Former RNC Chair Comes Up With Damning New Way To Describe Trump Supporters

HuffPost

Former RNC Chair Comes Up With Damning New Way To Describe Trump Supporters

Lee Moran – February 12, 2024

Michael Steele, a former chair of the Republican National Committee, on Sunday, ripped Donald Trump supporters as “MAGA zombies” as he expressed his frustration with those who don’t appear to believe the former president will likely attempt to deliver on his increasingly wild threats if he wins back the White House.

Four-times-indicted Trump on Saturday said he’d urge Russia to “do whatever the hell they want” to member countries of the NATO military alliance if said country hadn’t paid its way. It’s amid fears Trump will be unleashed in a second administration stocked with acolytes rather than serious policy appointees.

“Why don’t they see that he’s trying to build a sycophantic army of, I’m calling them zombies, MAGA zombies, to do as he’s instructing them to do?” Steele, while guest hosting on MSNBC, asked former Trump White House national security adviser John Bolton.

“What is the disconnect that people don’t seem to get?” Steele added.

“I think people really don’t believe it could be as bad as it might be,” Bolton, now a fierce critic of his former boss, Trump, replied.

“I think a Trump victory risks continuing constitutional crisis,” he continued. “I think we’ll survive it. I don’t think democracy is threatened, but I think we could suffer a lot of damage, and many others have tried in different ways to convince, especially Republicans, that this is serious. But as you say, we have not been successful so far.”

Watch the video here:

‘What A Jackass!’: Joe Scarborough Stunned By Donald Trump’s Latest Lie

HuffPost

‘What A Jackass!’: Joe Scarborough Stunned By Donald Trump’s Latest Lie

Lee Moran – February 12, 2024

MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough on Monday morning went to town on Donald Trump’s latest story involving an unnamed “sir,” a verbal habit of the former president that commentators have previously noted pretty much means he’s about to lie.

“It’s not even a good lie for Donald Trump,” said the anchor.

Over the weekend, Trump railed against the NATO military alliance at a campaign rally and claimed, “One of the presidents of a big country stood up and said, ‘Well sir, if we don’t pay and we’re attacked by Russia, will you protect us?’ I said, ‘You didn’t pay? You’re delinquent?’ He said, ‘Yes, let’s say that happened.’ No, I would not protect you. In fact, I would encourage them to do whatever the hell they want. You gotta pay. You gotta pay your bills.”

Watch Trump’s speech in the video here:

Scarborough highly doubted Trump’s version of the events.

“Nobody is saying that. What a jackass!” he said. “How stupid would you have to be in that audience to go, ‘Oh, well, did they really say that? That’s amazing. I can’t believe a big country president would say that.’ It’s just stupid.”

The “Morning Joe” cohost suggested Trump was “now so desperate to support [Russian President] Vladimir Putin and undercut America’s allies in Europe, he’s making up a ‘sir’ story?”

“It’s not even a good lie for Donald Trump. Like, this is you can tell he’s losing it,” he said, later adding it was the kind of story that even a third-grader would question.

Watch the video of Scarborough’s take:

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Apologizes For Controversial $7 Million Super Bowl Ad

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Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Apologizes For Controversial $7 Million Super Bowl Ad

Ron Dicker – February 12, 2024

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Apologizes For Controversial $7 Million Super Bowl Ad

A $7 million Super Bowl ad touting Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s run for president prompted an apology from the independent candidate. (Watch the video below.)

The ad, produced by a super PAC backing Kennedy, American Values 2024, borrowed heavily from a 1960 spot for his uncle John F. Kennedy’s winning presidential bid. It uses the same jingle and co-opts the vintage vibe.

RFK Jr. shared the ad on X but hours later added an apology to his family after his cousin, Bobby Shriver, the son of Eunice Kennedy Shriver, slammed the ad. “She would be appalled by his deadly health care views,” Bobby Shriver wrote.

Notably, the ad not only remained on RFK Jr.’s account — but was pinned to the top of his profile as of Monday morning.

I’m so sorry if the Super Bowl advertisement caused anyone in my family pain,” Kennedy wrote. “The ad was created and aired by the American Values Super PAC without any involvement or approval from my campaign. FEC rules prohibit Super PACs from consulting with me or my staff. I love you all. God bless you.”

