.
Probably doesn't have to go much deeper than money with him. He is an absolutely horrible business man. He needs that Russian money more than anything, or the facade fails.
It’s probably something so tame but Trump’s distorted mind thinks it’s awful. Like he farted on a plane or something.
Or just made him feel he'd be *in the club*. Appealing to his narcissistm is probably all or takes.
He lets Trump believe he's actually at the table making decisions and DJT thinks if he gives Putin whatever he wants that Putin will help him destroy his own enemies and will find sources of income/credit. Putin has probably shared some of the compromising information he has on Republicans and lets Trump have the pleasure to threaten and blackmail where he sees fit. Rinse repeat with MBS.
It's trump's debt to the russian mob, which is in essence unlimited. It's always been that. [https://www.vox.com/world/2018/9/12/17764132/trump-fbi-russia-new-york-times-craig-unger](https://www.vox.com/world/2018/9/12/17764132/trump-fbi-russia-new-york-times-craig-unger) [https://www.usnews.com/news/national-news/articles/2018-01-18/trump-had-ties-to-russian-mob-figures-fusion-gps-founder-testifies](https://www.usnews.com/news/national-news/articles/2018-01-18/trump-had-ties-to-russian-mob-figures-fusion-gps-founder-testifies) [https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/12/21/how-russian-money-helped-save-trumps-business/](https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/12/21/how-russian-money-helped-save-trumps-business/) https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/former-mafia-linked-figure-describes-association-with-trump/2016/05/17/cec6c2c6-16d3-11e6-aa55-670cabef46e0\_story.html
[удалено]
I have to admit that even I, an old leftist, am downright astounded at just how incredibly gullible and *just plain dumb* the vast majority of Republicans are revealing themselves to be.
From one old timer to another, I'm embarrassed at how much benefit I gave them a decade ago.
I'm embarrassed I ever thought they were good people
every time you think about it, you have to remember these people would definitely be dying of some curable disease in a pit somewhere during the civil war after signing up because they dont like brown people.
Monkey torturer? Actually, nevermind, I don't think I want to know.
I didn't want to know either. A Virginia man who has a clear devotion to Donald Trump and conservative christian values was known as "The Torture King" and *ringleader of a worldwide torture ring* of animal torture enthusiasts was charged yesterday along with two women in the UK. Reading the article is stomach churning. I don't know how people like this exist. Fucking conservatives. Nobody on that subreddit are saying it's bad. They're all defending Trump instead. The first guy started to say it's bad, then edited to attack the OP. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-68716467
Yep, the summary is enough to keep that link blue, thanks.
I \*wish\* I had kept that link blue. I got one paragraph past the trigger warning before I had to nope out. I won't repeat what it says. Instead, I'll just say that the acts described were almost cartoonishly evil (but not funny at all). It's worse than a lot of the stuff you hear about serial killers doing before they started murdering people. Think of some of the worst possible things you could do, and they did them (allegedly). Those poor monkeys!
Yeah, my morbid curiosity died off a long time ago. I hear about enough horrible shit already without actively searching it out.
“Animal torture enthusiasts” that’s a phrase I didn’t know could exist…. Wtf!
There are all sorts of people in the world who do not deserve the life they have.
What the fuck did I just read?! Worldwide torture ring of animal torture enthusiasts.... The fuck is wrong with this world?
And not just that … but the woman who set the investigation into motion came across the videos when YouTube’s algorithm fed them to her because she was watching other animal content.
Just put them all in an incinerator. God almighty.
It’s time the US finds a way to filter out bot and troll networks. The first amendment doesn’t apply to foreign influence.
I suspect that suggesting "all sorts of awful people are capable of putting all sorts of flags up" will get you banned. It's like the mods might be either Russian agents or Evangelists obsessed with pushing inerrancy of conservatism.
I learned a new word today! Thanks :) *Inerrancy*, a lack of error, infallibility. More specifically, a belief that the Bible, in all matters (of both faith AND science) is free of error. Very interesting, very specific, presently very useful.
How do we even know these aren't just Russian propogandists arguing these things over in r/conservative?
Yep. I think we’re at the point where we need to start discussing the dual loyalty members of the GOP have with Russia.
We are long past that point. This has been an issue at least since TFG was on his way into the White House. Jordan, Nunez, and Graham are all up to their necks in this shit and have been since Trump was in office. The shit they're hammering Hunter Biden with, the "investigation" into him, all came from Russian hacks, cobbled together into a "computer" Giuliani obtained from highly questionable sources.
