Injustice Anywhere is a Threat to Justice Everywhere, MLK jr – Page 25

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

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.

Reagan’s daughter says he wouldn’t want to be in GOP today

The Hill

Reagan’s daughter says he wouldn’t want to be in GOP today

Elizabeth Crisp – February 12, 2024

Patti Davis, the daughter of former President Reagan, says her late father would be “appalled” by the state of politics today, and she doubts he would want to be associated with the Republican Party.

“I don’t see how he would want to be in it,” Davis told CNN’s Jim Acosta in an interview Sunday. “It’s so diametrically opposed to what he believed and to the dignity that he felt that people in government should have.”

It’s not the first time Davis, an actress and author who was estranged from her father for several years but reconciled before his death in 2004, has spoken unfavorably about the modern GOP.

She penned an open letter to Republicans in 2019, arguing they had disparaged her father to pump up former President Trump.

“You have claimed [my father’s] legacy, exalted him as an icon of conservatism and used the quotes of his that serve your purpose at any given moment,” Davis wrote. “Yet at this moment in America’s history when the democracy to which my father pledged himself and the Constitution that he swore to uphold, and did faithfully uphold, are being degraded and chipped away at by a sneering, irreverent man who traffics in bullying and dishonesty, you stay silent.”

During the CNN interview over the weekend, she said she believes her father would be saddened by the state of the nation.

“I think that he would be heartbroken and horrified about where America is and how mired we are in anger, in violence, in disrespect for one another,” she said. “I think he would heartbroken, and I think he would be scared.”

Feeling betrayed, Trump wants a second administration stocked with loyalists

NBC News

Feeling betrayed, Trump wants a second administration stocked with loyalists

Katherine Doyle, Jonathan Allen and Peter Nicholas – February 12, 2024

WASHINGTON — Sitting in the Oval Office in the infancy of his presidency in 2017, Donald Trump found himself surrounded by new aides who had worked for other prominent Republicans, including Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, his most bitter rival from the previous year’s primaries.

The “America First” president evidently worried that they wouldn’t now put the American president first.

Trump went around the room, inquisition-style, asking each aide to declare allegiance, according to a person who was present.

“He was quizzing people in the Oval if they were loyal to him or previous bosses,” the source recalled seven years later.

But no matter how much emphasis Trump put on loyalty in his first term, he found himself disappointed and frustrated when people he had hired chose other considerations over his instructions — their own reputations, future ambitions and even the Constitution.

During one meeting three years into his term, the president sat with his third defense secretary, Mark Esper, a top aide who had been tasked with installing loyalists in the administration and other senior advisers. The aides wondered aloud how they had kept missing the mark and choosing people who weren’t loyal enough.

“Trump said, ‘We can’t let that happen again,’” according to a source familiar with the conversation.

Secretary of Defense Mark Esper, left, President Donald Trump, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Army Gen. Mark A. Milley, right, wait for a meeting with senior military leaders in the Cabinet Room of the White House on Oct. 7, 2019. (Brendan Smialowski / AFP via Getty Images file)

From Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ allowing for the appointment of the Russia probe special counsel Robert Mueller to Attorney General William Barr’s refusing to declare the 2020 election invalid and Vice President Mike Pence’s declining to reject electors, Trump felt he had been betrayed by the very officials who owed him the most.

Esper, too, would later be unceremoniously cast out after being at odds with Trump on a number of issues.

Now, as he contemplates a second stint in the Oval Office, his fixation on fealty appears to be growing, and some people who have spent time close to the former president say they believe it will be the singular criterion for potential appointees if voters give him what he wants.

Trump has repeatedly brought up the issue of loyalty in his public remarks, as well. On the eve of the Iowa caucuses, he emphasized that point at a rally. He went after Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, his competitors who were once his allies. And as a contrast, he stood with his onetime rival Doug Burgum as the governor of North Dakota offered him an endorsement.

“There’s something about the lack of loyalty in politics,” Trump said.

Trump’s success in a second term will hinge on bringing in people committed to his agenda, top appointees from his first term say. Trump and his allies have big plans for a second term — and still-fresh memories of a drawn-out four-year battle against a hostile administrative state. But without committed allies in key roles, ambitions to gut the federal bureaucracy, overhaul rulemaking and slash budgets could wither and die.

“They have to be resolute with their commitment to the president’s vision,” a top Trump official said of those who could find themselves tapped for plum roles. “You weren’t elected; you’re a Cabinet person as part of the executive branch, and your job is to understand and execute.”

“The headwinds will be significant,” he added.

Finding the ‘shock troops’

Allies of Trump, who is term-limited if re-elected, are aware of the need for a slate of officials willing to execute his vision and prepared to quickly kick into gear.

“You have four years. You have three or four major things you can accomplish — major things — and you have to have the full support of a team that’s loyal,” an outside adviser to Trump said. “I think the president is going to have that.”

A former White House official, speaking about the plans to send in loyalists who are better prepared to execute Trump’s agenda, said: “We’re not going to sit around and wait for the Senate, which is very, very divided and not even in the hands of conservatives, to get things done. Things will be happening, even before Inauguration Day.”

Already, conservatives are laying the groundwork for “shock troops” to take administration posts in a second Trump term, with one group, the Association of Republican Presidential Appointees, hosting a two-day “presidential appointee boot camp” Feb. 19 and 20 in the Washington suburbs.

The boot camp promises to give would-be appointees insight into “the operating context in which appointees work to implement the president’s agenda” and “tactics appointees can use to help the president gain control over the levers of power and thwart a hostile bureaucracy.”

And yet, Trump’s campaign team has tried to put a lid on a constellation of outside groups that are dreaming up wish lists of appointees and an agenda for a prospective next term.

“The efforts by various non-profit groups are certainly appreciated and can be enormously helpful,” Trump campaign senior advisers Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita said in a statement in November. “However, none of these groups or individuals speak for President Trump or his campaign. We will have an official transition effort to be announced at a later date.”

