The Blue Country Gazette is the successor to the Rim Country Gazette, reflecting our evolution to a nationwide political blog for readers who identify as "blue," liberals, progressives, and/or Democrats. Our mission is to provide distinctive coverage of issues during a time of extreme polarization in the U.S. We strive to provide side-stories and back-stories that provide additional insights and perspectives conventional coverage often doesn't include.
Jeremy W. Peters and Katie Robertson, The New York Times
Rupert Murdoch’s remarks, which he made last month as part of Dominion’s
$1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox, added to the evidence that
Dominion has accumulated as it tries to prove its central allegation:
The people running the country’s most popular news network knew Mr.
Trump’s claims of voter fraud in the 2020 election were false but
broadcast them anyway in a reckless pursuit of ratings and profit. [...]
The new documents and a similar batch released this month provide a
dramatic account from inside the network, depicting a frantic scramble
as Fox tried to woo back its large conservative audience after ratings
collapsed in the wake of Mr. Trump’s loss. Fox had been the first
network to call Arizona for Joseph R. Biden on election night —
essentially declaring him the next president. When Mr. Trump refused to
concede and started attacking Fox as disloyal and dishonest, viewers
began to change the channel.
The filings also revealed that top executives and on-air hosts had
reacted with incredulity bordering on contempt to various fictitious
allegations about Dominion. These included unsubstantiated rumors —
repeatedly uttered by guests and hosts of Fox programs — that its voting
machines could run a secret algorithm that switched votes from one
candidate to another, and that the company was founded in Venezuela to
help that country’s longtime leader, Hugo Chávez, fix elections.
Fox News has been a misinformation project from its inception. The
people that have ascended to the highest, muddiest rungs of the
Fox-o-verse are the top liars, willing to spew the most ignorant
right-wing entertainment propaganda. However, after making money by
attacking predominantly marginalized people and those without the
resources to fight back, Fox News’ defamatory nature has finally bitten
the network in the tushy.
It was explosive news and not surprisingly, Fox News has forgotten to mention it over the past 10 days or so. Even Fox News’ own filings in the matter did not get the kind of coverage one might expect from a legitimate
news organization. On Sunday, having received quite a bit of criticism
for ignoring this tiny bit of enormous news, Fox News’ own Howard Kurtz
spoke to his silence on the matter on his show Media Buzz. It was … enlightening.
In what may have been an ad-libbed moment, Kurtz told his Media Buzz audience, “Some
of you have been asking why I’m not covering the Dominion voting
machines lawsuit against Fox involving the unproven claims of election
fraud in 2020, and it’s absolutely a fair question. I believe I should
be covering it. It’s a major media story, given my role here at Fox. But
the company has decided that as part of the organization being sued, I
can’t talk about it or write about it, at least for now.”
But don’t you worry: Kurtz wants you to know that while he has
flushed any semblance of professional integrity down the toilet, he
still believes he has integrity, saying “I strongly disagree with that
decision, but as an employee, I have to abide by it. And if that
changes, I’ll let you know.”
He’ll “let you know.” Kurtz isn’t the first Fox News on-air
personality to be muzzled by the higher-ups. It was previously reported
that Fox News producers tried to shut down “Judge” Jeanine Pirro’s relentless barrage of election fraud fabrications
in the hours and days preceding Donald Trump’s clear in the
presidential election. In Kurtz’s case, it seems Fox News’ higher-ups
just don’t want their fake reporters to report on how fake their
reporting is.
The cherry on top of this all is that Fox News’ position in the
Dominion defamation lawsuit is something something First Amendment,
freedom of speech, shut your face Howard Kurtz.
Fox News’ defense has long been that Americans know they are full of
it. The problem is that while most Americans know that Fox News cannot
be trusted as a news source, enough of them do to sway Republican
primaries and color public opinion polling with profound ignorance.