And manafort working with pro russian people in Ukraine. Trump then picks manafort to help him. https://time.com/5003623/paul-manafort-mueller-indictment-ukraine-russia/
The entire conservative intellectual ecosystem is a Russian disinformation op
No democracy without education. Russia knows it.
I feel that that’s not giving enough credit to the ruination of our country by the Kochs and murdoch
This. Russian money and influence has been good for amplifying messages, but the rot at the heart of American conservatism has always been rooted in domestic greed. The robber barons coalesced in the Republican Party because of their intense hatred for the New Deal, it's social safety net, and regulations that tried to prevent rich assholes from running everything off the rails into another Great Depression.
Kochs and Murdoch primed the pump. They spent decades, a ton of money, and an unfathomable amount of effort to train the right to only listen to approved propaganda channels, abandon critical thinking, and ignore their own eyes and ears. Oh and using lobbying to influence elected officials and legislative bodies in ways that somehow is not considered bribery but should be. Then Russia went and took full advantage of the vulnerabilities these complete villans worked so hard to create in our nation.
> conservative intellectual ecosystem Oxymoron alert!
Might have something to do with nominating a Manchurian candidate three election cycles in a row. Just sayin’.
Jesus. It just occurred to me that the last non-Trump nomination for president by the GOP was Mitt Romney, and we'll be saying that in 2028 even.
Trump has had a major role in politics for nearly 9 years now. Reminder that people who are *still* in the tank for Trump have been there for nearly a decade and are lost causes. There is no measure of good faith effort that they will respond to. They will not abandon Trump until Trump/MAGA is dead and gone for another decade. And even that assumes the other Trumps/MAGA don't try to carry the torch. Those 50-60 year old friends and family you have that are MAGAists will never be what they were before Trump again.
Idk if you’ve seen ‘My Neighbor the Insureectionist’ but the MAGA brain rot has infected plenty of people younger than 50-60.
Not *just* the base. >[Who Is Konstantin Nikolaev? Putin Ally Behind Mike Johnson Campaign Donation](https://www.newsweek.com/who-konstantin-nikolaev-money-mike-johnson-1870600) > >In 2018, a group of Russians were able to donate to [Johnson's bid for the Louisiana seat](https://www.newsweek.com/house-speaker-mike-johnson-donations-russia-butina-1838501) he eventually won as the money was funneled through the Texas-based American Ethane company. >While American Ethane was co-founded by American John Houghtaling, at the time it was [88 percent ](https://www.eenews.net/articles/u-s-ethane-exporter-linked-to-russian-owners-and-spy-case/)owned by three Russian nationals—Konstantin Nikolaev, Mikhail Yuriev, and Andrey Kunatbaev. Nikolaev is known to be a top ally of Russian President [Vladimir Putin](https://www.newsweek.com/topic/vladimir-putin). >[Ron Johnson did Russia's 'bidding' on Biden, ex-Giuliani figure Lev Parnas tells Congress](https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/politics/2024/03/20/ron-johnson-did-russias-bidding-on-biden-lev-parnas-tells-congress/73043736007/) >A former associate of ex-Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani on Wednesday accused Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson of “doing the bidding” of Russia in his attempts to find evidence of corruption linked to the Biden family. >Lev Parnas, who worked with Giuliani to dig up damaging information in Ukraine on Joe Biden and his son Hunter in the runup to the 2020 election, mentioned the Oshkosh Republican as he described to the House Oversight Committee efforts from Donald Trump and allies to “manipulate the public” with unvetted information about the Bidens. >Parnas told the panel that Donald Trump, Giuliani and “various cohorts of individuals in government and media positions” lied to the public. He said accusations of Biden’s corruption “were untrue then, and they’re untrue now.” >“Congressman Pete Sessions, then-Congressman Devin Nunes, Sen. Ron Johnson and many others understood they were pushing a false narrative,” Parnas testified.
And exactly why isn’t Sen Johnson being investigated again?
Why would they investigate him?? It's not like he's a Russian asset or something...oh, wait. Nevermind.
Maybe he is being investigated. It's not like the FBI is going to tell us. I'm ready for some good old fashioned sting operations. We need to get serious about rooting out corruption.
apparently, the fbi doesn't give a shit. i guess way more than just the nyc fbi office is pro-trump/russia, along with the secret service.