Wiles and LaCivita declined requests to comment for this article.

Refusing to take any chances in the vetting process, allies are promising to help “weed out those that would employ subterfuge” in a bid to thwart Trump from inside, the former official said.

“This is a sharp-elbowed sport, and we know that there will be people that want to undermine the president,” the person added.

A political strategist with ties to a Republican who has been floated in the media as a potential running mate for Trump said, “If you’re Trump, you value loyalty above all else, particularly because he sees Mike Pence as having made a fatal sin.”

It’s exactly that thinking that has given rise to concerns about who might be prepared to staff a future Trump administration, with those at odds with him fearing a worst-case scenario that imperils the sanctity of the republic.

“The starting point for a second Trump term will be the last year of his first term. … Loyalty will be the attribute Trump will be seeking above all else,” said Esper, whose tenure as defense secretary was cut short as Trump struggled to come to terms with the 2020 election results. “He won’t pick people like Jim Mattis or me who will push back on him. So the question becomes: What harm might occur over four years?”

‘It reminds me of “Game of Thrones”‘

As Trump’s lead in the Republican primary campaign becomes more solid, ritual demonstrations of loyalty, particularly from Republicans with stronger ties to a political establishment that was once foreign to him, show his tightening grip.

After Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina — who challenged Trump for the Republican nomination before he dropped out in November — said he would support Trump over Haley, Trump gave little pause before he dug the knife in as the two appeared together in New Hampshire last month.

“You must really hate her,” Trump said of Haley, the former governor of South Carolina, who appointed Scott to his seat in the Senate.

Scott could only manage to utter words that are music to Trump’s ears: “I just love you,” Scott said.

Yet, it’s not just Trump demanding fealty as he mounts his comeback campaign. Voters, too, feel a sense of allegiance, with Republicans today less likely than they were two years ago to believe Joe Biden was the legitimate winner of the 2020 election, according to a recent University of Maryland-Washington Post poll.

Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, a onetime Trump critic, defended those concerns in an interview with ABC News this month, echoing other allies for whom Trump’s election loss in 2020 still looms over his comeback campaign.

Vance, who has been floated as a possible vice presidential pick, said the results of the 2020 presidential race should have been handled differently for a “legitimate” outcome, with Congress considering multiple slates of electors.

It isn’t only potential running mates or political appointees who are taking stock of the price of disloyalty; so are operatives at every juncture of the Republican machine.

“It reminds me of ‘Game of Thrones,’” a former adviser said. “They want you to bend the knee. And if you don’t bend the knee, they take your property. They take your title. They take your reputation, and they throw you into the gulag.”

The demand has settled like a fog over the Republican Party, seeping into its crevices and stifling dissent, an outcome that gives credence to Trump’s fiercest critics, this person argued.

“What I fear is this idea of loyalty means ‘stop questioning,’” the former adviser said. “There will be consequences if you do, and that’s why I think there’s some credence to the idea that he’s a so-called authoritarian. I don’t think he is authoritarian, but he’s opening himself up to this criticism.”

This person added, “His idea of loyalty is one-way.”

Others said that while Trump is susceptible to displays of fealty, he is looking to nab top talent.

“He wants the ‘best available,’” another former White House official said. “Loyalty is important to him, but I don’t know that it’s as much of a litmus test as that.”

History shows that even a promise of excommunication from Trump can run its course. Those who have climbed back in from the cold include Steve Bannon, Trump’s ousted former chief strategist, and conservative media figure Tucker Carlson, who endorsed Trump in November but earlier wrote that he hated him “passionately” in a text message revealed in a lawsuit.

“There are plenty of people that he once viewed as, in his mind, disloyal, who he then relishes bringing back on board,” said Marc Short, Pence’s chief of staff. “Trump loves nothing more than a public reconciliation.”

In Tucker Carlson interview, Putin’s plans for Ukraine appear to echo Trump’s

USA Today

In Tucker Carlson interview, Putin’s plans for Ukraine appear to echo Trump’s

Kim Hjelmgaard and Rachel Barber – February 9, 2024

Former Fox News host and divisive conservative political commentator Tucker Carlson on Thursday released a lengthy and carefully stage-managed interview with President Vladimir Putin − the first Western media figure to do so since Russia invaded Ukraine nearly two years ago.

Carlson published the video interview on his personal website. It was also posted on his X social account. The interview took place in a gilded hall at the Kremlin palace in Moscow.

It covered a variety topics from the war in Ukraine to President Joe Biden, from the fate of detained Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich to Elon Musk. The interview did not break meaningful new ground. Carlson has consistently spread misinformation and conspiracy theories. He’s also been a strident critic of Ukraine.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, left, and U.S. conservative political commentator Tucker Carlson.

“If you really want to stop fighting, you need to stop supplying weapons,” Putin said when asked by Carlson about the prospect for peace in Ukraine, referring to Western aid. “It will be over within a few weeks. That’s it.”

Putin said he didn’t see a point in calling Biden, whom he had not spoken to since before the invasion. Biden has refused to speak to the Russian leader unless genuine conditions for negotiating a peace deal are put forward.

Instead, Putin’s answers about the fighting in Ukraine seemed to echo with the U.S. president he said he had a positive relationship with: Donald Trump.

Putin called on the U.S. to “make an agreement” to end the war, likely involving Ukraine ceding territory to Russia.

“Before I even arrive at the Oval Office, shortly after I win the presidency, I will have the horrible war between Russia and Ukraine settled,” Trump said at a Manchester, New Hampshire, rally last month.

Trump has not explained how he would achieve this.

The interview comes as momentum on the battlefield appears to have swung in Russia’s favor while fresh U.S. aid for Ukraine remains uncertain in Congress. Polls show the majority of Americans believe the U.S. should be supporting Ukraine, but many are concerned it may be doing too much at the expense of domestic priorities. Republicans are far more skeptical than Democrats over the utility of sending Ukraine more wartime aid.

