Do MAGAts Ever Ask Themselves Why America's Enemies Back Trump?
Today, Punchbowl’s Jake Sherman, John Bresnahan Melanie Zanona and Andrew Desiderio got the day off to a miserable start by reminding their readers that “Biden has succeeded where no other politician has these last few years— making Republicans look both competent and unified. Biden’s catastrophic showing and the ensuing drama have turned the Democratic Party on Capitol Hill completely upside down. Democrats spent much of this Congress watching from the sidelines as Republicans tore themselves apart over former Speaker Kevin McCarthy and the return of former President Donald Trump… Rank-and-file Democrats now find themselves caught between a president who says he isn’t going anywhere— and who’s working hard to stamp down dissent— and their own political futures.” To say nothing on the country’s future.
Suddenly Trump isn’t the big story any more. He always is. No matter what Biden did pre-debate, he never was. Now he is— and that’s a catastrophe, not just for his own campaign and for the Democratic Party, but for the country and the future of democracy. There’s barely a ripple about how Trump— who could give a shit about unifying the GOP when he has MAGA— is treating his former primary rivals. He sees and will always see, Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis as backstabbers. She not invited to the Republican convention and DeSantis, a sitting governor, can’t be kept out but… practically has to walk around with a brown paper bag over his head. He won’t be allowed onstage but he’ll be appearing at an ancillary event hosted by the sexual predator group he’s involved with, Mom’s For Liberty, the “Southern States Fest.”
Politico reported that “DeSantis is also allowed to be on the convention floor. Evan Power, the chair of the Republican Party of Florida, said that sitting governors and members of Congress are given floor passes… One person familiar with the conversation said that DeSantis did not ask Trump for a speaking slot at the convention nor to be considered for a position in a potential Trump administration… DeSantis is viewed by many in his orbit as a likely 2028 presidential contender. But that positioning could be undermined by Trump’s vice presidential pick.”
Even if Trump doesn’t care about GOP unity— just utter subservience— he is certainly excited by the unity he’s been able to engender among the world’s fascist dictators behind his candidacy. His (and Putin’s) pal, Hungarian dictator Viktor Orbán has endorsed him outright. And, reported Politico, “Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu has fostered and feasted on American political divisions for years, especially over how to deal with Iran, throwing his lot in with Republicans.”
On Tuesday night, Dustin Volz reported that the Kremlin is all in on helping Trump defeat Biden. “The Russian government,” he wrote, “has launched a ‘whole-of-government’ effort to influence the outcome of the U.S. presidential election and favors Republican candidate Donald Trump in the race, senior U.S. intelligence officials said Tuesday. The officials didn’t mention Trump by name, but said that Russia’s current activity— described as covert social-media use and other online propaganda efforts— mirrored the 2020 and 2016 election cycles, when Moscow also favored Trump and sought to undermine Democratic candidates, according to U.S. intelligence agencies.”
That Trump is compliant and easy for Putin to manipulate is one thing, but Trump’s antipathy towards NATO— a bulwark against tyranny is what thus is really all about. On Tuesday, in an OpEd for the Washington Post, Nancy Pelosi and Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, leader of the opposition to Belarus’ fascist dictator Alexander Lukashenko, noted that “tyranny is on the march in Eastern Europe. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war of conquest in democratic Ukraine is emblematic of this sad trend. The mass terror and repression in neighboring Belarus, wrought by ‘Europe’s last dictator,’ Alexander Lukashenko, is less frequently reported on… [B]oth Putin’s and Lukashenko’s regimes need to be designated ‘state sponsors of terrorism.’ In 2023, Russia was designated as a ‘country of particular concern’ because of Putin’s ongoing campaign of cruelty and oppression. It is past time to go further. Make no mistake: Putin and Lukashenko are as much a danger to the global order as Adolf Hitler was in his time. History warns us that we must never be afraid to confront repressive dictatorships bent on snuffing out democracy.”
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