Kurtz and everyone with half a brain cell knows the evidence against the hack media outlet is damning. It will be something to see how this affects (or does not affect) the network’s coverage of election security in 2024.
During his train wreck, water-distribution tour of East
Palestine, OH, Trump said he was not responsible for what happened
during his administration. When a reporter asked him about his “pulling
back rail regulations," Trump replied, “I had nothing to do with it.”
Not much of a profile in courage. Apparently, during Trump’s one term,
the buck stopped somewhere else.
Trump continued by attacking Pete Buttigieg. He blamed the
Transport Secretary for America’s “third world nation” airports. It was
his usual fact-free shtick. The Biden administration has provided $15 billion for airport repair and upgrades in its Infrastructure bill. During Trump's time, infrastructure got “a week” but no funding. The man is still incapable of shame.
In response, Buttigieg challenged Trump to do the right thing. During his trip to the crash site on Thursday, a reporter asked Pete:
“You mentioned the national political figures decided to get
involved, it sounds like you’re talking about Trump. And then you said,
‘I need your help.’ How can he help?”
Buttigieg replied:
“Well, one thing he could do is express support for reversing
the deregulation that happened on his watch. I heard him say he had
‘nothing to do with it,’ even though it was in his administration. So if
he had nothing to do with it, and they did it in his administration
against his will, maybe he could come out and say that, that he supports
us moving in a different direction.”
“Against his will?” You can hear the steel scraping the ribs as
Pete twists the knife. The acid drips as he says, “even though it was
in his administration.” The icing is the “aw shucks” placid demeanor
Pete assumes with well-modulated good humor. That’s how you do
“patronizing.”
Buttigieg had more:
“We’re not afraid to own our policies when it comes to raising
the bar on regulation. And I’ve got to think that him indicating that
this is something that everybody, no matter how much you disagree on
politics and presidential campaigns, can get behind — higher fines,
tougher regulations on safety, Congress on tying our hands on breaking
rules, all the other things that go with it that’d be a nice thing for
him to do.”
Here Pete's genius is to tell the audience that Trump supports
something so beneficial no one could find objection to it. Trump is on
the horns of a dilemma. He can either agree with a course of action
promoted by a Democrat. Or he can slam Buttigieg's words and, in doing
so, make himself look beholden to special interests.
Trump will brush it off. The MAGAs will not understand the
subtext. But independents and the “please make Trump go away”
Republicans will admire the verbal knockdown.
Buttigieg vs. DeSantis. Who does disaster footwear better? And which one of them is gay?
Now that Buttigieg has visited the crash site, Fox News has had
to move on from its “where is Secretary Pete?” hysteria. And it landed
on Buttigieg’s footwear. Still smarting from Ron DeSantis’s white boot
follies after Hurricane Ian, Fox snarked that Buttigieg was wearing
“dress boots.”
Under the banner headline “Buttigieg mocked for appearing to wear dress boots while on the ground in East Palestine, Ohio,” reporter Houston Keene wrote,
"Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg appeared to wear dress boots while surveying the train derailment on the ground in East Palestine, Ohio.”
And in case you missed the boots, two sentences later he adds:
“The secretary appeared to be wearing leather dress boots, instead of
heavy-duty shoes like work boots, while surveying damage in the city.”
As a slam, this is second-rate stuff. First, who is doing the
mocking? The author and his water cooler buddies? If these mockers are
real, they are no one anyone cares about. Second, has Houston looked at
the pictures in his article? Those are not “dress boots” — look at the
thickness of the sole. They are also well-worn — something Pete uses
regularly and has not bought or borrowed for the occasion.
Third, what did Houston think Pete was there for — to swing a shovel? Why does he need work boots?
I am not familiar with the work of this journalist. However, if
this is his usual output, he will not have a distinguished career. He
should certainly stay away from fashion pieces. Hopefully, he is young
and can aspire to better things.
On the other hand, Trump is not young and has long since lost the ability to be anything more than a pyrite grifter.