Ukraine is running out of weapons: Is it also running low on the time-tested coping mechanism of humor?

At times, the interview, which lasted more than two hours, became somewhat confrontational. However, Carslon did not explicitly challenge Putin’s many false assertions, nor did he push Russia’s leader on his military’s alleged war crimes in Ukraine or political repressions at home.

When Putin said he believed Russia and the U.S. could potentially reach a deal to free Gershkovich, an American journalist Russia detained last year, Carlson pressed him: “This guy’s obviously not a spy. He’s a kid, and maybe he was breaking your law in some way, but he’s not a super spy, and everybody knows that.”

Putin’s government has been holding Gershkovich for more than a year for reporting on the invasion. Gershkovich has been charged with espionage, an allegation he and the U.S. State Department deny. The U.S. government has determined that Gershkovich is being wrongfully detained.

The U.S. made an offer late last year to secure Gershkovich’s release but said Moscow rejected it. Putin appeared to indicate Thursday that he would consider swapping Gershkovich for Vadim Krasikov, a Russian assassin who killed a Georgian-born dissident in a park in Berlin in 2019. Krasikov followed his victim to the park on a bicycle. He’s serving a jail sentence in Germany.

Putin dominated the conversation. He also appeared to occasionally joke and snarl at Carlson’s expense.

“Are we having a talk show or a serious conversation?” Putin said in response to a question about why he had previously said he believed the U.S. could, via NATO, launch a “surprise attack” on Russia.

“Your basic education is in history, as far as I understand,” Putin added. “So if you don’t mind, I will take only 30 seconds or one minute to give you a short reference to history to give you a little historical background.”

Putin then went on to speak for more than 20 minutes about the history of Eastern Europe, including references to Catherine the Great, the 18th century empress of Russia.

Carlson struggled to interrupt Putin during his personal overview of Russian history.

At one point, the conversation took a turn to discussing the U.S. reputation in the international community. Putin claimed the U.S. is more afraid of a “strong China” than it is of a “strong Russia.”

Putin repeated false claims Russia did not attack Ukraine. He addressed his relationships with past U.S. presidents, saying he had a “very good” one with George W. Bush.

And he lavished praise on Tesla’s founder, who also owns X.

“I think there’s no stopping Elon Musk,” he said.

In a social media monologue prior to releasing the interview, Carlson said he wanted to sit down with Putin because “most Americans are not informed” on how the war in Ukraine is “reshaping the world.” He blamed U.S. mainstream media for this, alleging that “no one has told them the truth.” He has previously claimed, without providing evidence, that the U.S. government has thwarted his attempts to sit down with Putin.

Carlson said Western journalists have, by contrast, interviewed Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy many times. He described these interviews as “fawning pep sessions” aimed at amplifying Ukraine’s need for more U.S. weapons and ultimately directed at getting the U.S. more involved in the war.

There was no immediate official reaction to Carslon’s interview with Putin from Ukraine’s government.

Ukraine shake-up: Volodymyr Zelenskyy removes his top general Valery Zaluzhny

International media outlets have sat down with Zelenskyy dozens of times since the war’s start. However, there is little merit to Carlson’s other claims. Journalists in Russia face extreme reporting restrictions. They can be arrested for labeling Russia’s invasion a “war”; instead, they have to call it a “special military operation.”

Russia’s crackdown on free speech extends to regular citizens as well as journalists. They can be arrested or fined for criticizing the war in Ukraine. Carlson promotes his show on social media platform X as a defender of free speech. The International Criminal Court in The Hague, Netherlands, has issued an arrest warrant for Putin. It accused him of war crimes in Ukraine including deporting children from Ukraine to Russia.

War crimes allegations in Ukraine: They may be unprecedented. So is the country’s push for swift justice

Russians escape Putin’s war on Ukraine: They find a new home – and a moral dilemma

Since news of the interview broke, many Western journalists have been posting on social media how they have repeatedly attempted to secure interviews with Putin over the last two years. The last time Putin was interviewed by an American journalist was in June 2021 with NBC’s Keir Simmons.

“Does Tucker really think we journalists haven’t been trying to interview President Putin every day since his full scale invasion of Ukraine?” CNN’s Christiane Amanpour wrote on X. She called his claim “absurd.”

Putin himself has made many speeches and public appearances during which he’s commented at length on the war in Ukraine and his “objectives.” At various times, he’s described these as “denazification, demilitarization and its neutral status.” There is no evidence to indicate that Ukraine has a systemic problem with neo-Nazis. Putin has long been vehemently opposed to Ukraine and other neighboring nations joining NATO.

Putin has said that Western countries have been “stupefied” by anti-Russian propaganda.

Before the interview ran, White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters that Americans shouldn’t believe anything Putin said in the interview.

“Anybody (who) watches that interview you need to make sure to remember that you are listening to Vladimir Putin. You shouldn’t take at face value anything he has to say.”

As the host of “Tucker Carlson Tonight” on Fox News, Carlson was one of the network’s biggest stars. The show was canceled last year following a series of controversies. Carlson drove ratings at the network but, his critics say he pushed extreme right-wing views and trafficked in racist and misogynistic themes and conspiracy theories.

“Tucker Carlson isn’t a journalist, he’s a propagandist,” wrote Ian Bremmer of the Eurasia Group, a global political risk consultancy, on X.

A timeline: Tucker Carlson and his Russia obsession

Carlson has been a longtime defender of Putin and he has consistently questioned U.S. support for Ukraine.

“It may be worth asking yourself, since it is getting pretty serious, what is this really about? Why do I hate Putin so much?” he said as Russia’s leader amassed troops on Ukraine’s border, ready to invade, in February 2022.

“Has Putin ever called me a racist? Has he threatened to get me fired for disagreeing with him? These are fair questions, and the answer to all of them is: ‘No.’ Vladimir Putin didn’t do any of that.” Carlson described Ukraine as a “a pure client state of the United States State Department” and the then looming war as a “border issue.”