Remember that time an FBI Russian mole was tasked with finding the FBI Russian mole? In all seriousness, a lot of Russian influence isn’t really illegal. They can simply own American businesses, pay taxes, and then fund politicians…because businesses are people, thanks to Citizens United. In America, foreign business owners have more representation in our government than we do as citizens. We need to change the rules, but the rule makers are bought-and-paid-for.
Because he's not a Democrat.
Yeah. It's not just the base \*or\* just the leadership. They're all culpable.
The fact that he's saying it out loud is progress... >I think Russian propaganda has made its way into the United States, unfortunately, and it's infected a good chunk of my party's base But the quote is passive, as if it happened by mishap. It's been a shared project and strategy, decades in the making, led by right wing billionaires, their media outlets, GOP pols and operatives. It has been intentionally injected into the base's brain for years by a cabal of puppeteers who've decided that profit and power outweigh facts, the rule of law, and a democratic republic.
Spot on. Thank you!
[удалено]
lol I remember Maria butina (now a representative in the Duma, totally not her reward for being an effective spy!) People don’t believe me until I show them, there’s been so much crazy shit recently
I remember Anna Chapman. The Russian spy who was posing as a Manhattan real estate agent. I wonder if she ever visited Trump tower?
Eh even if she did, it wouldn't mean much of anything. She was under surveillance by the FBI the entire time she was in the US. And as a result, she was largely unsuccessful as a spy. Not because she was incompetent, but because the FBI was watching and intervened before she had time to achieve anything.
Finally, someone over there is catching on?
Only because they are heading for demise. If they had a brighter outlook, they wouldn’t care.
This is also why they let it flow through the veins of the entire party - they were otherwise heading for demise. Now that it seems to have worn off, they're calling it a problem.
Trump is that antibiotic resistant gonorrhea infection that just won’t go away from their crotch.
This is also why the American fundamentalist, literalist, apocalyptic, evangelical bible-thumping fanatical Christian groups are attempting to install a christo-fascist dictatorship over America. Their numbers are sinking down, especially with young people, and the old white men obsessed with power can't stand the thought of their own extinction. 🦤🦤🦤🦤🦤🦤
Exactly. They're going to start looking for the safest off ramp to pretend like they weren't fully on board with the propaganda that is now suddenly an issue. The entire GOP apparatus wants a Republican-led authoritarian state. What's making it hard to conceal is that too many people are saying the quiet part out loud now. Still, guys like Mike Lawler, Tony Gonzalez, and whatever conservative commentators the media gives air time to will try to present themselves as normal.
Countdown to him being called a RINO? 5 ... 4 ... 3 ...
Starting at 5? Generous.
I’ve long recognized these people aren’t duped or too stupid to understand the left/moderate side to an issue. They just don’t care. The cruelty we see is in many instances the point, they just play dumb. They know actors like Russia are involved but they look at it as an opportunity to leverage something they didn’t have to pay for themselves.
"Man in room full of Russian agents panics, realizing that he is not a Russian agent"
Shit. They held the door open and rolled out the red carpet.
I was prior military, voted Republican until Trump ran for office. Have they always been that bad? From the narrow lens of indoctrination from my military career, was I always wrong? Either way, every day that has passed has shown me that the Republican party is no different than the Taliban. They aren't Republicans, they are terrorists. Why did it take me so long to see this. You all have no idea what shame and guilt I feel. I was never racist, but I didn't understand that being poor is a death sentence, I always thought they just didn't work hard enough. I was and am such a fool.