Kennedy’s press secretary, Stefanie Spear, sang a different tune over the big-game advertising, which American Values co-founder Tony Lyons estimated at $7 million, according to CBS News. (Watch the video below.)

“We are pleasantly surprised and grateful to the American Values PAC for running an ad during the Super Bowl where more than 100 million Americans got to see that Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is running as an independent candidate for president of the United States,” Spear told CBS News.

Robert Shrum, a speechwriter for the late former Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.), said the ad was “plagiarism” while adding on X: “Bobby, you’re no John Kennedy.′ Instead you are a Trump ally.”

Kennedy, whose anti-vax views align with many conservatives, was grabbing 14% of the general vote in a recent poll that imagined a five-person ballot in November. That positions him as a potential spoiler for the expected main candidates, President Joe Biden and his criminally indicted rival, former President Donald Trump.

Here’s the original JFK ad:

Trump’s ‘outrageous’ NATO comments make allies ‘wonder whether they can rely on America’, warns Romney

Independent

Trump’s ‘outrageous’ NATO comments make allies ‘wonder whether they can rely on America’, warns Romney

Eric Garcia and Gustaf Kilander – February 12, 2024

Mitt Romney has told The Independent that former President Donald Trump’s comments about how he would urge Russia to attack NATO countries who don’t spend enough on defense makes US allies wonder if they can “rely on America”. 

Mr Romney’s comments come after Mr Trump’s rally in Conway, South Carolina on Sunday, where he said: “If we don’t pay and we’re attacked by Russia, will you protect us?” Mr Trump said, claiming to remember a Nato member state leader asking him during his presidency. He then claimed to have responded: “No, I would not protect you. In fact, I would encourage them to do whatever the hell they want.”

Mr Romney, now a Utah Senator after being the 2012 Republican presidential nominee and serving as the governor of Massachusetts, told The Independent on Monday: “He says outrageous things to get people riled up. It works at the rallies. Unfortunately, it also has an impact around the world where our friends wonder whether they can rely on America.”

This comes after reports regarding Mr Trump telling top European Union officials that the US would never help Europe if it was attacked.

Thierry Breton, a French EU commissioner, said during a roundtable discussion in Brussels early last month that Mr Trump made the comments in January 2020 when speaking to the president of the commission, Ursula Von Der Leyen, a former German defence minister.

“You need to understand that if Europe is under attack, we will never come to help you and to support you,” Mr Trump said, according to Mr Breton. “By the way, NATO is dead, and we will leave, we will quit NATO.”

“And by the way, you owe me $400bn, because you didn’t pay, you Germans, what you had to pay for defence,” Mr Trump added at the time, Mr Breton said.

“Out of principle the President NEVER discloses what her interlocutors have told her during closed-door meetings. So we are not going to comment either way,” a spokesperson for Ms von der Leyen told Reuters.

“The idea that he would abandon our allies if he doesn’t get his way underscores what we already know to be true about Donald Trump: The only person he cares about is himself,” the Biden campaign told the news agency.

Senator Roger Marshall of Kansas dismissed critiques of Mr Trump’s rhetoric.

“What I know is he’ll secure the border, he’s going to make this country safer, he’s going to hold Nato accountable,” he told The Independent. “And I think that people need to realize that like, you should take everything that he says seriously, but not literally.”

Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri, a staunch supporter of Mr Trump who led the charge to object to the 2020 presidential election results, said Mr Trump was correct in saying that Nato countries did not pay their fair share, but added that the United States would live up to its commitments.

“Seriously, they need to do more, but obviously we don’t want Russia to invade,” he told The Independent. “If they invaded a Nato country, we’d have to defend them, so we don’t want that.”

I’m a Neuroscientist. We’re Thinking About Biden’s Memory and Age in the Wrong Way.

By Charan Ranganath – February 12, 2024

Dr. Ranganath is a professor of psychology and neuroscience and director of the Dynamic Memory Lab at the University of California, Davis, and the author of the forthcoming book “Why We Remember: Unlocking Memory’s Power to Hold On to What Matters.”