Prior to his interview with Putin, one of the topics Carlson addressed on his X account, which posts material from his subscription streaming service, was about male-pattern baldness.

Contributing: Francesca Chambers

Abandoned by his colleagues after negotiating a border compromise, GOP senator faces backlash alone

Associated Press

Abandoned by his colleagues after negotiating a border compromise, GOP senator faces backlash alone

Mary Clare Jalonick and Stephen Groves – February 7, 2024

Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., left, the lead GOP negotiator on a border-foreign aid package, holds hands with his wife Cindy Lankford, center, joined at right by Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, I-Ariz., who has been central to Senate border security talks, during procedural votes, at the Capitol in Washington, Wednesday, Feb. 7, 2024. Senate Republicans have blocked the bipartisan border package, scuttling months of negotiations between the two parties on legislation intended to cut down record numbers of illegal border crossings. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., the lead GOP negotiator on the Senate border and foreign aid package, does a TV news interview at the Capitol in Washington, Monday, Feb. 5, 2024. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Just before the Senate voted Wednesday to kill the border deal he spent the last four months negotiating, Oklahoma Sen. James Lankford climbed a set of marble stairs outside the chamber and joined his wife in the visitors’ gallery.

As the Republican quietly watched from a floor above, briefly the outsider after defending his legislation in a last Senate floor speech, fellow negotiator Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona was down on the floor excoriating the Republicans who had abandoned Lankford, one by one, after insisting on a border deal and asking him to negotiate a compromise on one of the country’s most intractable issues.

“Less than 24 hours after we released the bill, my Republican colleagues changed their minds,” said Sinema, a former Democrat turned Independent. “Turns out they want all talk and no action. It turns out border security is not a risk to our national security. It’s just a talking point for the election.”

Walking out of the gallery with his wife close by his side, Lankford was asked by a waiting reporter if he felt betrayed by his party. He sighed, deeply, and waited a few beats.

“I’m disappointed we didn’t get it done,” Lankford said, diplomatically. “I don’t know if I feel betrayed, because the issue is still there. It’s not solved.”

He then walked back down the stairs with his wife and Sinema, who had come up to greet them after her speech, and walked into the chamber to watch the bill’s defeat.

In the end, all but four Republicans voted against moving forward on the legislation — including Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, who had delegated Lankford to negotiate the bill combining Ukraine aid and border security and had been closely involved in the negotiations.

A former youth minister in the Baptist church, Lankford, 55, is known as one of the most sincere and well-liked members of the Senate. He’s a conservative who rarely votes against his party, has long championed stricter measures at the border and has been supportive of former President Donald Trump. So his colleagues’ swift and outright rejection of the deal he has spent weeks and months negotiating — and their willingness to completely abandon Lankford in the process, after many of them indicated they were supportive of the direction of the talks — is all the more remarkable.

“They reacted to it like it was a poison,” said Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut, the third negotiator with Lankford and Sinema, of Senate Republicans who had previously signaled they were supportive. “I think it’s unforgiveable what they did to James.”

“They really threw the man overboard,” President Joe Biden said of Lankford at a fundraiser Wednesday evening.

While some Republicans were always going to vote against the compromise, arguing that no policy is better than what they saw as weak policy, others made clear they were encouraged by the talks as Lankford briefed them on the emerging details. But his colleagues’ eventual, quick rejection of the bill highlights the deep divides in the GOP as Trump, the party’s front-runner for the 2024 presidential nomination, has made immigration a top issue. Some senators who had previously been open to a deal became more skeptical after Trump made his opposition clear.

It is also a sign of dysfunction and paralysis in the Senate as its traditionally bipartisan image fades in favor of more partisan, House-like battles.

When he took on the job negotiating a border compromise, Lankford laughed that “he drew the short straw.” Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kan., joked later that if Lankford can’t get a deal done: “Moses couldn’t get a deal done. He’s one of the most kindest, compassionate people I’ve met in my lifetime.”

His fellow negotiators described him as an earnest, smart legislator who was willing to spend long hours digging into the intricacies of immigration law — and spent weeks away from his family in the process. Murphy said senators often negotiate the broad policies and let staff do the “dirty work” of putting the ideas into legislative text.

“James does both,” Murphy said. “It’s a sign of how sincere he is and how in the weeds he is on policy. But it probably means he’s maybe a little less attuned to the politics.”

The Oklahoma Republican has spent the last three days desperately trying to explain the bill after many of his colleagues put out statements opposing it without even reading the full text. Some Republicans put out misleading statements about what it would do, claiming it was designed to let more people into the country. Trump, who has strongly opposed the bill and said he doesn’t want to give Democrats a win on the issue, gleefully bragged that he helped kill it.

“I think this is a very bad bill for his career, and especially in Oklahoma,” Trump said of Lankford on a radio show earlier this week.

The bipartisan compromise would overhaul the asylum system at the border with faster and tougher enforcement, as well as give presidents new powers to immediately expel migrants if authorities become overwhelmed with the number of people applying for asylum, among other measures to reduce the record numbers of migrants crossing the border. It would also send billions to Ukraine, Israel and allies in the Asia-Pacific.

Lankford’s work on the issue could have lasting political consequences. A group of about 100 people within the Oklahoma GOP put out a statement condemning him for crafting the bill even before it had been released. And in his Senate floor speech Wednesday, Lankford spoke of an unidentified “popular commentator” who told him that if he tries to move a bill to solve the border crisis, “I will do whatever I can to destroy you, because I do not want you to solve this during the presidential election.”

Even more stunning was how quickly his Senate colleagues turned against it.

As the bill was released late Sunday night, Lankford was on an airplane flying to Washington. By the time he landed, an onslaught of criticism from conservatives was already underway. He was on a call with reporters, trying to explain the details of the bill, when House Speaker Mike Johnson posted on X that the bill would be “ dead on arrival ” in his chamber.

Lankford’s frustration was palpable as he responded, listing off how the bill would accomplish several conservative goals like building more border wall, hiring more Border Patrol agents, expanding detention capacity and speeding deportations.