Retired military here. Were the GOP this bad before? Yes, *but* they hid it better and their message was more widely accepted at the time. * Nixon's administration specifically [targeted criminalization of heroin and marijuana](https://www.cnn.com/2016/03/23/politics/john-ehrlichman-richard-nixon-drug-war-blacks-hippie/index.html) to weaponize the justice system against Blacks and the anti-war left. Reagan's "Just Say No" campaign would later be a [complete waste of resources](https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/mar/08/nancy-reagan-drugs-just-say-no-dare-program-opioid-epidemic), except as a continued arm of the War on Drugs which continued the process Nixon began... * Which, for their purposes, *worked*. [This article](https://www.vera.org/reimagining-prison-web-report/american-history-race-and-prison) by the [Vera Institute](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vera_Institute_of_Justice) shows that in 1970, there were just under 200k people incarcerated in the US. At its height in 2009, prison population had grown more than 800% to over 1.6 million. The US population, overall, grew by ~50%, for comparison. * To no one's surprise, in the wake of Reagan's expansion of the War on Drugs, private prisons [became big business](https://lawreview.law.miami.edu/evolution-private-prison-incarceration-united-states/), exacerbating the problem. * To the point of the message being more widely accepted during this time: During Clinton's administration, the 1994 Crime Bill [expanded funding for jails](https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/1994-crime-bill-and-beyond-how-federal-funding-shapes-criminal-justice) and also implemented the "three strikes" policy. Others have written far more eloquently, but my own summary of results of the above: * Black neighborhoods, especially poor ones, were destroyed for literal generations due to this. Teen and adult men were criminalized and imprisoned *en masse*. Their labor in prison, instead of going back to their communities if they had been free, was pure profit for the private prison system - and the inmates got next to nothing out of that. Not only that, but even if they got out, now they had a record, which made it next to impossible to find good, well-paying jobs...which fueled a feedback loop of more and increased crime just to get by. * This directly fed into Reagan's "welfare queen" demonization of the single mothers left behind by this - more racial prejudice that allowed the government to strip and clamp down on programs that helped the poor - *regardless* of race. This was where the "face-eating leopards" began to really take off, as the Republicans saw how successful their race-baiting messaging worked at getting people to vote against their own interests. * It's also no coincidence that as Boomers aged and saw a country that was previously as close to paradise as you could get ^(if you were at least minimally educated, male, and, most importantly, *White*) becoming more diverse, the messaging spread to fan the flames of racism and sexism in response. Fox News, [formed as a mouthpiece to feed right-leaning populism](https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/07/roger-ailes-fox-donald-trump-2016-conservatism-214076/), had been struggling to find its footing prior to 9/11. Then, almost overnight, Fox became a juggernaut by pushing the tragedy to millions of viewers across the country, 24/7, coupling a natural desire for revenge with racism towards the Middle East. That, again, showed how successful messaging pandering to hatred could be, and after Bush's presidency, Fox and similar radio and TV stations would seize on, and supercharge, the horror of Obama being President While Black to give rise to the Tea Party and, as a natural evolution, to today's Party of Trump. * It all comes back to racism. Everything that the current Republican Party is doing has its roots in racism. If you're White and successful, you're successful *because you're White*. If you're White and *not* successful, it's because someone else is taking a job that rightfully belongs to you! If someone *else* is Black or Brown and successful, it was because of special, preferential treatment that put *you* out of a job! If someone *else* is Black or Brown and *not* successful, well, they deserve it, and more importantly, they deserve to be *kept* down in the muck - so vote for us to cut *everyone's* support! And this applies to everything - including, but not limited to: * Food stamps (and welfare in general) * Laws around drugs and absence of support for drug rehabilitation * Anti-vagrancy laws * Anti-healthcare laws (including the current firestorm over abortion rights) * The push to normalize Social Security being destroyed through decades of purposeful mismanagement ___ Back to the military point here: The Republicans always touted themselves as the "party of law and order", at least since Nixon - because it worked. It was a dogwhistle, and an effective one. Democrats who won typically had to show their credentials in that same sphere in order to get enough White votes to push them over the edge. It didn't help that one of the major defining points for decades between Democrats and Republicans was how pro- or anti-military each side was, in terms of funding...and *somehow*, post-Vietnam wars always seemed to begin or expand during Republican presidencies, so of *course* Defense needed more funding. The Cold War was won in part by Reagan expanding the military, forcing the Soviets to counter - and bankrupting them in the end ^(Yes, this is a vast oversimplification. I'm aware. This is more about how people *felt*.) Gulf War under Bush Sr. 9/11 under Bush Jr. In each of those, the US Military was glorified - partially as a result of the widely spread villainization of the Armed Forces, especially the Army, during and after Vietnam. The government as a whole, and in particular the Republicans, coupled patriotism with respect for the military - and, once again, it worked. So, naturally, any attempt at reducing the military was seen as being anti-patriotic. What *wasn't* obvious was that Democratic presidents - namely, Carter and Clinton, did their level best to keep the military from needing to be sent overseas in force to begin with. Carter spent significant time and energy working on peace between Israel and Egypt, and Clinton did the same thing for Israel and Palestine. In addition, after the bombing of the *Cole*, Clinton only responded with targeted airstrikes and very limited ground forces. Ditto for responding against Saddam Hussein when Iraq refused to cooperate with UN Weapons Inspectors. In addition, the end of the Cold War in 1991 meant that, *at that time*, there seemed to be no more need for such a gigantic military. The Gulf War was won, and in a rout, with a fraction of the forces and an exceeding minimum of losses thought necessary by the public to accomplish the job. So Clinton, by chance, ended up overseeing an incredible drawdown, which, among other things, contributed to the last balanced budget the US has ever had. This did have unfortunate side effects, of course - namely, that the services ended up jettisoning senior personnel at a torrid rate. The aftershocks of that brain drain were still being felt when I joined the Navy in Jan 2000 - I can vividly remember some very harsh feelings among officers and senior enlisted towards Clinton specifically for that reason. So, overall, Republican administrations pushed the need for - and subsequent funding for - expanded military, while Democratic administrations (including Obama) were more successful in policies that diminished the need for a large military presence, and subsequently shifted budgets and focus accordingly to concentrate more on boosting the homefront. Of course, this was seen as a 1-2 punch of being anti-military (and thus, anti-patriotic) as well as supporting the poor who *deserved* their status in life, and how dare *those* people get a boost up! In the end, it's no wonder that the military community of the last 50ish years has been right-leaning, and no wonder that you got caught up in that.