President Biden seated in a chair holding a stack of what looks like index cards.
Credit…Doug Mills/The New York Times

Dr. Ranganath is a professor of psychology and neuroscience and director of the Dynamic Memory Lab at the University of California, Davis, and the author of the forthcoming book “Why We Remember: Unlocking Memory’s Power to Hold On to What Matters.”Sign up for the Opinion Today newsletter  Get expert analysis of the news and a guide to the big ideas shaping the world every weekday morning. Get it sent to your inbox.

Special Counsel Robert K. Hur’s report, in which he declined to prosecute President Biden for his handling of classified documents, also included a much-debated assessment of Mr. Biden’s cognitive abilities.

“Mr. Biden would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview with him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”

As an expert on memory, I can assure you that everyone forgets. In fact, most of the details of our lives — the people we meet, the things we do and the places we go — will inevitably be reduced to memories that capture only a small fraction of those experiences.

It is normal to be more forgetful as you get older. Broadly speaking, memory functions begin to decline in our 30s and continue to fade into old age. However, age in and of itself doesn’t indicate the presence of memory deficits that would affect an individual’s ability to perform in a demanding leadership role. And an apparent memory lapse may or may not be consequential depending on the reasons it occurred.

There is forgetting and there is Forgetting. If you’re over the age of 40, you’ve most likely experienced the frustration of trying to grasp hold of that slippery word hovering on the tip of your tongue. Colloquially, this might be described as ‘forgetting,’ but most memory scientists would call this “retrieval failure,” meaning that the memory is there, but we just can’t pull it up when we need it. On the other hand, Forgetting (with a capital F) is when a memory is seemingly lost or gone altogether. Inattentively conflating the names of the leaders of two countries would fall in the first category, whereas being unable to remember that you had ever met the president of Egypt would fall into the latter.

Over the course of typical aging, we see changes in the functioning of the prefrontal cortex, a brain area that plays a starring role in many of our day-to-day memory successes and failures. These changes mean that, as we get older, we tend to be more distractible and often struggle to pull up the word or name we’re looking for. Remembering events takes longer and it requires more effort, and we can’t catch errors as quickly as we used to. This translates to a lot more forgetting, and a little more Forgetting.

Many of the special counsel’s observations about Mr. Biden’s memory seem to fall in the category of forgetting, meaning that they are more indicative of a problem with finding the right information from memory than actual Forgetting. Calling up the date that an event occurred, like the last year of Mr. Biden’s vice presidency or the year of his son’s death, is a complex measure of memory. Remembering that an event took place is different than being able to put a date on when it happened, the latter of which is more challenging with increased age. The president very likely has many memories of both periods of his life, even though he could not immediately pull up the date in the stressful (and more immediately pressing) context of the Oct. 7 attack on Israel.

Other “memory” issues highlighted in the media are not so much cases of forgetting as they are of difficulties in the articulation of facts and knowledge. For instance, in July 2023, Mr. Biden mistakenly stated in a speech that “we have over 100 people dead,” when he should have said, “over one million.” He has struggled with a stutter since childhood, and research suggests that managing a stutter demands prefrontal resources that would normally enable people to find the right word or at least quickly correct errors after the fact.

Americans are understandably concerned about the advanced age of the two top contenders in the coming presidential election (Mr. Biden is 81 and Donald Trump is 77), although some of these concerns are rooted in cultural stereotypes and fears around aging. The fact is that there is a huge degree of variability in cognitive aging. Age is, on average, associated with decreased memory, but studies that follow up the same person over several years have shown that, although some older adults show precipitous declines over time, other “super-agers” remain as sharp as ever.

Mr. Biden is the same age as Harrison Ford, Paul McCartney and Martin Scorsese. He’s also a bit younger than Jane Fonda (86) and a lot younger than Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett (93). All these individuals are considered to be at the top of their professions, and yet I would not be surprised if they are more forgetful and absent-minded than when they were younger. In other words, an individual’s age does not say anything definitive about their cognitive status or where it will head in the near future.