“We’ve got to be able to find a way to stop the chaos at the border,” Lankford said.

Almost no Republicans endorsed it, save McConnell. And by Monday night, seeing the writing on the wall, McConnell told the conference it was OK to vote against it.

“I feel like the guy standing in the middle of a field in a thunderstorm holding up the metal stick,” Lankford told reporters shortly ahead of the bill release. “This is a really intense thing. It’s been divisive.”

Associated Press writers Seung Min Kim, Will Weissert, Jill Colvin and Lisa Mascaro contributed to this report.

Sen. Lankford says a ‘popular commentator’ threatened to ‘do whatever I can to destroy you’ if he negotiated a border deal during a presidential election year

Business Insider

Sen. Lankford says a ‘popular commentator’ threatened to ‘do whatever I can to destroy you’ if he negotiated a border deal during a presidential election year

Bryan Metzger – February 7, 2024

Sen. James Lankford was the top GOP negotiator on the failed border security deal.
He claims a “popular commentator” warned him not to solve the crisis during an election year.
“I will do whatever I can to destroy you,” Lankford said.

Sen. James Lankford of Oklahoma spoke on Wednesday about the political challenges he’s encountered while serving as the top GOP negotiator on a bipartisan border security deal.

In a speech shortly before the expected failure of the deal, Lankford bemoaned the fact that some fellow Republicans were objecting to the bill for purely political reasons.

“Some of them have been very clear with me,” Lankford said of his GOP colleagues, “they have political differences with the bill. They say it’s the wrong time to solve the problem. We’ll let the presidential election solve this problem.”

Lankford went on to say that a “popular commentator” — without naming any names — threatened to “destroy” him if he negotiated the deal during a presidential election year, regardless of what was in it.

“I will do whatever I can to destroy you, because I do not want you to solve this during the presidential election,” Lankford recounted the commentator saying.

“By the way, they have been faithful to their promise, and have done everything they can to destroy me,” he added.

Ahead of the release of the text of the deal — which was negotiated following GOP demands to attach border security provisions to a bill to provide billions in aid to Ukraine and Israel — right-wing media outlets like Fox News promoted false claims about the deal, claiming it would amount to “amnesty.”

And some Republicans admitted that politics was a key factor for them.

“I cannot vote for this bill,” said Sen. John Barrasso of Wyoming, the third-highest ranking GOP senator, in his statement on the deal. “Americans will turn to the upcoming election to end the border crisis.”

Following the expected failed vote, the Senate is expected to take up a bill to send billions in aid to Ukraine and Israel, but without any border security provisions.

“Awful and unethical”: Legal experts say Judge Cannon could face removal for “disturbing” order

Salon

“Awful and unethical”: Legal experts say Judge Cannon could face removal for “disturbing” order

Igor Derysh – February 8, 2024

Legal experts sounded the alarm after the judge overseeing Donald Trump’s classified documents case rejected special counsel Jack Smith’s bid to keep government witnesses secret.

Smith’s team opposed making information public that could reveal the identity or any personal identifying information of any potential witnesses in the case or any transcripts or other documents they may have provided, citing concerns about witness intimidation.

Trump-appointed U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon ruled in Trump’s favor on the matter, writing: “Following an independent review of the Motion and the full record, the Court determines, with limited exceptions as detailed below, that the Special Counsel has not set forth a sufficient factual or legal basis warranting deviation from the strong presumption in favor of public access to the records at issue.”

Cannon questioned Smith’s concern for witnesses, writing that “the Special Counsel’s sparse and undifferentiated Response fails to provide the Court with the necessary factual basis to justify sealing.”

The Press Coalition, which is comprised of major media companies, also asked the court to unseal Trump’s redacted motion in unclassified form, citing public interest.

Jeremy Foley, a Berkeley College law professor who specializes in judicial ethics, told Newsweek it is “unusual for a judge to make classified documents public.”

“Before doing so, Judge Cannon was required to weigh the factors favoring disclosure: potential aid to the defense and the public interest argument asserted by the media groups against those identified by the government: release of the documents could harm national security, impair an ongoing investigation, or compromise potential witnesses in the case,” he said.

“If the government is concerned that the judge’s order will cause harm, it can seek emergency relief from the 11th Circuit, which could stay the order pending review. We should know very soon if that happens,” Foley added.

The order raised concerns among legal experts who have long worried that Cannon may be tilting the case in favor of Trump.

“Judge Aileen Cannon continues to make rulings that are disturbing,” former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance wrote on Substack. “Perhaps we’d view any one of them, on their own, as a judicial aberration. But the pattern of ruling upon ruling that is out of the legal mainstream and results in delay well past the point where this case should have been ready for trial is something that shouldn’t be ignored. Judges should not put their fingers on the scales of justice either for or against a defendant or any other party. Here, it’s impossible to avoid the conclusion that the scales are being tipped.”

Smith’s “best option” may be to ask Cannon to reconsider, but the judge’s “dismissive tone towards the government suggests that there is little they can do to persuade her,” Vance wrote.

A big test will come next week when Cannon holds a hearing under Section 4 of the Classified Information Procedures Act (CIPA), where she will make rulings on what classified material in discovery can be used at trial. Trump is expected to seek additional delays in the case, asking Cannon to postpone the deadline for some pre-trial motions and revisiting his presidential immunity and Presidential Records Act claims that “border on being frivolous at this point, and using them to further delay this case would be a travesty,” Vance wrote.

“The time for Smith to decide whether to actively seek Cannon’s recusal, or at least hint to the Circuit that it’s merited, will be after the Section 4 hearing rulings are issued,” Vance noted. “Forced recusals are rare. But at this late date, even if the 11th Circuit were to move quickly, as it has in the past, and force Cannon to step aside, it would take a new judge some time to get up to speed. There are no quick fixes for the damage Judge Cannon has done,” she added.