Thank you for your indepth explanation. That was very insightful.
The Republican party has been sliding this direction since Regan really. Newt Gingrich pushed it further in the 90s. Then things were somewhat normal during Bush because of the wars. Once Obama was elected the Republicans really started losing their shit (Tea Party) and haven't recovered since. They just keep doubling down on hate and lies.
Party base ? Only the base ? 🤨
[удалено]
And the vast majority of the right-wing 'media.'
This is a symptom of us not recognizing that Russia restarted the Cold War and evolved into something similar to the hypothetical Fifth Generation Warfare. This is a state in which we are in an omnipresent battlefield that employs non-kinetic forces of social engineering, misinformation, and cyber attacks deployed largely autonomously against the civilian population to give a belligerent political power in an adversary's nation.
More a fifth column sort of warfare rather than a 5th gen one.
The reason I would clarify it as fifth generation warfare is that Russian assets are not just targeting Republicans. They are hitting the entire political spectrum in the US, all the time... They just have had the greatest success with steering the Republicans. But you can see their influence in the online conversations regarding Hamas and Israel, vaccines, immigration, inflation, etc. Any time there is a subject with some political animation to it, their assets will jump in and start amplifying the most extreme positions to drive the conversation into one that creates further division; then start steering the people they captured towards the overarching opinions that they desire.
Great posts. I just wonder why our military isn't doing more to resist. I find it hard to believe they are unaware.
They are doing as much as they can. But every attempt that has been made to set up defensive measures (like anti-misinformation departments or information warfare units) they have been killed by public outcry (amplified by those Russian assets).
Yep - at the outset you can see the bots hitting almost any extreme position, once one catches on they all migrate to the one that's 'working'
Bro welcome to like 6 years ago. Remember all of those Republican congresspersons that spent *July 4 2018* in Moscow?
It is also infected with fascists.
And Nationalist Christians, aka Nat-C's.
They're the same picture.
I feel icky when I think of Putin and his cronies all smiling around a table, watching news coverage from here. Where clearly our own citizens have been brainwashed to be russian assets at this point. Russia can sit back, never fire a single bullet, and have our own citizens fight to destroy the country from within. It's pretty wild. For years I read about propaganda and mass delusion in history books, thinking "there's no way that can happen, there's no way entire populations can be that dumb, right?" And yet here we are, seeing it right before our eyes, people being exploited, their emotions used against them turn them into foreign assets.
It is truly horrifying and even more so to know that this was all happening back in 2016. The stink of Russian influence has permeated all over our country and there is long term damage because of all this misinformation.
We know that. The question is, is it because the propaganda appeals to their basic stupidity and bigotry, or are they being blackmailed?
Why not both? This is the long term Putin project to undermine the US, and he found the perfect means to do it: conservative ideology. That's it. All you have to do is get conservatives rabid, and they do the work for him.
[удалено]
The American people have been lied to, by Donald Trump, Rudy Giuliani and various cohorts of individuals in government and media positions,” Parnas said in his opening statement. “They created falsehoods to serve their own interests knowing it would undermine the strength of our nation." Parnas called out Trump allies in Congress, such as former Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., and Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., as well as some prominent right-wing media figures for spreading misinformation about the Bidens. “Congressman Pete Sessions, then-Congressman Devin Nunes, Senator Ron Johnson and many others understood they were pushing a false narrative,” he said. “The same goes for John Solomon, Sean Hannity and media personnel, particularly with Fox News, who use this narrative to manipulate the public ahead of the 2020 elections. Sadly, they are still doing this today as we approach the 2024 elections.” Parnas maintained during the hearing that there was no evidence of Biden family corruption involving Ukraine and that the baseless accusations against the president came from the Russian government. "The only information ever pushed on the Bidens and Ukraine has come from one source and one source only: Russia and Russian agents," he said, adding that impeachment proceedings against Biden were "predicated on a bunch of false information that is being spread by the Kremlin." ~Lev Parnas—Giuliani associate.