I can’t speak to the cognitive status of any of the presidential candidates, but I can say that, rather than focusing on candidates’ ages per se, we should consider whether they have the capabilities to do the job. Public perception of a person’s cognitive state is often determined by superficial factors, such as physical presence, confidence, and verbal fluency, but these aren’t necessarily relevant to one’s capacity to make consequential decisions about the fate of this country. Memory is surely relevant, but other characteristics, such as knowledge of the relevant facts and emotion regulation — both of which are relatively preserved and might even improve with age — are likely to be of equal or greater importance.

Ultimately, we are due for a national conversation about what we should expect in terms of the cognitive and emotional health of our leaders.

And that should be informed by science, not politics.

Why I Am Now Deeply Worried for America

Paul Krugman – February 12, 2024

An American flag in murky water.
Credit…Damon Winter/The New York Times

Until a few days ago, I was feeling fairly sanguine about America’s prospects. Economically, we’ve had a year of strong growth and plunging inflation — and aside from committed Republicans, who see no good, hear no good and speak no good when a Democrat is president, Americans appear to be recognizing this progress. It has seemed increasingly likely that the nation’s good sense would prevail and democracy would survive.

But watching the frenzy over President Biden’s age, I am, for the first time, profoundly concerned about the nation’s future. It now seems entirely possible that within the next year, American democracy could be irretrievably altered.

And the final blow won’t be the rise of political extremism — that rise certainly created the preconditions for disaster, but it has been part of the landscape for some time now. No, what may turn this menace into catastrophe is the way the hand-wringing over Biden’s age has overshadowed the real stakes in the 2024 election. It reminds me, as it reminds everyone I know, of the 2016 furor over Hillary Clinton’s email server, which was a minor issue that may well have wound up swinging the election to Donald Trump.

As most people know by now, Robert Hur, a special counsel appointed to look into allegations of wrongdoing on Biden’s part, concluded that the president shouldn’t be charged. But his report included an uncalled-for and completely unprofessional swipe at Biden’s mental acuity, apparently based on the president’s difficulty in remembering specific dates — difficulty that, as I wrote on Friday, everyone confronts at whatever age. Hur’s gratuitous treatment of Biden echoed James Comey’s gratuitous treatment of Clinton — Hur and Comey both seemed to want to take political stands when that was not their duty.

It’s a case of bureaucrats overstepping their bounds in a way that’s at best careless and at worst malicious.

Yes, it’s true that Biden is old, and will be even older if he wins re-election and serves out a second term. I wish that Democrats had been able to settle on a consensus successor a year or two ago and that Biden had been able to step aside in that successor’s favor without setting off an intraparty free-for-all. But speculating about whether that could have happened is beside the point now. It didn’t happen, and Biden is going to be the Democratic nominee.

It’s also true that many voters think the president’s age is an issue. But there’s perception and there’s reality: As anyone who has recently spent time with Biden (and I have) can tell you, he is in full possession of his faculties — completely lucid and with excellent grasp of detail. Of course, most voters don’t get to see him up close, and it’s on Biden’s team to address that. And yes, he speaks quietly and a bit slowly, although this is in part because of his lifetime struggle with stuttering. He also, by the way, has a sense of humor, which I think is important.

Most important is that Biden has been a remarkably effective president. Trump spent four years claiming that a major infrastructure initiative was just around the corner, to the point that “It’s infrastructure week!” became a running joke; Biden actually got legislation passed. Trump promised to revive American manufacturing, but didn’t. Biden’s technology and climate policies — the latter passed against heavy odds — have produced a surge in manufacturing investment. His enhancement of Obamacare has brought health insurance coverage to millions.

If you ask me, these achievements say a lot more about Biden’s capacity than his occasional verbal slips.

And what about his opponent, who is only four years younger? Maybe some people are impressed by the fact that Trump talks loud and mean. But what about what he’s actually saying in his speeches? They’re frequently rambling word salads, full of bizarre claims like his assertion on Friday that if he loses in November, “they’re going to change the name of Pennsylvania.”

Not to mention confusing Nikki Haley with Nancy Pelosi and mistaking E. Jean Carroll for one of his ex-wives.

As I also wrote last week, Trump’s speeches make me remember my father’s awful last year, when he suffered from sundowning — bouts of incoherence and belligerence after dark. And we’re supposed to be worried about Biden’s mental state?

