Posted on 04/19/2024 9:13:17 AM PDT by Kazan
The House speaker’s comments wrecked one of the far right’s most ridiculous, reprehensible tropes.
It was a remarkable moment: After introducing a package of bills that includes military aid to Ukraine, Mike Johnson flatly told reporters on Wednesday that enabling Ukraine to defend itself is in the best interests of America and the world. This surprised a lot of people who had wrongly assumed the House speaker was effectively functioning as a stooge for Vladimir Putin—and Donald Trump—and would thus slow-walk Ukraine aid to death before ever allowing a vote on it.
Johnson’s new stance has attracted a good deal of positive attention. But I want to highlight an aspect of it that’s been overlooked because it’s an important tell about the true state of MAGA ideology and what it’s demanding of Republicans these days.
“I really do believe the intel and the briefings that we’ve gotten,” Johnson said, in a moment that became a mini-speech. “I think that Vladimir Putin would continue to march through Europe if he were allowed. I think he might go to the Balkans next. I think he might have a showdown with Poland, or one of our NATO allies.” If so, he added, we might find ourselves sending troops to defend allies from Putin later.
Did we really hear the speaker say that he believes what our intelligence services have told him about the long-term consequences of cutting off aid to Ukraine?
This is a direct challenge to the MAGA worldview in multiple ways. Johnson is treating Putin as the aggressor in the Russia-Ukraine conflict and acknowledging his broader imperialist designs, which is heresy to some MAGA Republicans. But he’s also flatly declaring that on these matters, the deep state is very much to be believed.
A big MAGA conceit is the idea that a nefarious deep-state network of senior federal bureaucrats, nongovernmental experts, and technocratic and managerial elites lurks behind the push to fund Ukraine—and that it’s making up lies about Russia’s war to create a pretext to fulfill a broader set of sinister globalist aims. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene recently tweeted this:
The Ukraine scam is up.
If our Republican majority in Congress funds Joe Biden’s war against Russia on behalf of Ukraine (because he’s a puppet on strings) then Republicans are tools of the foreign war loving deep state.
This is probably MAGA’s most elaborate exercise in up-is-down totalitarian-style propaganda of all: Biden is being manipulated by a deep-state “scam”—i.e., the idea that Ukraine is worth defending—to carry out a war against Russia, which has been magically transformed from aggressor to victim.
The horrible atrocities against Ukraine the world has witnessed, Putin’s declarations that the sovereign democracy of Ukraine isn’t a real country and shouldn’t exist, the consequent effort to erase it with murderous conquest—all of that disappears in this fog of MAGA propaganda. This sort of thing is why even some senior Republicans suggest that a number of House GOP lawmakers are operating under the influence of Russia.
Johnson’s affirmation that he believes our intelligence services on these matters is a direct rebuke to those MAGA tendencies.
The bills that GOP leaders have introduced—which are scheduled for votes on Saturday—are also surprisingly faithful to the intel agencies’ apparent understanding of this geopolitical moment. They include $61 billion in aid to Ukraine, $26 billion for Israel, funding for Taiwan, and humanitarian assistance, including for victims in Gaza, which is essential to winning the support of Democrats who will be needed when right-wing Republicans oppose the package.
Greene had threatened to hold a motion-to-vacate vote to oust Johnson if he moved forward with Ukraine aid. If so, there are signs that Democrats will vote to save Johnson if Ukraine aid passes. Either way, Johnson appears prepared to brave MAGA’s fury—and the word of U.S intelligence services is a key reason for it.
To be clear, there’s nothing wrong with healthy skepticism of what our intelligence services are saying. That’s reasonable. After all, they contributed to whipping up the ultimately false assertions about weapons of mass destruction that helped justify the Iraq War.
But reasoned skepticism is not what MAGA Republicans are offering. Instead, they’re pushing carefully choreographed propaganda that seeks to entirely erase Russian agency from the story of the conflict and to transform Ukraine’s allies into the true warmongers here.
Greene’s effort at this is obvious. Then you have Donald Trump Jr., who tweeted that the aid bills will “hurt my father’s ability to negotiate an end to the war between Russia and Ukraine” if he’s reelected president, whereas “globalist” Republicans who support the package want indefinite war.
But that’s absurd. As international relations professor Nicholas Grossman shows, the idea behind rhetoric like this—a ruse that other MAGA Republicans regularly employ—is to recast our choice as one between “peace” (which we’d attain by refraining from aiding Ukraine) and “war” (which we’re facilitating with Ukraine aid). In reality, withholding aid is not antiwar at all; it merely makes Russian conquest more likely to continue and succeed (which is perhaps the whole point of this framing).