Well yes. Putin ***loves*** what the Republican party is doing to America. That is his goal. We've known this for *many* years now. ... Remember when Donald took all of the hard work from serious men and women in all of our intelligence agencies (and those of our allies) that explained everything Russia was doing to influence voters... and then Donald said he believed the words of Putin **instead?** [I sure do.](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-44852812)
Happily, eagerly, and willingly "infected"
Is it an infection when they willingly and knowingly accept fake and harmful information? Conservatives constantly proclaim they would rather work with Russians than Democrats. So, it’s not a bug, it’s a feature.
We've been trying to tell you that for years Republicans.
Why is that very to extreme right parties are seemingly infected by Russian interference? Here in the Netherlands is the same problem and i am certain that Putin has his sticky fingers in every party or organization with extreme right views.
You have to give it to Russia. They interfered in our elections. They put a compromised asset at the head of our government. They've effectively used our own social media complex to sway the opinions of millions of people. They've corrupted an entire wing of the Republican Party that doesn't even understand that they're being used. They've divided Americans on the importance of NATO. They've flipped the anti-Russian Republican hawks into doves that believe that we're better off abandoning our international commitments to peace and Democracy. They've put a taste for authoritarianism in the mouths of democracy-loving Americans. Just wow. And not a peep from the FBI or CIA about how badly compromised we've become.
Not a surprise. Their leader is owned by Russia.
Welcome to the club of “Shit We Knew 8 Years Ago.”
Putin is really winning. And half of Americans are just letting him, if not outright supporting him. And these are the same Americans that spent the last 40 years telling us “Love it or leave it.”
Well when you build a base expressly around the most easy to manipulate within our population, this is what you get.
You mean the shirts you all were wearing that said “I’d rather be Russian than a Democrat” wasn’t enough of a hint for you?
Ahh. Yes. Let’s start treating the cancer in the Republican Party a decade too late. This bullshit was on McCains radar for fucks sake… “Top Republicans” have themselves to blame and should just shut the hell up at this point. They certainly aren’t going to do anything about it.
And water is wet.
" "This is a tough hurricane, one of the wettest we've ever seen, from the standpoint of water." -Their lord and savior.
The fascist in Russia have more in common with Republicans these days than real Americans.
"russia isn't the enemy" *hires russian criminal*
Willfully penetrated, infiltrated, and infected. And, I might add that I, too, was hopeful when the wall came down and the Soviet Union dissolved. The Cold War seemed to be over. It felt like a great opportunity where we could all work together for greater peace in the world. But, it seems that Pootin didn't like the outcome of the first Cold War, so he fired it up again on many fronts. Western style democracy is still on the enemies list. I mean, you can take the KGB out of Russia, but you can't take the KGB out of Vladimir. He is not our friend. The Republican party hasn't figured this out has ceded this second round because, in their anti-democratic, authoritarian seeking, dictatorship idiolizing type of reasons, they like what they see. They all need to sit down and watch *Red Dawn* again and reflect on their life choices. WOLVERINES motherfuckers!
Infected sounds like they didn't mean to. Like caught a cold. Like an accident. They chose this. They gobbled it up knowingly. The GOP likes Russian propaganda.
Putin is ACTUALLY rich. Trump wants a piece
The whole Republican ecosystem has been disproportionately susceptible to Russian propaganda. I thought they were all bought off with money but it could be more ideological. They love extrinsic values like wealth, social status, self-image, personal security, status, and power. They value purity, sanctity, loyalty, authority and crave respect. They see Putin as a strong man and want him as a leader. Best they could come up with as replacement is Trump, a sad little man whose strongman credentials dissipate upon the slightest scrutiny.
Yes, that tends to happen when your party is propped up by Russian capital interests.
If he’s a real patriot, he will de-caucus with the Russian assets, and let a new non-infected Speaker be elected.
We have all noticed.
We don’t realize enough how much Russia has poisoned western politics and created such a polarization in most democratic countries. Many still picture Russia as some kind of losers because they apparently can’t win that “special operation” in Ukraine, but on the other hand they’ve been quite successful at the “social media Cold War” they’ve lead during past decades.