Over the past few days, while the national discussion has been dominated by talk about Biden’s age, Trump declared that he wouldn’t intervene to help “delinquent” NATO members if Russia were to attack them, even suggesting that he might encourage such an attack. He seems to regard NATO as nothing more than a protection racket and after all this time still has no idea how the alliance works. By the way, Lithuania, the NATO member that Trump singled out, has spent a larger percentage of its G.D.P. on aid to Ukraine than any other nation.

Again, I wish this election weren’t a contest between two elderly men and worry in general about American gerontocracy. But like it or not, this is going to be a race between Biden and Trump — and somehow the lucid, well-informed candidate is getting more heat over his age than his ranting, factually challenged opponent.

As I said, until just the other day I was feeling somewhat optimistic. But now I’m deeply troubled about our nation’s future.

EXPLAINER-What did Trump say about NATO funding and what is Article 5?

Reuters

EXPLAINER-What did Trump say about NATO funding and what is Article 5?

Andrew Gray and Sabine Siebold – February 12, 2024

BRUSSELS, Feb 12 (Reuters) – Former U.S. President Donald Trump raised a storm of criticism from the White House and top Western officials for suggesting he would not defend NATO allies who failed to spend enough on defence and would even encourage Russia to attack them.

Here are the answers to some key questions about NATO, the comments by Trump – who is running for another term in the White House in November and leading President Joe Biden in some polls – and their implications.

WHAT IS NATO? Founded in 1949 to counter the Soviet Union with Cold War tensions rising, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization is a political and military alliance of countries from North America and Europe.

Enshrined in Article 5 of its founding treaty is the principle of collective defence – the idea that an attack on one member is considered an attack on all of them.

NATO takes decisions by consensus but the political and military strength of the United States means that it is by far the most powerful country in the alliance, with its nuclear arsenal seen as the ultimate security guarantee.

WHICH COUNTRIES ARE IN NATO?

NATO currently has 31 members – most of them European nations, plus the United States and Canada. The newest member is Finland, which joined last April in reaction to Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Sweden applied to join along with Finland but is waiting for Hungary to ratify its application as the final major step before membership.

During the Cold War, NATO’s main focus was protecting Western Europe from the Soviet Union. After the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall, NATO expanded to take in former communist bloc countries from Central and Eastern Europe.

NATO’s members range from large countries such as Britain, France, Germany and Turkey to small nations such as Iceland and Montenegro.

WHAT DID TRUMP SAY ABOUT NATO?

As U.S. president from 2017-21, Trump often lambasted NATO and members such as Germany, accusing them of not paying enough for their own defence and relying on Washington to protect them. He openly questioned the collective defence principle.

Other U.S. administrations have also accused Europeans of not spending enough on defence, but in less strident terms.

Trump took his criticism to a new level at a campaign rally on Saturday in Conway, South Carolina, when he recounted what he said was a conversation with the “president of a big country”.

“Well sir, if we don’t pay, and we’re attacked by Russia – will you protect us?” Trump quoted the unnamed leader as saying.

“I said: ‘You didn’t pay? You’re delinquent?’ He said: ‘Yes, let’s say that happened.’ No, I would not protect you. In fact, I would encourage them (Russia) to do whatever the hell they want. You gotta pay,” Trump said.

HOW IS NATO FUNDED?

Trump has often accused other NATO members of not paying their dues, giving the impression that the alliance is like a club with membership fees.

But NATO operates differently. It has some common funds, to which all members contribute. But the vast bulk of its strength comes from members’ own national defence spending – to maintain forces and buy arms that can also be used by NATO. However, NATO members have committed to spending at least 2% of their Gross Domestic Product (GDP) every year on defence – and most of them did not meet that goal last year.

HOW MANY NATO MEMBERS MEET THE DEFENCE SPENDING TARGET? According to NATO estimates from July last year, 11 members were expected to meet the 2% target in 2023. Those members were Poland, the United States, Greece, Estonia, Lithuania, Finland, Romania, Hungary, Latvia, Britain and Slovakia.

Germany, Europe’s economic heavyweight, was estimated at 1.57%. But German officials have said they expect to meet the 2% target this year, partly thanks to a special 1-billion-euro fund established in response to Russia’s war in Ukraine.