Trump's bottled water giveaway did about as much good in East Palestine as his paper towels did in Puerto Rico.
Welcome to Armstrong County, PA!(Blog
Editors note: Some ask why this blog exists. The answer is: where else
did you see this story about the vile and ignorant antics of the
extremists on the right? We must not forget who and what we are dealing with.)
A small business owner near where I live in rural, deep red
Pennsylvania recently spent $150K to put up an electronic billboard with
rotating messages of hate. The billboard was placed on a busy road
that also serves as a school bus route, so that elementary school
children would pass by it every day. The messages included rants
against critical race theory (image above), attacks on same sex
marriage, and even a sign comparing the FBI to the Gestapo, complete
with swastika. After an outcry from local religious leaders, the
swastika -themed message was taken off, but the other messages are still
running.
In response, the local Democratic party put up a billboard across the
street with a message of inclusion and tolerance. It seems that local
bigots where outraged that somebody would dare to characterize the
citizens of this county as welcoming and tolerant, and they started
making death threats to the people who operated the billboard. The
billboard was taken down after less than a week.
It is unfortunately not surprising that the same people who defended
the messages of intolerance as ‘free speech’ were ready to use any
means necessary, including violence, to suppress a message of inclusion.
A highly offensive message in rural PA, apparently.
It feels a little unfair when politicians buy their books in bulk in order to vault them to the top of The New York Times best
sellers list. Those spots are for people like Prince Harry, whose
wealth and fame came about honestly and organically, through hundreds of years of diligent plunder.
But former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo—who’s about as likely to be
voted Miss Teen USA as he is president, assuming both contests agree to
drop the anachronistic swimsuit competition—doesn’t care about fairness.
He wants to create the illusion of being at least as popular as Chris Christie.
So Pompeo did what politicians often do: He bought numerous copies of his own memoir so it could fall just two spaces behind Pamela Anderson’s book
on how endlessly mortifying the 1995 release of her sex tape has been.
If only Pompeo had his own sex tape. If only it showed him in flagrante delicto with a Taliban fighter. It might finally explain why he negotiated that awful peace deal that led directly to the abrupt takeover of Afghanistan.
Mike Pompeo’s political action committee shelled out $42,000 on books
the day his memoir hit bookshelves, according to a filing submitted to
the Federal Election Commission on Monday.
“Never Give An Inch: Fighting for the America I Love”came out on Jan. 24. That same day, Champion American Values, a PAC that Pompeo chairs,paid Bulkbooks.com $42,000for “mementos—books,” according to the filing.
Of course, this raises an urgent question: Exactly how many wobbly kitchen tables does Mike Pompeo’s mom have?
As Forbes notes, since Pompeo is not yet officially a
candidate for president, it’s still legal for him to personally profit
by using his donors’ funds to buy his own book. Having a big stash of
funds one can use for such purchases also incentivizes publishers to
pursue authors who have exactly nothing interesting to say.
For instance, our previous vice president’s memoir, Hangin’ With Mike Pence, sold
$91,000 worth of books, even though its author has the personality of
pulped turnips. And the Republican National Committee bought $100,000
worth of Donald Trump Jr.’s book, Triggered, which appears to have been ghostwritten by an actual deceased person—and tripled their spend for his next book.
The first Trump Jr. book topped the New York Times bestseller list; the secondroseand thenquickly fellon Amazon’s chart.
This appears to be a largely Republican phenomenon. While at least
seven Democratic senators published books during the past election
cycle, neither the Democratic National Committee nor the party’s two
congressional arms reported buying any of them in bulk quantities.
It also doesn’t hurt to lie about what it actually means to be on TheNew York Times list. In a Facebook ad campaign, Pompeo boasted, “Even theNew York Timesadmits that my new book is a must-read!” Though as Forbes notes, “TheTimesdid not review Pompeo’s book, suggesting that Pompeo was referring to its position on the best-seller list.”
This might be the most hilarious book blurb I've ever seen.
