Meet the Real Head of the Republican Party: Vladimir Putin
The real leader of the modern-day GOP is Russian dictator Vladimir Putin.
With news this week that behind republicans’ pathetic attempt to impeach President Joe Biden is a former FBI informant turned Russian mole, it has become all the more clear that the real leader of the modern-day GOP is Russian dictator Vladimir Putin.
Prosecutors allege former FBI official Alexander Smirnov blamed Russian intelligence agents for the false information on President Biden and his son Hunter that Smirnov communicated to House Oversight Committee members Reps. James Comer, Jim Jordan, and Chuck Grassley.
Their allegations against the Bidens claim, as The Daily Kos reported in 2019:
At the heart of the charge Trump is making against Biden is this: Biden’s son Hunter was on the board of an energy company called Burisma Holdings that was targeted by a Ukrainian prosecutor. This prosecutor was one of several figures whom [then-VP] Joe Biden railed against on a trip to Ukraine in which he complained about corruption in the country’s government, including a threat to withhold U.S. funds if Ukraine didn’t clean up its act. In the next election, the prosecutor was voted out, and Ukraine got its funds. Burisma may have benefited from that change, though it’s not clear to what extent. Not surprisingly, the whole purpose of adding Hunter Biden and other prominent Americans to Burisma’s board was the hope of positioning the Ukrainian company to leverage its American connections. To the extent that it raised the company’s visibility, it probably did work. Hunter Biden’s term on the board was for five years. It has since expired, and Biden stepped down earlier this year.
Even though no one has unearthed a single shred of impropriety, the republican Putin caucus is running with it because, in attacking Hunter Biden, it feels it can get to President Biden to help Donald Trump’s re-election, thereby advancing Vladimir Putin’s objective of weakening NATO and withdrawing US support for Ukraine against him.
Alexander Smirnov, the Oversight Committee’s “star witness,” lied to the FBI when he alleged Burisma paid Hunter and Joe Biden $5 million each. Donald Trump appointed the federal prosecutor who debunked this story.
The DOJ noted in its filing:
When he was interviewed by FBI agents in September 2023, Smirnov repeated some of his false claims, changed his story as to other of his claims, and promoted a new false narrative after he said he met with Russian officials.
As Donald Trump’s niece, Mary Trump, asserted recently in her Substack piece:
Despite the apparent holes in Smirnov’s story, James Comer and Jim Jordan either failed to vet it and fell for it hook, line, and sinker, or actively took part in something more nefarious. Whether their actions were merely reckless or malevolent, it’s clear that Russia’s unceasing threat to democracy is more active than ever.
But if we think Comer and Jordan are pumping the brakes now they’ve been exposed, we haven’t been paying attention to the fact-blind republican party.
They hauled President Biden’s brother James before the committee on Wednesday. In his response to the claim President Biden exploited his official government positions to assist relatives and profit from their business dealings, James Biden replied:
I have had a 50-year career in a variety of business ventures. Joe Biden has never had any involvement or any direct or indirect financial interest in those activities. None.
Historic of European history, author of the books On Tyranny and Bloodlands, Timothy Snyder, stated in a recent piece titled “Beware the Weak Man”:
Ukraine could win, if Americans would help; but our weak men have cut off the weapons. Musk spreads Russian propaganda. Vance amplifies Russian foreign policy. Trump follows Putin’s wishes. Johnson maneuvers for months to block a vote on aid to Ukraine. And so the Ukrainians, fighting for their lives, run out of artillery shells, and must withdraw from losses from Avdiivka.
The Republican Party is becoming a party of fear, in which Republicans fear other Republicans, fear their constituents, and fear Trump, which means fearing Russia. Republicans enter the submission chain that binds them to Trump, and to Putin, and then rationalize what they have done. From the position, actual cooperation with actual Russians no longer seems to be a problem, as we have just seen in the attempt to impeach Biden with the help of Russian lies, and for that matter in a series of events going back a decade.
Progressive talk show host and author Thom Hartmann added in his piece “Comer & Jordan are Mainstreaming Political Poison into the Bloodstream of Democracy”:
Vladimir Putin always knew he couldn’t beat America militarily, so his next best option was to infiltrate our political systems and seize control of the GOP. It increasingly looks like he’s pulled it off, right down to blocking US aid to Ukraine for over a year.
Progressive commentator Dean Obeidallah wrote:
Donald Trump has been suspiciously consistent from his 2016 run for president through today on one thing: His refusal to publicly criticize Russia’s Vladmir Putin. In fact, Trump has even in the past despicably defended Putin’s murder of people like pro-democracy activist Alexei Navalny.
Now we know from DOJ’s filing “that Russian intelligence were involved in passing” information to Smirnov — a longtime FBI informant. That means Putin was hoping that Smirnov’s claim that Biden took bribes would influence the 2020 campaign.
Trump has been carrying water for Vladimir Putin for years. Trump spent his entire four years as president as a mouthpiece for Putin’s ultimate wish to destroy the international alliance preventing him from re-creating the Soviet Union.
Trump’s elevation to the presidency was the outcome of a coordinated disinformation campaign that included insidious social media infiltration and exploiting internal political divisions.
While Vladmir Putin can’t communicate directly with the American people, the twice-impeached, four-times indicted former reality TV slumlord found criminally liable for rape facing 91 felony counts can and is, and MAGA members of Congress are complicit, actively working against American interests in favor of Putin’s.
The republican party deigning to Trump’s every maniacal whim would likely have no problem using its well-funded right-wing hate media machine to justify going along with him. There would be some opposition, sure, but if the past four decades, and definitely the past seven years, are any indication, the bulwark between democracy and fascism that used to protect the United States is rapidly eroding.
It happens from within, and the machinations to accomplish it are already in motion.
Let’s not “sleepwalk into dictatorship,” as former republican House member Liz Cheney said recently.