The lowest spenders as a share of national GDP were Spain, Belgium and Luxembourg, according to the NATO figures.

NATO is expected to release updated figures in the coming days that will show more allies meeting the 2% target, according to people familiar with the data.

WHAT IS NATO’S ARTICLE 5?

In Article 5 of the founding treaty, NATO members declared that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America “shall be considered an attack against them all”.

They agreed they would “assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force”.

However, Article 5 stops short of a commitment to an automatic military response to help an ally under attack. That means the strength of Article 5 depends on clear statements from political leaders that it will be backed up by action. This is one reason Trump’s comments caused such a furore, particularly as they came at a time of heightened alarm in NATO about Russia’s intentions, following its invasion of Ukraine.

By suggesting he would not take military action to defend an ally, Trump undermined the assumptions that give Article 5 its power.

“Any suggestion that allies will not defend each other undermines all of our security, including that of the U.S., and puts American and European soldiers at increased risk,” NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said on Sunday. (Reporting by Andrew Gray and Sabine Siebold; editing by Mark Heinrich)

Carlson interview solidified one thing about Putin — he’s off the rails

Business Insider

Russia historians say the Tucker Carlson interview solidified one thing about Putin — he’s off the rails

Erin Snodgrass and Kelsey Vlamis – February 12, 2024

  • Vladimir Putin’s interview with Tucker Carlson showcased his delusions, two Russia experts said.
  • Putin attempted to negate Ukraine’s sovereignty through his version of Russian history.
  • US senators are working to provide aid to Ukraine and Israel, but it may not survive the House.

Russian President Vladimir Putin delivered a strange performance fueled by Russian propaganda and imperialist posturing in his interview with right-wing media host Tucker Carlson last week.

The two-hour interview revealed little new information about the war in Ukraine — beyond that it is likely to continue — but did manage to highlight Putin’s increasing delusion, according to two Russia historians.

“Putin’s performance was strange,” said Robert English, a professor at the University of Southern California who studies Russia, the Soviet Union, and Eastern Europe.

For nearly 30 uninterrupted minutes, Putin rattled off his version of Russian history in an apparent attempt to prove that Ukraine is not a sovereign country. Countless historians and analysts have refuted Putin’s sovereignty claims since the war began in February 2022.

The Russian president parroted in great, slogging detail many of the erroneous talking points he’s used over the years to bolster his belief that Ukraine ought to be under Russian control.

“Putin seems like a delusional man who has lost touch with reality, yammering on about Rurik and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth,” said Simon Miles, an assistant professor at Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy and a historian of the Soviet Union and US-Soviet relations.

“The first question where Carlson asks about outbreak of hostilities in Ukraine — as if they just spontaneously combusted and Putin didn’t invade, starting the war — really set the tone,” Miles wrote in an email to BI.

The interview, which streamed Thursday on Carlson’s website and X, comes at a key moment in Ukraine’s fight for ongoing US assistance.

Putin could have easily blamed the invasion on Russia’s fear of an expanding NATO presence in the region, English said. If Putin had acquiesced even a bit — hinting at the possibility of eventual reconciliation — he may have been able to turn the tide even further against continued US assistance to Ukraine.

“Instead, he showed that it wasn’t Russian insecurity, but Putin’s personal imperialism, that motivated the war,” English said. “And so those watching in the West may well conclude that he still wants to conquer all of Ukraine, that he will never respect its sovereignty, and so the West must keep the weapons flowing to Kyiv.”

“He could have shown that he is reasonable and open to a fair compromise,” English added. “Instead, he showed that he is both imperious as well as imperialistic, and so compromise with him may be impossible.”

In their read of the interview, the New Yorker’s Masha Gessen noted the danger of Putin’s delusion.

“But the way Putin described the beginning of the Second World War in his interview with Carlson suggests that, although he keeps accusing Ukraine of fostering Nazism, in his mind, he might see himself as Hitler, but perhaps a wilier one, one who can make inroads into the United States and create an alliance with its presumed future President,” Gessen wrote.

Former President Donald Trump made comments over the weekend that added to the potential dangers of Putin’s view. The GOP frontrunner said the US should allow Russia to attack non-paying NATO countries and even “encourage them to do whatever the hell they want.”