Longtime Harvard Law Prof. Laurence Tribe said he hopes Tuesday’s order “will trigger a motion to remove her.”

“The 11th Circuit might well agree this was the last straw. Compromising national security is a bridge too far,” he tweeted.

“It is impossible to overstate how awful and unethical is Aileen Cannon,” added Norman Ornstein, emeritus scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. “Clearly has no business being a judge at any level.”

Putin tells Tucker Carlson the US ‘needs to stop supplying weapons’ to Ukraine

The Guardian

Putin tells Tucker Carlson the US ‘needs to stop supplying weapons’ to Ukraine

Adam Gabbatt and Andrew Roth – February 8, 2024

Tucker Carlson and Vladimir Putin were in the spotlight on Thursday night, as the divisive, Trump-supporting rightwing commentator interviewed the reclusive Russian autocrat.

The rambling, two-hour interview, filmed in Moscow, was Putin’s first with a western media outlet since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022.

It marked a new level of infamy for Carlson, who has frequently criticized US support for Ukraine, has referred to Volodymyr Zelenskiy, the president of Ukraine, as a “Ukrainian pimp” and “rat-like”.

Carlson’s tone was less pugnacious in the interview with Putin, who he referred to as “Mr President” throughout.

The decision to interview Putin had been widely criticised ahead of the interview. But the opening of the conversation between the former Fox News host and Putin was a let down.

Putin spent more than 30 minutes giving a history of Russia, Lithuania, Poland and Ukraine, in a monologue that took viewers from the ninth century rule of Oleg the Wise, to the struggles of the 1300s, through to a critique of Lenin’s foreign policy.

When a baffled-looking Carlson finally coaxed Putin into the 21st century, the Russian president accused the US and other western countries of prolonging the war in Ukraine.

There were peace talks with Ukraine that were “almost finalized”, Putin said, but then Ukraine “threw away all these agreements and obeyed the instructions of western countries, European countries and the United States to fight Russia to the bitter end”.

Putin laid the blame at the feet of Boris Johnson, the former British prime minister, in particular. Johnson was forced out of UK parliament in June 2023, but Putin claimed that as prime minister he had dissuaded Zelenskiy from signing a peace deal in the early stages of the conflict.

“The fact that they [Ukraine] obey the demand or persuasion of Mr Johnson, the former prime minister of Great Britain, seems ridiculous,” Putin said.

In a video released ahead of the interview, Carlson said he was driven to speak to Putin, in part, because the American public has “no idea why Putin invaded Ukraine or what his goals are now”.

It’s unclear whether viewers will come away with a clearer sense of either.

In December, the Kremlin said engaging in peace talks with Ukraine is “unrealistic” – Ukraine has said peace can only be based on a full withdrawal from the territory Russia has seized since it invaded in 2022.

But in the interview, Putin told Carlson that Russia and the US still speak “through various agencies” about ending the conflict.

Russia’s message to the US, Putin said, is: “If you really want to stop fighting, you need to stop supplying weapons. It will be over within a few weeks.”

Putin said the last time he spoke to Joe Biden was before Russia invaded Ukraine.

“I said to him, then, I believe that you are making a huge mistake of historic proportions by supporting everything that is happening there, in Ukraine, by pushing Russia away,” Putin said.

Carlson did, at least, press Putin on Evan Gershkovich, the Wall Street Journal reporter who has been detained in Russia since 23 March having been accused of espionage – which Gershkovich and the Journal deny.

Putin claimed Gershkovich, 32, was “caught red-handed when he was secretly getting confidential information”, and alleged he was “working for the US special services”.

Russia is “ready to talk” about releasing Gershkovich, Putin said, but added: “We want the US special services to think about how they can contribute to achieving the goals our special services are pursuing.”

The claim seemed to contradict the White House, which said in December that Russia had rejected a substantial proposal for the release of Gershkovich and Paul Whelan, a former US Marine serving a 16-year sentence in Russia on espionage charges.

In a video published ahead of the interview, Carlson claimed he was conducting the interview because English-language “media outlets are corrupt – they lie to their readers and viewers”.

“There are risks to conducting an interview like this obviously, so we’ve thought about it for many months,” Carlson said.

“Most Americans have no real idea what is happening in this region. Here in Russia or 600 miles away in Ukraine. But they should know. They’re paying for much of it.”

Followers of Carlson over the past two years will be less surprised than others that Putin accepted the interview request.

Carlson was an early, notable defender of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. As Putin amassed up to 190,000 troops on Ukraine’s border in mid-February 2022, Carlson appeared to echo Putin’s talking points by claiming the brewing conflict was a mere “border dispute”.

In the week following the attack, Russian state media played clips of Carlson’s rants about Ukraine and against the US providing military aid to the country.

The interview was aired on Tucker Carlson Tonight, a streaming service which Carlson launched in December 2023. Notably, Carlson was fired by Fox News in April 2023 – for getting “too big for his boots”, a book later claimed.

The rightwing commentator faced criticism for the interview before it aired. On Wednesday, Hillary Clinton said Carlson was a “useful idiot” for Putin.

“He says things that are not true,” the former US secretary of state said of Carlson.

“He parrots Vladimir Putin’s pack of lies about Ukraine, so I don’t see why Putin wouldn’t give him an interview because through him, he can continue to lie about what his objectives are in Ukraine and what he expects to see happen,” Clinton said on MSNBC Wednesday.

In his video announcing the interview, Carlson claimed that “not a single Western journalist has bothered” to attempt to interview Putin.

Abby Phillip, an anchor for CNN, said that was untrue.

“Serious outlets, including CNN, have requested Putin to interview over and over again,” she said in her show on Tuesday.

On Wednesday, the Kremlin also debunked Carlson’s claim.

“Mr Carlson is wrong,” Dmitry Peskov, a Kremlin spokesperson, said in a briefing. “We receive many requests for interviews with the president.”

Putin last gave an interview to a western outlet in 2021, when he spoke with a reporter for CNBC. He has largely ceased speaking with independent media, both Russian and international, since launching his full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Since 2021, he has only given interviews to Russian, Kazakh and Chinese media.