Even supposedly shrewder MAGA Republicans play a version of this sleazy game. Ohio Senator J.D. Vance recently wrote a New York Times op-ed arguing that Ukraine is losing and our aid won’t give it what it needs in equipment (or soldiers) to prevail. Democrats have effectively rebutted those claims. But Vance also slips into his piece the idea that in providing aid, “we”—meaning the United States—would “prolong a long and bloody war,” and suggests the primary obstacle to peace is President Biden’s unwillingness to negotiate toward it.
But how does Vance himself envision the war ending? Couldn’t it mean Russia gobbles up much or even all of Ukraine? Vance doesn’t say, beyond insisting we should forget about Ukraine regaining all of its stolen territory. Thus he too frames the choice as one between peace (ending aid) and war (continuing it). Presto: Opposing the package suddenly becomes the antiwar position, and being for the package becomes the pro-war one. That’s slippery, dishonest rhetorical trickery that you’d think is below Times standards.
This is the sort of deceitfulness that Johnson has effectively taken on. By affirming what abandoning Ukraine would really mean, and stressing that the deep state is telling lawmakers the truth about it, Johnson has for the time being taken a stance against one of MAGA’s most cherished—and most toxic—propaganda tropes. No wonder Greene is beside herself with rage.
So Mike Johnson is still Speaker of the US House of Foreign Representatives?
Biden is destroying the US, he is in favor of this, and you agree with him.
And this is the problem....you can completely swallowed and then regurgitate the propaganda that being pro-America, pro-Trump and MAGA means the same thing as being a stooge of Putin. People like you HELP the real enemy....the entrenched communist deep state who are trying fundamentally change the United States.
I can’t support a war overseas when the government’s boot is stomping on my face here at home.
It seems that every time we appear to take a step forward, we end up taking two back.
Ben Franklin said in response when someone asked what kind of government will we have, “A republic, if you can keep it”.
Well, it looks like we lost it.
Germany wants very much to restore trade relations with Russia, ASAP.
Germany puts on a show of supporting Ukraine, but Germany is literally: *technically sitting on its butt.*
Germany: NOT producing sufficiently for NATO to stop Russia from drawing up to the borders . . . TO THE VERY NATO BORDERS that Russia claims that it does not want to be near.
Well said.
Mike “Unconditional Surrender” Johnson.
Flippin the page here...
.... turning it over ..
.... flip...flip...flip ..
...still can’t find the page..
....of “NATO” stepping up ...
flip...flip...flip ...
Kevin Jr.
“I think that Vladimir Putin would continue to march through Europe if he were allowed.”
The domino theory has been revived.
If the war drags on, Putin will break the Ukrainian military. Putin knows Russians will not tolerate many more years of war, so he will end it by all necessary means.
It’s time for an armistice so a somewhat smaller Ukraine can have a government chosen by Ukrainians instead of by Putin.
Bad people sometimes triumph, as Trump now knows all too well.
Well we have so little money to go around so I take #2. #1 and #3 will just have to be sacrificed to budget austerity. /spit
This being an election year, and a CRITICAL one, demands that the Republicans stay together. Instead-and it couldn’t have happened at a worse time- we’re at each other’s throats, thanks to Mike Johnson.
Pathetic.
Okay...
Once more...
The chamber of commerce supports open borders.
The chamber of commerce supports gun control laws.
The chamber of commerce supports giving these illegals money to spend.
The chamber of commerce supports the endless wars.
bush league chamber of commerce worshipping republiCAN’Ts are the enemy.
Voting for them will only get you more of the above.
I’m now going to sit and wait for the arrival of the, but you have to vote for the bush league chamber of commerce worshipping republiCAN’Ts because... because... well, just because crowd to chime in.
And carve up Poland between them, again.
Johnson is a traitor and the a-hole who wrote this article is nothing but lying propagandist.
5) Ukraine doesn’t have the men to fight.
“*EXCEPT* the one guy who actually attacked & invaded a sovereign country without any provocation”
“Without any provocation”?
Putin doesn’t see it that way. He saw a noose on his neck closing.
Johnson is getting advice that by embracing the Left and Biden, the media will swoon and his favorability ratings will skyrocket, protecting him.
He likes to use the term “bipartisan” to hand the Dems victories.
He’s imagining himself as a new Barack Obama type of politician that can do no wrong.
They're actually two sides of the same coin: one of the main reasons for the wars erupting everywhere is the weakness that follows from ideological commitment to Marxist anti-Americanism in the current regime. That same commitment is responsible for trashing the Constitution and trying to impose a one-party dictatorship in the US.
We have the Dems and the Left here lighting a bonfire in the living room and foreigners, seeing that, are setting fire to the garage as well.
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