Meanwhile, US senators are working to advance a bill that would provide aid to Ukraine and Israel, but its prospects in the House remain uncertain.

Donald Trump and Tucker Carlson gave Putin exactly want he wants

Salon – Opinion

Donald Trump and Tucker Carlson gave Putin exactly want he wants

Heather Digby Parton – February 12, 2024

 Brendan Smialowski / AFP via Getty Images
Brendan Smialowski / AFP via Getty Images

As we all know, the biggest story in the world is the breaking news that President Joe Biden is old. Sure 9/11 was something of a big deal and the war in Iraq and the global pandemic required all of our attention for a time, but this is the most important news of our lifetime, maybe anyone’s lifetime and there’s no telling when, or if, the nation will ever recover. Still, it’s probably important to at least pay a tiny bit of attention to other things happening in the world just in case they might also be affected by Biden’s age in some way.

In fact, we probably should be just a little bit curious about what former Fox News celebrity Tucker Carlson was doing in Moscow last week interviewing Russian president Vladimir Putin. Carlson has demonstrated his affinity for Putin for years now and is commonly extolled on the Russian state television channels as a model American with all the right ideas. Back in March of 2022, Mother Jones obtained a copy of a Kremlin memo with talking points for the media:

“It is essential to use as much as possible fragments of broadcasts of the popular Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who sharply criticizes the actions of the United States [and] NATO, their negative role in unleashing the conflict in Ukraine, [and] the defiantly provocative behavior from the leadership of the Western countries and NATO towards the Russian Federation and towards President Putin, personally,” advises the 12-page document written in Russian. It sums up Carlson’s position: “Russia is only protecting its interests and security.” The memo includes a quote from Carlson: “And how would the US behave if such a situation developed in neighboring Mexico or Canada?”

(People like Carlson used to be called “useful idiots.”) Russian state media has followed those instructions and for the past two years has featured Carlson’s commentary regularly. It’s therefore not all that surprising that he would be granted the coveted interview with Putin.

As it turns out the interview ended up mostly being a twisted history lesson from Putin with Carlson sitting there like a potted plant with a feigned fascinated expression on his face. The point of Putin’s tutorial was to explain why Russia has every right to invade Ukraine and anywhere else he might fancy. Putin went to great pains to explain why it was the victims of WWII who made Hitler do what he did, specifically the people of Poland, whom Putin blamed for balking at Hitler’s invasion of its country. The entire thrust of the conversation was a very thinly veiled threat to invade Poland. The Polish government certainly heard it that way. The foreign minister posted this on Friday:

He’s right. It isn’t the first time. Putin been saying it for years now and it’s one reason why the NATO alliance has not only been more unified than ever, but they’ve also welcomed Finland — another country that shares a border with Russia and is definitely on Putin’s wish list. Sweden has also applied for membership but is still being held up by Russia-friendly Hungary under the leadership of authoritarian dreamboat, Viktor Orban. (There is some hope that this last impediment will be lifted in the near future.) These are countries that had long resisted joining the alliance but moved quickly to do it when Putin expanded his invasion of Ukraine in 2022. They see the writing on the wall.

There’s been a ton written about the right’s attraction to Putin for reasons that range from affinity with his macho whiteness and adherence to “traditional values” (homophobia and misogyny) to an appreciation of his willingness to crack down on dissent. He’s their kind of guy. And we know that the man who leads their party, Donald Trump, admires him greatly because he says so all the time. When Putin invaded Ukraine in 2022, Trump was very impressed:

Here’s a guy who’s very savvy … I know him very well. Very, very well. By the way, this never would have happened with us. Had I been in office, not even thinkable. This would never have happened. But here’s a guy that says, you know, ‘I’m gonna declare a big portion of Ukraine independent’ – he used the word ‘independent’ – ‘and we’re gonna go out and we’re gonna go in and we’re gonna help keep peace.’ You gotta say that’s pretty savvy.”

