A Few— A Very Few— Republicans Are Gently Breaking With Trump Over His Alignment With The Kremlin

Musk Isn't Just Running DOGE, He's Also Running US Foreign Policy Now

Republican Mike Lawler’s constituents don’t like in the Ozark Mountains or in the Texas or Florida panhandles where people believe whatever garbage Trump feeds them. Most of his Westchester, Rockland, Putnam and Dutchess counties district is in the NYC media market. And Trump lost the district by a point, even as Lawler, up against a confused and fatally flawed opponent, won by over 6. Lawler has to be careful of what he says, not repeating Trump’s worst lies but not offending the MAGA base by contradicting him too much either.

On Weekend Edition, however, he did admit that “Putin alone is responsible for [the war] with his unprovoked invasion of Ukraine. He has committed numerous war crime atrocities throughout this conflict.” That’s a lot further than most congressional Republicans would dare go. Most are following the Kremlin line that is being amplified by Trump, Vance and Musk. In fact, Trump’s favorite South African Nazi is now pushing the idea that the U.S. should leave NATO, a position akin to what extreme right nationalists Mike Lee (R-UT) and Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) in the Senate and Chip Roy (R-TX), Mike Rogers (R-AL), Eli Crane (R-AZ), Diana Harshbarger (R-TN), Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL), Harriet Hageman (R-WY), Josh Brecheen (R-OK), Thomas Massie (R-KY) and, of course, Marjorie Traitor Greene (R-GA) in the House have offered as legislation in withdrawing the U.S. from the UN.

It’s worth noting that from its inception, the extreme right fringe has opposed the UN and other foreign entanglements. Their hostility stems from a mix of isolationist nostalgia, conspiracy theories about global governance, and a deep-seated aversion to multilateralism— especially when it limits American unilateral power. The John Birch Society, a mid-century, pre-MAGA, far-right group, famously smeared the UN as a communist front, and that paranoia never truly left the GOP’s hard-right faction. Today’s MAGA-aligned Republicans recycle those same fears, painting the UN as a vehicle for “globalists” who supposedly undermine American sovereignty. In reality, withdrawing from the UN would only diminish U.S. influence, ceding global leadership to authoritarian powers like China and Russia— an ironic outcome for self-proclaimed patriots who claim to put America first.

Senator James Lankford (R-OK) was on Meet the Press yesterday and, surprisingly, he went in the same direction as Lawler. He responded to Kristen Welker’s first question by saying “we're not turning our back on Ukraine, nor should we. Putin is a murderous KGB thug that murders his political enemies and is a dictator there. And so, we've seen that. We've seen his aggression. Countries around him have seen that. Obviously the Ukrainian people have seen that. The challenge is now we're at a stalemate. This is a World War I like trench warfare, and it is best to be able to get to at least a pause. And what I hear President Trump saying over and over again is, ‘We need to get to a stop in fighting, find some resolution.’ I understand Zelenskyy is rightfully concerned that Putin has violated every single agreement he's ever signed and that he can't be trusted. He's looking for some kind of security guarantees, which the French and the U.K. are saying they want to put troops in. But we need to get these two folks at the table, get to some kind of resolution to something that may look like North and South Korea for a long time, and have a line where people are looking at each other, but not an active war… I don't like it when other members of the Senate [Miss Lindsey] ask for Zelenskyy to be removed either. Quite frankly, I think that would spiral Ukraine into chaos right now, trying to find who is the negotiator to bring an issue to peace. If you remember, in that press conference in the Oval Office just on Friday, it began with President Trump saying that he is a friend of Zelenskyy. He is interested. They've had good conversations. I think they understand each other and that, obviously, there are differences whereas Zelenskyy wants more in the way of some kind of security guarantees. The United States is not willing to be able to put troops on the ground. We're not willing to do that...”

Later in the show, Bernie told Welker that “I think millions of Americans are embarrassed, are ashamed, that you have a President of the United States who says that Ukraine started the war, that Zelenskyy is a dictator— he's got it exactly backwards.”

Chris Murphy was on State of the Union where he told Dana Bash that “The White House has become an arm of the Kremlin. Every single day, you hear from the national security adviser, from the president of the United States, from his entire national security team Kremlin talking points. The last week, the White House has been pretending as if Ukraine started this war. That's essentially saying that Poland invaded Germany at the beginning of World War II. There are still facts in this world. And the fact is this. Vladimir Putin is a brutal dictator. Russia started this war. And the entire pretext for that meeting yesterday was an attempt to rewrite history in order to sign a deal with Putin that hands Putin Ukraine. That is disastrous for U.S. national security. That means that China will be on the march. Putin may not stop. America may be at war with a nuclear power. And for what? For what? It appears as if America is trying to align itself with dictators, that Donald Trump wants us to have our closest relationships with despots all around the world, because that makes it easier for him to transition America into a kleptocratic oligarchy, where Elon Musk and Donald Trump rule and steal from the American people. If we were allied with democracies, that would be harder. But if the United States' closest partner is Russia, then it makes it a lot easier for Donald Trump, Elon, and their billionaire pals to steal from the American people, to steal our data, to steal our Medicare, to steal our Medicaid in order to enrich themselves.”

Later, Murphy reiterated that “Putin is not to be trusted. And so Zelenskyy had an obligation to raise that issue. And Vance seized on that moment to start a litany of Russia-baked talking points about how weak the Ukrainian army was, about how corrupt the nation is. The back half of that meeting ended up just being the Kremlin literally driving the message of the White House. It is a sad day in America when we are getting closer and closer to Russia, a brutal dictatorship, and we are getting further and further away from democratic allies. Nobody in America wants that. People in America want that war to end, but they don't want it to end by handing the entirety of Ukraine to Russia and elevating, elevating the power of a dictator in the Kremlin.”When Bash asked Murphy if he thinks he made the right choice in voting to confirm Marco Rubio as Secretary of State, he replied “No, it was a mistake. It was a mistake. I think a lot of us thought that Marco Rubio was going to stand up to Donald Trump on an issue like this, that, when Donald Trump decided to align America with dictatorships, again, in order to make it easier for him to steal from the American people, to turn America into an illiberal democracy in which, just like Russia, the oligarchs, the economically powerful people in America rule, and the rest of us just feed the powerful, I thought, when Donald Trump decided to do that, when Donald Trump would come to him and say, help me move America closer to Russia and to Russian values, Marco Rubio would stand up to him. Marco Rubio has not, and that's been a great disappointment to many of his former colleagues in the Senate.... [T]he case I'm making to Democrats is that we have to fight every single day, every single day. Republicans flood the zone. Democrats have to flood the zone. They flood the zone with lies. We flood the zone with truth. We are going to stop this billionaire takeover of government. We are going to stop their destruction of democracy, which they have to do, because what they are attempting to do, gut Medicaid in order to feed another set of tax cuts to Elon Musk and his billionaire friends, it's unpopular. We're going to stop that billionaire takeover, that destruction of our democracy only by fighting them every single day. A lot of Democrats think maybe you should fight every third day, you should reserve your power and jump out of the bushes at the right moment. I just think that we have to be on the offensive 24/7.”

Over on Fox News Sunday, Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) had a very similar attitude, saying he also regretted have voted to confirm Rubio. “As a member of the Senate, Secretary Rubio was somebody who stood up for American values, American principles… [and formerly] acknowledged that Russia was the aggressor against Ukraine… [N]ow he's simply taking his directions to the State Department from Elon Musk and essentially parroting the president's position, which I understand, but it's very different than what Senator Rubio used to talk about.”