Jeff Danziger lives in New York City. He is represented by CWS Syndicate and the Washington Post Writers Group. He is the recipient of the Herblock Prize and the Thomas Nast (Landau) Prize. He served in the US Army in Vietnam and was awarded the Bronze Star and the Air Medal. He has published eleven books of cartoons, a novel and a memoir. Visit him at DanzigerCartoons.
Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) is once again being heralded as a hero after his impassioned speech on the House floor Thursday, during which he blasted Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) for, among other vulgarities, likening NATO to the Nazis.
"She talks about NATO Nazis. Does the minority believe that our allies in NATO, who are trying to defend the people of Ukraine are Nazis? Has it come to this?" Raskin asked on Thursday.
"She said the aid that the taxpayers of America are sending to the people of Ukraine to defend themselves against Vladimir Putin and the Russian army falls into the hands of Nazis. I want to see her proof. Where's her evidence?"
Raskin goes off on Marjorie Taylor Greene: Gentlelady talked about a massive invasion. We had a massive invasion of our own chamber and she continued to be a cheerleader for the insurrectionpic.twitter.com/SOAPOxWkht— Acyn (@Acyn) 1651166559
Pointing to an article on Rep. Raskin's remarks criticizing Greene, attorney, professor, and author Seth Abramson shed a great deal of light on the Georgia Republican Congresswoman.
"I wonder how many Americans know Greene did this," Abramson asked, referring to Greene likening NATO to Nazis, "less than 12 hours after the top primetime Kremlin TV program compared NATO to the Nazis."
"I also wonder how many Americans know that one of Greene’s top advisors has been a Kremlin-connected guy for decades," he added.
Probably not many.
Urging people to "Google both those things," Abramson writes: "Greene is advised by a Kremlin-connected individual in the same way that Trump was in 2016—and if you think it’s a coincidence she’s parroting Kremlin propaganda in real time the way Trump did you need to follow golf instead of politics."
He points to a March article at The New Republic titled, "How Republicans Spent Decades Cozying Up to Putin’s Kremlin," that begins: "The man who once worked to connect Tom DeLay and Jack Abramoff to Russia is now chief of staff to Marjorie Taylor Greene. Any questions?"
It gets worse.
"Take Ed Buckham, the recently appointed chief of staff for Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene," The New Republic piece continues. "Today, Buckham handles a congresswoman who proudly attends 'white supremacist, antisemitic, pro-Putin' rallies, as Congresswoman Liz Cheney characterized them, and has become renowned for touting conspiracy theories about how the California wildfires were started by Jewish space lasers. On Thursday, when the House of Representatives voted to suspend normal trade relations with Russia and Belarus, Greene, not surprisingly, was one of eight Republicans who voted against it."
Abramson also links to video, and writes: "And here is Kremlin TV calling NATO the world’s 'collective Hitler' just hours before Greene did the same thing while advised by a Kremlin-connected chief of staff. Greene has thrown in her lot with the Kremlin. She wants *election aid* from Russia."
Here's that video, which is subtitled in English:
Russia\u2019s most famous journalists and \u201cexperts\u201d saying on state TV that nuclear war with NATO maybe wouldn\u2019t be that bad after all since the Russians will go to heaven, while the Westerners...pic.twitter.com/xOZvIM6b3h— Visegr\u00e1d 24 (@Visegr\u00e1d 24) 1651093158
Reprinted with permission from AlterNet
Russian President Vladimir Putin is an autocrat with a near unilateral control of his country and what little freedom of expression its people have. Yet, his popularity in the Republican Party has grown unimpeded for years.
Russia’s sudden invasion of Ukraine and the mounting allegations of war crimes leveled against it — including accusations of repeated rape, unprovoked executions, and looting, among other crimes — have not dampened support for Russian amongst GOP leaders and lawmakers, including former President Trump..
Trump — as a candidate for president, president, and twice-impeached former president — has heaped praise on Putin, calling him, amongst other things, “savvy,” “strong,” and a “genius.”
“[Putin] is taking over a country for two dollars worth of sanctions. I’d say that’s pretty smart,” Trump said in February at a Mar-a-Lago event. “Now they laugh at us. That’s why you have Ukraine, that’s why you’re going to have China. Taiwan is next, and you’re going to see the same thing,” Trump later added.
Taking a cue from Trump, some Republican voters now view Putin more positively than they do President Biden, Vice President Harris, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, according to a January YouGov poll.
But it doesn’t end there. In early April, 63 GOP lawmakers voted against a resolution to express support for NATO. A subsequent vote simply asking President Biden to collect evidence of Russian war crimes was, shockingly, rejected by six House Republicans: Reps Andy Biggs (R-AZ), Warren Davidson (R-OH), Paul Gosar (R-AZ), Thomas Massie (R-KY), Scott Perry (R-PA), and, to no one’s surprise, Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA).
Greene, who played a prominent role in inciting the January 6 riot, has publicly voiced her support for Russia’s invasion. “You see, Ukraine just kept poking the bear, and poking the bear, which is Russia, and Russia invaded,” Greene said on a far-right radio show. “There is no win for Ukraine here. Russia is being successful in their invasion.”
The Georgian congresswoman isn’t the only Republican lawmaker to make controversial statements about Ukraine. After Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky addressed both chambers of Congress in March, Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-NC), who arrived late and missed a large portion of the speech, called Zelensky a “thug.” He added, “Remember that the Ukrainian government is incredibly corrupt and it is incredibly evil and has been pushing woke ideologies.”
But that’s still not all the Putin-loving GOP members of Congress. In a heated exchange with Secretary of State Anthony Blinken at a congressional hearing Tuesday, Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) blamed Russia’s invasion on the United States’s support for Ukraine to join NATO.
Paul said the United States has for many years, and under Democratic and Republican leadership, been calling for Ukraine to join NATO, a move Moscow has long since labeled a “red line.”
““You could also argue that the countries that [Russia] has attacked were … part of the Soviet Union,” Paul said to Blinken during a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing, according to the Washington Post.
Blinken rejected Paul’s argument, noting that the United States had tried to assuage Russia’s national security concerns, but the country had invaded Ukraine, anyway. Blinken said that Putin had invaded because he believed “Ukraine does not deserve to be a sovereign nation,” per the Post.
Blinken also defended the United States’s continued support for Ukraine, saying, “We, senators, are not going to be more Ukrainian than the Ukrainians. Our purpose is to make sure that they have within their hands the ability to repel the Russian aggression and indeed to strengthen their hand at an eventual negotiating table.”
Paul, a self-proclaimed libertarian, has been shilling for authoritarian Russia for years. In 2018, disregarding evidence that Russia had interfered in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, Paul headed a delegation of Americans to meet in Moscow with the Federation Council, Russia's Senate. Before that he was accused of "working for Putin" by the late Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) after :Paul blocked a vote on a treaty ratifying Montenegro's accession to NATO.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, has called described the Putin supporters in his party as “lonely voices,” according to the Guardian. But McConnell has repeatedly dodged invitations to say if such Republicans should be booted from the party or, in the absence of party leadership spine, face disciplinary measures.
Jeff Danziger lives in New York City. He is represented by CWS Syndicate and the Washington Post Writers Group. He is the recipient of the Herblock Prize and the Thomas Nast (Landau) Prize. He served in the US Army in Vietnam and was awarded the Bronze Star and the Air Medal. He has published eleven books of cartoons, a novel and a memoir. Visit him at DanzigerCartoons.
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