Really embarrassing @mikepompeo couldn't find ANYONE else to praise his book.
Well, if anyone’s actually read Pompeo’s book, please review it here.
I’d be willing to do it, if OSHA can somehow clear it—and I get
sufficient hazard pay to make it worthwhile. If not, I’ll wait until
Pompeo hits double digits in any presidential primary poll. In other
words, until the heat death of the universe or Nikki Haley’s inauguration, whichever comes first.
As we are all well aware, verbal poop dispenser Marjorie Taylor Green
recently called for a “National Divorce” between the Red and Blue
States, and in a typical delusional Right-Winger way, she thinks this
would be somehow a benefit for those Red States.
In a Twitter post
Monday, the right-wing member of Congress said, "We need a national
divorce. We need to separate by red states and blue states and shrink
the federal government."
According to Greene, "everyone" she talks to agrees.
"From the sick and disgusting woke culture issues shoved down our
throats to the Democrat’s traitorous America Last policies, we are
done," she wrote.
"After Democrat voters and big donors ruin a state like California,
you would think it wise to stop them from doing it to another great
state like Florida," she said.
And in 2021, Greene conducted a highly unscientific poll
via Twitter to gauge people's interest in splitting the nation along
party lines. She claimed it found 48 percent of the country wanted it to
stay together, while 43 percent wanted it to split and 9 percent were
undecided.
And she believes that Blue staters who move to Red States shouldn’t be allowed to vote for 5 years. Yeah, really.
So, voter suppression. Then eliminate the Department of Education and
all public schools so you’d only have private schools, and charter
schools that pick and choose their students. You'd fire all “Gender
Woke” teachers — which is blatant bigotry — and ban all CRT in the
schools so everyone would be taught how awesome the South was before the
Civil War and how they were wrongfully and viciously attacked by the
Evil North. And Slavery wasn’t all that bad either.
Yeah, uh huh.
[For the record though, most of the people moving from Blue to Red States are actually Republicans, so she would be cutting off her own nose with these policies.]
But as just about anyone with a brain knows, the Red States are hopelessly trapped suckling on the teet of Blue America.
This was pointed out by Joy Ann Reid.
The Brookings Institute recently generated a report that points out the Biden voting counties across the country produced 71% of the nation’s GDP.
Most notably, the stark economic rift that Brookings Metro documented
after Donald Trump’s shocking 2016 victory has grown even wider. In
2016, we wrote that the 2,584 counties that Trump won generated just 36%
of the country’s economic output, whereas the 472 counties Hillary
Clinton carried equated to almost two-thirds of the nation’s aggregate
economy.
A similar analysis for last week’s election shows these trends
continuing, albeit with a different political outcome. This time,
Biden’s winning base in 509 counties encompasses fully 71% of America’s
economic activity, while Trump’s losing base of 2,547 counties
represents just 29% of the economy. (Votes are still outstanding in 28
mostly low-output counties, and this piece will be updated as new data
is reported.)
And this is true, it is mainly Red States in the middle of the country that are the most dependant on Federal aid.
"The Trump states, virtually every single state except for Utah,
don't ask me why Utah, got back more from Washington than it paid,"
Rattner said. "So it would not really work very well to their advantage
to leave. In fact, the top states for getting a better deal from
Washington are Kentucky, Mississippi and West Virginia."
Higher state-level poverty rates correlate with support for
Republican candidates, Rattner said, while Democratic-leaning states
tend to have higher income.
"You can see with your eye that the red states tend to be above the
national average in poverty," Rattner said, while presenting a chart
showing that correlation. "The blue states tend to be below the national
average in poverty. Another way to look at it is if -- this is by
counties but you get to the same place, on the right, how much of the
[gross domestic product] is produced in these places -- red counties, 29
percent, blue counties, 71 percent. They're suffering more
economically, and that does lead to the question of, how does that
result in more money going to these states?"