He pays lip service to the idea that Putin is so afraid of Trump that he would never make a move without his permission but the truth is that Trump not only doesn’t care that Putin invaded a sovereign country, he is actively hostile to Ukraine, which he has been persuaded to hate for a variety of reasons many of which were likely put in his head by Putin himself.  And he’s been opposed to the NATO alliance for years, mainly because he never understood what it does and why the U.S. should be a part of it. He even admitted it on the trail once back in 2016, saying “I said here’s the problem with NATO: it’s obsolete. Big statement to make when you don’t know that much about it, but I learn quickly.”

Whatever Trump may have learned came up against his unwillingness to ever admit he was wrong so he transformed his critique to the only thing he understands: money. He has repeatedly threatened to pull out of NATO because the other countries aren’t “making their payments” as if they’re members of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago beach club in arrears on their membership dues rather than a mutual defense alliance in which each country has agreed to spend a certain amount on its national defense.

Over the weekend he went further, however, and said something truly dangerous and unhinged:

This kind of loose talk is dangerous and stupid coming from a man who was once president of the United States and is running again. People believe him when he says something like that, not because they can’t take a joke or don’t know that he’s full of hot air, but because it’s entirely believable that he would do exactly that. Everyone knows he doesn’t care about America’s allies and he has made it clear over and over again that he sees no real benefit to them beyond a possible payout. He posted this on Sunday:

That’s a meaningless demand indicating that even after four years as president, Trump is still as shallow and vacuous as he was the day he was inaugurated. It’s no doubt a coincidence that he made these comments within days of the Carlson interview with Putin. I find it hard to believe that Trump slogged through that tedious conversation or understood what Putin was talking about. But you can bet that Putin heard Trump and rubbed his hands together with glee. If only the American people heard him just as clearly.

Tucker Carlson Defends Putin, Says ‘Leadership Requires Killing’ | Video

The Wrap

Tucker Carlson Defends Putin, Says ‘Leadership Requires Killing’ | Video

Sharon Knolle – February 12, 2024

Tucker Carlson had a curious defense of Vladimir Putin in his first interview since interviewing the Russian autocrat, saying “Every leader kills people, leadership requires killing.”

Carlson’s remarks were made at the 2024 World Government Summit in Dubai, where he was interviewed by Egyptian journalist Emad Eldin Adeeb.

Adeeb asked Carlson why he neglected to ask Putin about such pressing topics as the poisoning of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny. “I’m not going to lecture you, but you should challenge some ideas,” said Adeeb. “You did not talk about freedom of speech, you did not talk about Navlny…”

Carlson replied that other journalists had already posed such questions to Putin, adding, essentially, that it’s not news that Putin has ordered hits on his enemies. “Every leader kills people, leadership requires killing,” said the former Fox News anchor. (Carlson’s comments that “leadership requires killing” appear about 17 minutes into the 26-minute segment.)

Although Carlson did ask Putin about the potential release of detained Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich during the interview that took place in Moscow, he told Adeeb that his primary goal was to “let Putin talk” and “hear his thoughts.” Carlson said that positioning himself as the “good guy” to Putin’s “bad guy” would “not be fruitful.”

When Adeeb asked about Carlson’s response to the criticism leveled at him over his Putin interview, Carlson responded,”I don’t like the internet and I haven’t seen any of the reactions.” Adeeb asked specifically if Carlson had heard Hillary Clinton’s summation that he had proved “a useful idiot” to the Russian dictator and he claimed not to have heard about it.https://www.youtube.com/embed/mMXikZM_O80?feature=oembed

“She’s a child, I don’t listen to her,” he said of the former Secretary of State.

While Carlson insisted several times that he is “not flakking for Putin,” he did praise Moscow for being better than any current U.S. city. “Moscow is so much nicer than any city in my country, cleaner and safer and prettier. I grew up in a country that had cities like Moscow and Abu Dhabi, and Singapore and Tokyo, and we no longer have them.”

Decrying the “filth and graffiti” found in American cities and people “begging for drugs” in London, Carlson seemed to be saying that if he were in charge, those kinds of things would not happen: “My children don’t smoke marijuana at the breakfast table because I don’t allow them.”

Carlson also has a long history of supporting pro-Putin and pro-Russia talking points on issues like the unprovoked invasion of Ukraine or U.S.-Russia relations, and criticizing Putin’s enemies and people arrested and imprisoned by Russia.