Press freedoms have largely disappeared in Russia over the past two decades, as pressure has grown on independent media and the danger of arrest has increased for local and foreign journalists working in the country.

The arrest of Gershkovich last year was a watershed attack on a foreign reporter in the post-cold war era.

But Russian journalists had already faced long prison sentences for their work and for angering Putin’s allies and friends.

In a particularly egregious verdict in 2022, Russian journalist Ivan Safronov was sentenced to 22 years in prison on treason charges widely seen as politically motivated. Safronov, who had previously worked at Kommersant, was thought to have angered the military by reporting on secret negotiations with Egypt, but all the information in his trial was secret. According to a lawyer, Safronov had been offered just a 12-year sentence if he incriminated others, but refused to cooperate.

Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has also sped up the crackdown on independent media. More than 1,000 journalists have fled the country, a number of high-profile criminal cases have been opened against reporters for discrediting the Russian army or spreading “fake news”, and legacy broadcast media like Ekho Moskvy have been forced to close down, despite having powerful backers in the government.

Russia was one of the world’s top five jailers of journalists in 2023, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, with 22 reporters in prison.

At a protest of military wives near the Kremlin this week, police arrested more than 20 journalists in order to prevent them from reporting on the demonstration in an “unprecedented” move, according to Reporters without Borders.

• This article was amended on 9 February 2024 to correct some misspellings of Evan Gershkovich’s surname.

Republicans are sticking to Trump — they’re about to reap the whirlwind

Salon – Opinion

Republicans are sticking to Trump — they’re about to reap the whirlwind

Brian Karem – February 8, 2024

Donald Trump; Mike Johnson Photo illustration by Salon/Getty Images

Welcome to the whirlwind.

Rep. Jamie Raskin, a Maryland Democrat and constitutional lawyer, says he doesn’t believe the Republicans can win this fall. “They are floundering to find something to run on,” he said. “They’re losing all over the place. They don’t want solutions, they want problems. With them it’s rule or ruin. Either they want to rule everything or ruin our chances of progressing. That’s a fascistic strategy.”

According to Raskin, the Republicans won’t accept the result of elections unless they win, and are using immigration as a campaign issue for Donald Trump — who may well be ineligible to run for office. “I don’t think he’s legally qualified to be on the ballot,” Raskin said. “It’s clear to me that section 3 of the 14th amendment disqualifies Donald Trump because he participated in an insurrection or rebellion. He violated his oath.” Raskin hopes the Supreme Court will come to the “unavoidable” conclusion that Trump is ineligible for the presidency.

Like I said, the whirlwind.

In 1984, in a place called Rio Bravo just south of Laredo, Texas, a double-wide trailer burst into flames.

As the flames grew in intensity they became a whirlwind of fire that consumed the trailer and another structure nearby.

That serves as an apt metaphor for today’s Republican politics, and not just on the southern border.

The trailer owners were unable to do anything about the fire because the subdivision they lived in had no running water, or even electricity. At the time of the fire they were also busy fishing a friend’s trailer out of the Rio Grande, where it had been swept after a sudden deluge of rain.

Rio Bravo was, at the time, a subdivision situated next to the Rio Grande, carved out of rented land by a greedy Texas land developer who sold parcels in “open contracts” to undocumented immigrants. Business was so good, he opened a second illegal subdivision (later called “colonias” — a common term in Mexico — as they became popular throughout the Southwest). He named the second one “El Cenizo.”

That’s right. He called the second one “The Ash.” You can’t make that up.

Covering the border between Texas and Mexico was one of my earliest assignments as a reporter. One of my first run-ins with the Trump administration occurred because of Trump’s incredibly obtuse policies regarding the border. At the time I confronted White House press secretary Sarah Sanders — now the governor of Arkansas — about the practice of caging young immigrant children.

She, of course, claimed to be a Christian and also claimed to be more credible than most reporters. She lied then. She lies now. And Don the Con did not understand, either then or now, the root cause of illegal immigration or how to solve that problem. Trump is not alone. It is an emotional issue, one that nearly every politician has fumbled and few of us understand. It isn’t about criminals marauding through the countryside. It is about hope, despair and disinformation. The U.S. government and the businesses that want a constant supply of cheap labor are responsible for continuing the problem.

There has been no meaningful legislation concerning illegal immigration since the Simpson-Mazzoli Act in 1985, which, for the first time, made it illegal to hire undocumented immigrants. In the 40 years since that became law, few if any large companies have ever been prosecuted for hiring any of the millions of immigrants who work in agriculture, construction, thoroughbred racing and numerous other industries. It’s the promise of jobs and a chance to live out the American Dream that drives the “crisis” on the border that has been with us for at least 40 years.

America needs cheap labor. Immigrants from Mexico and Latin America (and other places much farther away) need jobs. In response, there has been a steady deluge of political garbage out of every White House since the Reagan administration, aimed at criminalizing a story of hope in search of votes.

As the rain continued to fall in Los Angeles this week, causing catastrophic mudslides and flooding, the political rain in Washington also continued, and with similar results.

It engulfed the GOP shortly after sunset on Tuesday, when the House failed by four votes to impeach Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas — for reasons that even some Republicans could not fathom. Rep. Tom McClintock of California, for instance, voted against impeachment for the simple reason that House Republicans failed “to identify an impeachable crime that Mayorkas has committed.” To proceed, he said, would “stretch and distort the Constitution.”

The world is in disarray right now. But nothing is in more disarray than the Republican Party, as it suffers both the whirlwind of fire brought about by its own need to generate issues for Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and the deluge of stupidity unleashed by those who do his bidding in Congress. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene led the charge in that latter deluge, one of the few things she does with aplomb. She even claimed that Democrats had hidden members on the House floor to confuse the GOP majority as they voted to impeach Mayorkas. Apparently she can’t count to four even if she uses all of her toes. House Speaker Mike Johnson is so inept that he appointed Greene as a spokesperson. He also can’t count votes. Majority Whip Tom Emmer couldn’t find a way to get four more votes from his own caucus. Republicans have vowed to go after Mayorkas again once they figure out how to count. Is there a better definition of incompetent?