Host Joe Scarborough was amazed by Rattner's finding that 71 percent
of the GDP came from counties that voted for Biden in the 2020 election.
"This just underlines the fact that it would be devastating for there to be a divide,
for those areas that voted for Donald Trump to want a, quote, you know,
separation, a divorce from the United States," Scarborough said. "I
mean, yeah, what do you think -- well, what other chart -- do you have
any other charts we can move along to here?"
Poorer states pay less in federal taxes, Rattner said, and he
presented additional charts that showed how much states got back in
federal spending -- and those showed Trump states benefited
disproportionally from the federal government and would suffer if they
were cut off from that funding.
"They'd have huge economic deficits," Rattner said. "They
wouldn't have money for their projects, they wouldn't have new bridges,
they wouldn't have federal installations in their districts. They
wouldn't have food stamps, they wouldn't have Medicaid to help cushion
their residents against extreme poverty. It would be a really
tough and stupid economic decision. Again, the whole irony of this is
you've got Republicans who oppose kind of almost every kind of federal
spending, who are the biggest beneficiaries of the federal spending that
they oppose."
I've had arguments on Twitter with those on the right who like to say
that the cities with the highest crime are “run by Democrats.”
Technically that’s true but then *most* cities are run by Democrats
because that’s where Democrats live — in the cities. When you look at
it, the cities with the most crime are mostly in Red States.
Based on this information, the ten most dangerous cities in the United States are:
The most dangerous city in the United States is Detroit, Michigan.
Detroit has a violent crime rate of 2,007.8 incidents per 100,000
people with a total of 261 homicides in 2018. Detroit is the only
midsize or large city in the United States with a violent crime rate of
over 2,000. With a population of less than 700,000 people today, Detroit
reported about 13,500 violent crimes in 2018 – a rate higher than
cities with double the population. Detroit’s scarce economic
opportunities have led to an annual unemployment rate of 9.0% and 37.9%
of residents living below the poverty line.
Even with a population of about 8.5 million people, New York City is not even in the 50 most dangerous cities in the United States. New York
City has 295 homicides in 2018, which is less than Philadelphia’s 351
despite having a population five times the size of Philadelphia.
Philadelphia takes the number 40 spot on the most dangerous cities list.
Chicago had the highest number of homicides in 2018 with 563; almost
double that of New York, which has triple the population as Chicago.
The issue here is that Democrats who run cities in Blue states — like
Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Chicago or New York — generally have a lower
per capita rate of crime than Democrats (or Republicans) who run cities
in Red States. The difference is in the States — and the State Laws —
rather than the Democrats vs Republican leadership in those cities.
Rural vs Urban crime by age and 1000 victims
There’s another point about rural areas too. They also have crime
and mathematically because the people are spread out the level of crime
per capita can also be higher than in the more safe cities
— it just may be spread out over several sparsely populated counties.
Also, rural crime tends to be more heavily targeted against minorities
and gays so people like MTG probably wouldn’t count it anyway.
For those who would argue that the reason for high crime in these
cities in Red States is the fact that their population is largely black,
a common GOP dog-whistle, the statistic for crime indicate that there
is no real correlation between violent crime and race, but there is a correlation based on income and poverty. [As
noted above when it’s pointed out that Detroit is the U.S. most violent
city, while it has an unemployment rate of 9% and 37.9% of residents
live below the poverty line.]
Violent victimization by income level
Actually, when you break down both race and poverty you can see that
the rate of violence for poor whites is actually slightly higher than
that for blacks, even though the poverty rate for blacks is far higher
as has been well documented.
Violence by Income and Race
So again, the poverty rates are more in correlation to violent crime
in general, and Red States tend to have higher rates of poverty.
It may seem redundant to have both crime rates and gun deaths, but
they are very different issues. Most gun deaths, almost 70%, are the
result of suicides so the idea of increasing the availability of weapons
for the “good guys” doesn’t help at all. In fact, it can only make the
situation worse by making a quick death even more convenient.
