(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Stay tuned for Putin Interference -- Chapter Two [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2023-10-04 — — Chaos is their point. Destroying American Democracy too. Putin just needs the right conduits … to help make it happen. Murphy highlighted Donald Trump and a faction of the Republican Party’s obsession with Vladimir Putin: “Trump's admiration for Putin, it's turned into a collective right wing obsession. Turn on Tucker Carlson virtually any night and you're going to hear him lionizing Putin, and pushing often line for line Russian disinformation. Elon Musk uncritically blasts out Russian propaganda about the war to his 120 million plus followers. Steve Bannon says that Putin is the leader of the anti-woke fight globally. Donald Trump Jr., I follow him on social media, he's relentlessly making fun of Zelensky online. QAnon sites say that Russia’s war in Ukraine is righteous because it's just the next front of the war against these global sex traffickers that apparently are operating out of pizza parlors in Northwest DC and Ukraine.” Murphy added: “[T]here's literally a wing of the Republican Party that is lifting up Putin as an example to follow, is claiming that he's involved in a righteous fight. That same element of the Republican Party is trying to destroy American democracy. They’re not hiding that fact. They're being transparent about it. Some of the most influential thinkers on the right today are literally monarchists.” [...] — U.S Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), a member of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, spoke on the U.S. Senate floor — February 17, 2023 www.murphy.senate.gov Russian experts have long predicted that it’s only a matter of time before U.S. aid to Ukraine is jeopardized by war fatigue and domestic issues. The MAGA branch of the Republican Party is currently delivering in spades, as a stopgap funding bill that was passed by Congress to avert a shutdown excluded much-needed funding for Ukraine . As a special bonus for supporters of the Russian war effort, Elon Musk over the weekend mocked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on X (formerly Twitter) for seeking international support to help his country repel a genocidal aggressor. Predictably, Musk’s cruelty brought joy to Putin’s mouthpieces. During Monday’s broadcast of 60 Minutes, state TV host Olga Skabeeva noted, “It’s impossible not to notice that the West is getting sick not only of Zelensky but Ukraine as a whole, as a circumstance that is constantly siphoning away their money. Elon Musk is magnificent, he is wonderful and perhaps he really is our agent! [...] Putin’s Pals Brag: Elon Musk ‘Really Is Our Agent!’ Julia Davis, www.thedailybeast.com — Oct 2, 2023 Trump has frequently claimed that Putin would not have invaded Ukraine if he was reelected and has pledged to end the war in 24 hours if voters send him back to the White House. Many Republican presidential candidates as well as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy have criticized Trump over the remarks. "My former running mate likes to talk about solving it in a day," [Mike] Pence said. "The the only way you'd solve this war in a day is if you gave Vladimir Putin what he wanted." www.usatoday.com — July 11, 2023 The fact that some congressional Republicans are opposed to additional U.S. aid for Ukraine is not new. What is new, however, is the fact that this GOP contingent continues to grow significantly larger. NBC News reported: An amendment to the defense funding bill by Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., to prohibit all military assistance to Ukraine won 93 Republican votes Wednesday, as 126 Republicans and all 213 Democrats voted against it. That’s up from 70 Republicans who voted for a similar measure by Gaetz in July. For a full list of the 93 House Republicans who voted for the measure, the roll call is online. [...] The GOP’s so-called “Putin wing,” in other words, appears to be getting incrementally bigger. www.msnbc.com — Sept 29, 2023 In an exchange first reported by the Washington Post, [Kevin] McCarthy said: “There’s …there’s two people, I think, Putin pays: [California Representative Dana] Rohrabacher and Trump … [laughter] … swear to God.” According to the transcript, speaker Paul Ryan immediately responded: “This is an off-the-record … [laughter] … NO LEAKS … [laughter] … alright?!” www.theguardian.com — May 17, 2017 Factbox: Key findings from Senate inquiry into Russian interference in 2016 U.S. election Reuters — Aug 18, 2020 Below are key findings of the U.S. Senate