None of this has anything to do with “high crimes and misdemeanors,” the constitutional necessity for impeaching officeholders. There is nothing more grimly amusing than watching the GOP’s three-ring circus — which is both led by Donald Trump and staged exclusively for his benefit.

Trump lost twice on Tuesday. He couldn’t get the votes he wanted to impeach Mayorkas and he lost his bid for “total immunity” in his Jan. 6 criminal case, when three judges on the D.C. Circuit Court delivered circuit judges offered a unanimous and airtight opinion against him.

To understand the depth of Trump’s despair, you may be tempted to count the ketchup bottles at Mar-a-Lago. Or you could read at least part of the 57-page court decision which found that Trump can be criminally charged. Meanwhile, the GOP couldn’t muster anyone brighter than Greene to speak up about it. “When they came to Washington to protest, you called that an insurrection,” she said. “But when Biden was inaugurated and this Capitol was surrounded with National Guard troops, none of you stood there and called that an insurrection.”

The congresswoman from Georgia proves, once again, that you can be a whirlwind of fiery rhetoric while deluging the populace with extreme ignorance. Oh, and she wants the House to pass a resolution stating that Trump was no insurrectionist. So there is that.

At the same time the House GOP was trying to impeach Mayorkas, it was also just saying no to a Senate compromise bill that would provide more money and infrastructure on the border along with more support for both Ukraine and Israel. A standalone bill to fund aid to Israel, backed by the GOP, also failed on Tuesday. The border bill failed in the Senate Wednesday, and now that robust body, dominated by aging white men who suffer from incontinence, will have to take up separate funding bills for Ukraine and Israel.

“All of this is just to give Trump something to run on,” Raskin told me. “My colleagues in the Republican Party are subverting the process for a man who embraces fascism.”

The failures keep mounting, but don’t expect Mike Johnson to take any responsibility for his part in the fiasco on the House side. He told reporters, “I don’t think that this is a reflection on the leader, I think this is a reflection on the body itself.” Well, here’s a reminder: He’s the head of that body.

Johnson has promised that any bipartisan legislation sent to the House from the Senate regarding immigration will be “dead on arrival.” Of course Johnson says the border is “an overwhelming emergency” and should be dealt with promptly — but apparently not so much of an emergency that the GOP is willing to accept a compromise solution to a problem that has been ongoing since the last century. The Senate plan — negotiated by James Lankford, an Oklahoma Republican; Chris Murphy, a Connecticut Democrat; and Kyrsten Sinema, an Arizona independent — would strengthen border security and reduce illegal immigration. The Border Patrol union even supports it – and those folks are not liberal Democrats.

Don’t expect a solution anytime soon. We will get nothing but empty words as Trump’s tempest in a very nasty teapot continues. He wants to delay border legislation indefinitely, so he can run on the issue and take credit for any solution — but only after he wins, which is looking increasingly uncertain the closer we get to Election Day. The decision to deny him immunity seems ironclad, and relies on one of the oldest landmark Supreme Court cases — Marbury v. Madison — to do so. That decision gives courts the ability to strike down laws deemed unconstitutional. So it could be argued that if the Supreme Court takes up Trump’s immunity case and rules in his favor, it will overturn more than 200 years of judicial decisions and eliminate the Supreme Court as an equal partner in government.

To quote the D.C. Circuit decision: “As the Supreme Court has unequivocally explained: No man in this country is so high that he is above the law. No officer of the law may set that law at defiance with impunity. All the officers of the government, from the highest to the lowest, are creatures of the law and are bound to obey it. It is the only supreme power in our system of government, and every man who by accepting office participates in its functions is only the more strongly bound to submit to that supremacy, and to observe the limitations which it imposes upon the exercise of the authority which it gives. … That principle applies, of course, to a President.”

The court also found that the president is “amenable to the laws for his conduct,” and “cannot at his discretion” violate them.

Finally, the court found that Trump was a “citizen,” not a king: He “lacked any lawful discretionary authority to defy federal criminal law and he is answerable in court for his conduct.”

Harry Litman of the Los Angeles Times offered an explanation on X of what took the D.C. circuit so long: “They opted, probably from the start, to make it per curiam — basically one voice. That gives it even added force. And that might have required extensive compromising negotiation to get it just right.”

That means the Supreme Court might actually refuse to hear Trump’s appeal on the immunity case — something he fears and that many court watchers say is possible now that the D.C. Circuit has done the heavy lifting and penned an exquisite opinion. At any rate, even if the Supreme Court takes up the case, many experts believe Trump will still face a criminal trial, at the latest, by fall.

In the short term, do not expect any legislation regarding immigration to pass the Senate or House. Expect Donald Trump to use the time to raise money while he continues to fight his battles in court and keeps his political party running interference for him.

Trump’s last wild ride in the public domain is in its death throes. His whirlwind is consuming him. His supporters are holding on, and those who need him the most, like Marjorie Taylor Greene, are defending him so they can stay as relevant as possible (and perhaps evade criminal charges) in a world that increasingly sees Trump and his minions for what they are; soulless hacks with a need and desire for great personal power at the expense of humanity.

What this means for the GOP is obvious: After Kevin McCarthy and Mike Johnson; after Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell; after its inability to pass any legislation, the party is undeniably broken, unable to lead and woefully lacking in common sense. It is dedicated to the edification and protection of one of the worst politicians ever to rise to prominence in our republic.

Trump’s former chief of staff, John Kelly, described him as “a person that has no idea what America stands for and has no idea what America is all about.”

Lead? The GOP is incapable of that. Follow? It won’t follow anyone except Trump, and it will never get out of the way — unless we collectively kick it to the curb. Or right into that whirlwind.