It has been nearly a year since the COVID-19 vaccines became
available to every American adult last April, after initially being
offered to health workers and older populations, when supplies were
still limited.
However, vaccination rates differ markedly between states that voted
for former President Donald Trump, compared to those that voted for
President Joe Biden, paralleling the partisan lines that have divided
the country.
Data sourced from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
shows that the 10 states with the highest vaccination rates all voted
for Biden in 2020, while nine of the 10 states with the lowest
vaccination rates voted for Trump. The lone exception was Georgia, which
narrowly went for Biden by less than a quarter of a percentage point.
Further, cumulative death data from the C.D.C., from over the last 10
months, illustrates the implications of political polarization of the
COVID-19 vaccines.
An ABC News analysis of federal data found that on average, the death
rates in states that voted for Trump were more than 38% higher than in
states that voted for Biden, post widespread vaccine availability.
In addition, in the 10 states with the lowest percentage of full
vaccinations, death rates were almost twice as high as that of states
with the highest vaccination rates, the analysis found.
And they.are the states with the lowest life expectancy
[which makes sense considering all the above, and is highly ironic
considering that they claim to be “Pro-Life” except apparently for
people who are already living that is.]
The ten states with the lowest life expectancies, in order, are: Mississippi (74.6), West Virginia (74.9), Alabama (74.9), Kentucky (75.1), Arkansas (75.4), Oklahoma (75.5), Louisiana (75.5), Tennessee (76.1), South Carolina (76.2), and Ohio
(76.6). Mississippi's longevity is the lowest in the United States at
74.6 years. Mississippi men live the shortest lives on average of 71.4
years. Mississippi is the most obese state, with 40.8% of adults being
obese. Unsurprisingly, nine of the ten most obese states are also on the
list of the ten states with the shortest life spans. In general, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Oklahoma, and Arkansas are
considered the least-healthy states, with high rates of obesity,
excessive drinking, cancer, and heart disease, and low-quality health
care.
So basically, these states aren't getting anything done right.
Without Federal money for Medicare, Medicaid, Infrastructure and Law
Enforcement it would only get worse.
You take the Federal government out of the picture and you’ve broken
Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Without Federal influence the
Red States would further crush Unions driving wages even lower, they
would be operating without EPA and OSHA so worker safety would drop
through the floor, industrial accidents — like East Palestine — and
pollution would flourish, then you’d have the draconian Christo-Fascist
policies that they implement with even greater Voter Suppression (which
is already happening because of the broken Voter Rights Act), Anti-Woke
and Anti-Gay School Censorship as Civil Rights and Hate Crimes
Enforcement is shuttered, tragically edited Sex Education and
“Abstinance Only” plans which already don't work at preventing teen
pregnancy or transmitting disease, ignoring of vaccine requirements so
formerly dead viruses like Measles and Mumps would be revived, and on
and on.
They would turn these states into Far-Right Religious-infected hellscapes.
It would be absolutely horrible — for them.
Bring it on, red states. Or should we say, "Take it away. Just get outta here."
This was a week in which it seemed that Vladimir Putin just couldn’t
catch a break. On Monday in Kyiv, President Joe Biden delivered—as Eliot
Cohen aptly puts it in The Atlantic —a “gut punch” directed
at Putin’s aspirations. Biden deftly used the symbolic backdrop
of Ukraine’s capitol and most populous city to taunt the Russian
dictator, while pledging America’s “unwavering and unflagging support”
to Ukraine for “as long as it takes.” These sentiments were reiterated
on Tuesday in another inspirational speech Biden delivered in Warsaw.
That same day, Putin himself was reduced to making veiled threats
against his own citizens in a two-hour “state of the nation” diatribe. Putin spoke before an unenthused audience of “bureaucrats, security officials and functionaries,” all
of them robotically rising to clap again and again, before settling
back into their seats and resuming their glum expressions.
