Public Domain - via Wikimedia Commons
Volodymyr Zelensky
Volodymyr Zelensky
President Biden and President Volodymyr Zelensky were back together in Washington lobbying for continued U.S military assistance vital for Ukraine’s survival for the first time since Zelensky received a bipartisan hero’s welcome last December from a joint session of Congress that gave him 18 standing ovations.
A majority of Americans continue to strongly support Ukraine’s valiant battle fending off Russian President Vladimir Putin’s massive military invasion a year and a half ago that the murderous dictator expected to wipe the small democracy off the map within weeks. He failed.
Biden’s successful leadership of world democracies defending Ukraine has prevented Russia’s military aggression from expanding to threaten other European nations and launching World War III.
But here’s the scariest part. It’s also going to intensify Putin’s interference with the U.S presidential election in 2024 to re-elect Donald Trump, the most pro-Russian criminal American president in history.
GOP Cold Shoulder
That’s also why Zelensky was greeted by a very different Republican party last week than he was 10 months ago. That was glaringly obvious when House Speaker Kevin McCarthy rejected the request by Zelensky, the most widely admired freedom fighter in the world, to deliver another joint address to Congress because of “what we’re in the middle of.”
What House Republicans are in the middle of right now is an attempt by the chamber’s most anti-democracy Trump extremists to shut down the federal government and sabotage Biden’s presidency. Trump is egging them on to refuse to pass spending bills for Ukraine or anything else to throw Biden’s government into chaos.
Trump wants to create chaos to divert attention from his multiple criminal trials while he’s running for president again. Trump’s also counting on Russia spreading constant pro-Trump propaganda on social media smearing Biden just like it did against Hillary Clinton and Biden in Trump’s previous campaigns.
|
|
Lunatic Fringe
What the lunatic House fringe fails to understand is it’s endangering nearly 20 moderate House Republicans elected in districts Biden won and Republican Senators who need to appeal to rational voters statewide unlike House candidates in gerrymandered districts packed with rabid Trump true believers.
Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell is acutely aware Trump wildly altered voter turnout in the midterms a year ago. Those were the elections in which Republicans expected to win a 30-seat House majority and Senate control. Instead, Republicans barely won an unworkably thin House majority and lost another Senate seat.
Here's McConnell’s conservative position on Ukraine: “It’s certainly not the time to go wobbly. Now, with Ukraine bravely defending its sovereignty and eroding Russia’s capacity to threaten NATO. … Helping Ukraine retake its territory means weakening one of America’s biggest strategic adversaries without firing a shot.”
No wonder Trump hates McConnell. Trump’s pal Putin remains his role model for firing all the federal prosecutors indicting him and locking up his political opponents.
Republicans for Putin
Most Americans aren’t nearly as fond of Putin as Trump and Fox News hosts are. In a recent Quinnipiac University poll, 66% of Americans said supporting Ukraine was in the national interest with just 28% saying it was not. Even among Republicans, a 52% majority said support was in our interest with 40% saying it was not.
Biden’s leadership of world democracies continues to arm Ukraine with the weapons to defend itself, punish Russia economically for its war crimes and prevent Putin’s savage invasion from escalating further. The men, women and children of Ukraine are giving their lives to protect the rest of the world from Putin.
Zelensky’s private meeting with McCarthy and other House leaders spared all of us from hearing obscene Republican questions about how long Ukrainians would continue to need U.S. military and humanitarian assistance to fight for their freedom from Russia’s invasion. The answer should be as long we would fight if Russia ever tried to control our government, right? Or is that what it’s doing right now?
It's easy to dismiss Kevin McCarthy and the Marjorie Taylor Greene crazies as the sick jokes they are, but they’re also a serious threat to American democracy.
Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, the next great Democratic House Speaker, describes the House as a three-ring circus: “Ring 1: Shut down the government. Ring 2: Impeach President Biden. Ring 3: Jam your extreme rightwing ideology down the throats of the American people … It’s sad, it’s dangerous and it’s pathetic.”
We know exactly how dangerous political extremism can be in America because we watched Trump’s angry political hatred burst into violent terrorism on January 6, 2021. Presidents Biden and Zelensky are both fighting for democracy in the world and in their own countries.
Everyday Americans are tired of the chaos, political dysfunction and violent extremism. In these extraordinary political times for the world, two of the most important leaders for everyday people in their nations are Biden and Zelensky, a working-class politician and a former sitcom actor.
