Why are Rs Helping Putin? Follow the $$.

Do you remember when the Republican Party stood for a strong national defense? Those days, and that party are dead and gone.

Today’s Republican Party is now working to aid Putin in his war on Ukraine. And they are succeeding in helping him destroy that democracy. 

Republicans have refused to pass authorization for aid to Ukraine for months now. Their reasons for doing this keep changing, which is always an indication of a lie. 

Right now, they are using the border as their excuse, even though they killed the bill that gave them everything they’ve been saying they want to close the border. They have given other reasons for blocking aid to Ukraine at other times. 

There’s a rule in politics. When someone keeps changing the reason why they are doing something that goes against what they claim they believe, look for the money. Then, you’ll know why they’re doing it. That rule seems to apply quite well to today’s Republican Party and the help they are giving Putin in his effort to crush Ukraine.

Last week, Ukraine was forced to withdraw from the city of Avdivka because they ran out of ammunition. Many people think this happened because Putin’s Republicans in Congress are blocking aid to Ukraine. 

The cozy relationship between Putin and Republican members of Congress has long been publicized. 

Republican demigod Donald Trump has a long history of taking cash from Russian oligarchs when he is in financial trouble. Let’s look way back when ordinary grifter Trump somehow managed to bankrupt his casinos in New Jersey. Trump was going under financially. 

Then, along came Russian oligarch money to bail him out. They basically bought a desperate and bankrupt Trump on the cheap. And, according to his son Eric, they’ve been funding him ever since. As Eric Trump put it, “We don’t rely on American banks. We have all the funding we need out of Russia. 

From The Hill:

James Dodson during an interview Friday with Boston’s WBUR described meeting Donald Trump in 2014 and being invited to play golf at the Trump National Golf Club Charlotte.

He said asked Donald Trump how he was paying for his courses, and the now-president “sort of tossed off that he had access to $100 million,” Dodson said in the interview.

Dodson said he then questioned Eric Trump, who was along for the day.

”I said, ‘Eric, who’s funding? I know no banks — because of the recession, the Great Recession — have touched a golf course. You know, no one’s funding any kind of golf construction. It’s dead in the water the last four or five years,’”  the writers told WBUR.

“And this is what he (Eric Trump) said. ‘Well, we don’t rely on American banks. We have all the funding we need out of Russia.’

At the same time that Putin was using his oligarch’s money to buy Trump, he was also buying a lot of right wing causes and enterprises. Among other things, he used the National Rifle Association to funnel money into Republican candidates for office. 

The NRA’s participation in funneling Russian money into the campaigns of Republican candidates for office — and thus, buying our Republican elected officials — became obvious when NRA officials actually went to Moscow to conduct their business. It was a move that got them labeled “Russian assets” by The Guardian. 

You can read the full report of the investigation, The NRA and Russia: How a Tax Exempt Organization Became a Russian Asset here. 

The NRA’s betrayal of America into Putin’s hands is well known and documented. What is less well known is that the same Republicans who took money that was funneled to them from Putin also blocked further investigation into the on-going process of illegal campaign funding by Russian assets. Putin was buying Republican elected officials the same way they bought Donald Trump, and Republican elected officials stopped the investigation that would have further documented the crime. 

The current Republican Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, had his own, personal sources of Russian money behind him. The money came through the Texas-based, Russian-affiliated company Ethane. Ethane is 88% owned by Russian oligarchs who are top allies of Putin. 

So. Do you remember when the Republican Party stood for a strong national defense? That party is dead and gone. 

It has been bribed right out of existence by Russian money. While you were going about your life, feeling safe and secure in what you believed was the strongest country in the world, Russian money was boring holes into the underpinning of our democracy by the simple method of buying one of our two political parties. 

Right now, as I am typing this, Republicans in Congress continue to block aid to Ukraine. They lie a lot about why they are doing it. But their lies are based on their understanding that (1) rank and file Republicans have too much on their plates managing their own lives to learn all the facts, (2) “their” whore clergy will continue to pound home the message that salvation comes from voting Republican, (3) and that “their” media will lie for them just like they are lying for themselves. 

Meanwhile, Trump has announced that if he is re-elected, he will encourage Putin to “do whatever the hell he wants” to our allies in Europe unless they pay what he decides they should pay to NATO. Putin has wanted NATO destroyed for a long time. And Trump is promising to help him do it. 

NATO has had one job for the past 80 years and that is to prevent World War III. It has done that job. It has been a hedge against Russian (and now Chinese) military aggression. What Trump is talking about doing is dismantling the hedge that keeps you and I safe.

That’s what today’s Republican Party has become. This is not “conservatism.” It certainly is not maintaining a strong national defense. It’s just a bunch of bribed traitors, doing the bidding of the guy who bribed them. 

The Republican Party that my mother was a member of no longer exists. The Republican Party you have been voting for and that you think you are backing is dead. It no longer exists.