intelligence committee’s final report released on Tuesday about Russian efforts to influence the 2016 U.S presidential election in which Republican Donald Trump defeated Democrat Hillary Clinton. The bipartisan report, three-and-a-half years in the making, found Russia used Republican political operative Paul Manafort, the WikiLeaks website and others to try to influence the 2016 election to help now-U.S. President Donald Trump’s campaign. [...] RUSSIAN PRESIDENT VLADIMIR PUTIN “The Committee found that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the Russian effort to hack computer networks and accounts affiliated with the Democratic Party and leak information damaging to Hillary Clinton...” “Moscow’s intent was to harm the Clinton Campaign, tarnish an expected Clinton presidential administration, help the Trump Campaign after Trump became the presumptive Republican nominee, and undermine the U.S. democratic process.” [...] CONTINUED INTERFERENCE EFFORTS Russian interference in U.S. politics has continued at least until January 2020. The panel “observed numerous Russian-government actors from late 2016 until at least January 2020 consistently spreading overlapping false narratives which sought to discredit investigations into Russian interference in the 2016 elections and spread false information about the events of 2016.” Manafort and Kilimnik specifically sought to promote the claim that Ukraine, not Russia, interfered in the 2016 election. [...] The Senate Intelligence Committee has released the final report from its bipartisan investigation into Moscow's interference in the 2016 U.S. election. [...] This report is, to a large extent, something that reaches the same conclusion that Mueller did on the question of Russia's interference . And the committee didn't draw a conclusion on whether the Trump campaign conspired or colluded with Russia. What the committee did instead was lay out the facts that they found and then kind of leave it to the reader to make up their own mind. Some committee Republicans, in an annex to the report, declared that there was no evidence that the Trump campaign colluded. Democratic members, in contrast, called Russia's actions and the Trump team's openness to them, quote, "one of the single most grave counterintelligence threats in modern American history." So there was a bit of a bipartisan divide on that matter. www.npr.org — Aug 18, 2020 So much for bipartisanship. That “ship” has sailed … Trump’s inaugural committee took $1 million from a Russian-American whose money the GOP rejected Meanwhile, guess who really ends up paying the price …? NATO, Ukrainian people, US Generals, US Judges, Clerks, and Attorneys General. Oh yeah, and the American people too — plagued by their corruption and incompetence. And their duplicitous loyalties. — — GOP leaders laughed about Trump colluding with Russia even before WikiLeaks by Aaron Blake , WashPost — May 17, 2017 [...] McCarthy laughed while offering another apparent joke about Russia having hacked the Democratic National Committee (The Washington Post had reported on that hack the day before): “I’ll guarantee you that’s what it is. … The Russians hacked the DNC and got the opp [opposition] research that they had on Trump,” McCarthy said with a laugh. Ryan asked who the Russians “delivered” the opposition research to. “There’s … there’s two people, I think, Putin pays: Rohrabacher and Trump,” McCarthy said, drawing some laughter. “Swear to God,” McCarthy added. At that point, with some levity still apparent in their conversation, Ryan cut it off: “This is an off the record,” Ryan said. Some lawmakers laughed at that. “No leaks, all right?” Ryan said, adding: “This is how we know we’re a real family here.” “That’s how you know that we’re tight,” Scalise said. “What’s said in the family stays in the family,” Ryan added. [...] And it's pretty clear why Ryan wanted to shut this discussion down and asked participants not to leak it. Even joking about such things could one day come back to bite them. And now it has. The 2016 conversation Paul Ryan wanted to keep private www.dailykos.com — Sept 1, 2017 Same as it ever was. Stay tuned for Putin Interference, Chapter Two — already in progress, in the halls of Congress. Maybe even within the Office of a Congress-critter near you … For a full list of the 93 House Republicans who voted for the measure, the roll call is online. — — [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/10/4/2197444/-Stay-tuned-for-Putin-Interference-Chapter-Two?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=trending&pm_medium=web Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/