Putinspent some two hours unloadinga
barrage of lies, grievances, and bizarre historical revisions in his
attempt to justify the bloodletting he began a year ago. He also said
Russia would suspend participation in a crucial nuclear-arms-control
treaty with the United States. What does this all mean?
It means, more than anything, that Putin is desperate. He’s losing in Ukraine, where, according to aBritish estimatelast week, roughly 200,000 Russian soldiers have been killed or wounded. Even Russia’s tough-guyWagner mercenariesare getting cut to pieces: The National Security Council official John Kirbysaid in a briefing Fridaythat
the Wagner Group—many of them convicted criminals—has taken 30,000
casualties, which is about half the entire group’s strength and a huge
number even for a contractor force.
And so Putin must have rejoiced upon hearing his own talking points regurgitated by seemingly inevitable Republican
presidential candidate Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, who implied that
despite these setbacks, it would only be a matter of time before U.S.
policy in Ukraine would take an abrupt U-turn, allowing Putin to resume
running roughshod over Ukraine, with a view towards threatening central
and western Europe.
As explained by Jonathan Chait, writing for New York Magazine,
“As a governor, DeSantis has had little reason to engage in foreign
policy, but as a presidential candidate he will be presented with a
choice between the party’s traditional
hawkish-internationalist-neoconservative wing and its ascendant Trumpist
America First wing.”
This week we see that the choice has been made: A DeSantis White House would pander to the Marjorie Taylor Greene
wing of the Republican Party, which advocates disengaging from Ukraine,
in effect allowing Russia to do its worst—not only in Ukraine, but
everywhere else. In other words, Putin has a friend at the top of the
Republican Party, regardless of whether Donald Trump or DeSantis is that
party’s nominee.
–He described the Biden administration’s policy as a “blank check,”
implying that his administration would restrict or end aide to Kyiv.
(“Just saying it’s an open-ended blank check, that is not acceptable.”)
–He dismissed the notion that Russia poses a threat to American
allies, interests, or values. (“It’s important to point out the fear of
Russia going into NATO countries and all of that, and steamrolling that
is not even coming close to happening. I think they’ve shown themselves
to be a third-rate military power.”)
–He blamed the invasion not on Vladimir Putin but on Joe Biden. (“I
don’t think any of this would have happened, but for the weakness that
the president showed during his first year in office, culminating, of
course, in the disastrous withdrawal in Afghanistan.”)
Dutifully parroting the “America First” playbook, DeSantis also
contrasted the Biden administration’s position towards Ukraine with its
alleged lack of concern over the U.S.-Mexican border, a comparison so
blatantly inapt it probably originated from Steve Bannon’s podcast.
As Amanda Carpenter, writing for The Bulwark, explains:
Ron DeSantis isn’t really this dense—Yale,
Harvard, QED. He’s just acting dumb because he thinks it’s politically
smart. And in doing so, he has revealed quite a lot about what he might
be like as a president.
DeSantis has positioned himself on the wrong
side of Ukraine because he thinks that opposing Biden, no matter what
Biden does, is the only way to stay on the good side of MAGA voters.
Even if that means turning a blind eye to the plight of the Ukrainians.
Of course, the problem here isn’t simply DeSantis’ obvious pandering,
but the message that it sends to Putin, who is clearly looking for a
lifeline out of his self-inflicted quagmire. Now Putin knows where to
direct the same vast intelligence resources he employed to provide
Donald Trump with a friendly assist in 2016. In
fact, he is far more motivated now, since the failure to do so might
well result in his own demise, and that of his regime. And while the
Trump brand may crumble under the weight of pending indictments, there’s now a new appeaser out there, waiting to be courted.
Up to this point, many have speculated how a DeSantis campaign would
play out on a national level. Now those doubts can be put to rest: He
will be, first and foremost, Putin’s stooge.
GOP presidential hopeful Ron DeSantis is, first and foremost, Putin’s stooge. As most all Republicans have been since the Donald got into politics.
