Photo credit: www.kremlin.ru
We always knew President Joe Biden’s summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin would go better than President Trump disgracing us before the world three years ago in Helsinki by siding with Putin’s “incredibly strong and powerful denial” Russia had sabotaged American democracy by interfering in the U.S. election to help elect Trump.
What we didn’t expect was for Putin to call attention to how successful he’d been in turning the Republican Party against democracy under Trump. Putin sounded exactly like Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson and other Trump loyalists defending the violent Republican assault on democracy Jan. 6. He suggested Trump supporters were urging their government to stop election fraud. They weren’t. It was a lawless mob breaking down doors and threatening to murder the vice president and members of the House and Senate to overthrow Biden’s election.
“People went into U.S. Congress with political demands,” Putin said. “Four hundred people now facing criminal charges. They are facing prison terms of up to 20, maybe 25 years. They are called homegrown terrorists. They are accused of many other things. . . On what grounds? Not quite clear.”
In the world of Putin and the Republican Party, the bad guys on Jan. 6 weren’t the howling mob forcing terrified Senators and House members to hide behind locked doors with furniture piled against them. It was the FBI for arresting hundreds of would-be assassins.
Crimes Against America
Contrary to Putin and Republicans, the criminal charges are quite clear. The insurrection shut down a joint session of Congress causing $1.5 million in damages to the Capitol and ultimately resulting in the deaths of three police officers, two by suicide, and injuries to 140 others including severe brain injuries to police beaten senseless with flagpoles of American flags.
The most chilling part of Putin’s description of the arrests was comparing them to his own alleged poisoning of Alexei Navalny, his most vocal Russian political opponent, and the incarceration of hundreds of Navalny’s supporters. To Putin, murdering and imprisoning political opponents in Russia are no different from the U.S. Justice Department criminally charging hundreds of Trump’s supporters for attacking the cathedral of democracy.
|
|
Biden dismissed Putin’s “ridiculous comparison.” That’s all any of us who watched those disgusting individuals defiling democracy on Jan. 6 can do in response to the absurd lies of Sen. Johnson and other Republicans.
Wisconsin’s Pro-Putin Senator?
Johnson and other rightwing Republicans elected as diehard anti-communists should be embarrassed to have Putin’s public support, but Trump Republicans lost all capacity for embarrassment long ago. Johnson used his chairmanship of the Senate Homeland Security Committee before the election to spread fabricated attacks on Biden and his family created by Putin’s military intelligence.
Putin’s summit assessment of President Biden won’t help Republicans trying to sabotage his agenda for America’s economic recovery. “If you ask me what kind of a person and interlocutor President Biden is,” Putin said, “I can say that he is a very constructive person, a well-balanced and experienced seasoned politician and I expected that.” Putin said Biden communicates using personal stories about his own family and conversations with his mother. “It shows his qualities and his moral values. It is all appealing.”
That’s exactly why Republicans have failed miserably at demonizing Biden as a dangerous, left-wing, political radical plotting against America. There’s no question anymore which party presents a threat to America after Republicans conducted the worst assault on the U.S. Capitol since British troops burned it down during the War of 1812.
End of Democracy
If Jan. 6 had succeeded, it literally would have been the end of American democracy. The defeated president personally sent that violent mob to the Capitol to overthrow his election loss. If Trump had retained the presidency after being voted out of office by the American people by more than 7 million votes and winning only 232 electoral votes to President Biden’s 306, there’s no reason Trump couldn’t have remained in office for life just like Putin and President Xi Jinping of China. That’s why Putin’s sympathies lie with domestic terrorism under Trump.
Instead of fleeing Trump’s disastrous presidency as fast as they can, Republican leaders are desperate to retain the votes of Trump’s most loyal supporters even though they fear many of them as dangerous, violent people. So far 14 Republican states have passed new election laws restricting the right to vote, especially for voters of color, and giving Republican legislators more power to reverse the outcomes of elections they don’t like. Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell vows Republicans will block any federal laws to protect the right to vote.
That’s no way to restore respect for the Republican Party. Americans are hungry for a competent presidency that can pass Biden’s legislation for a robust recovery. They want America back. That’s not a nation praised by Putin for trying to prevent every American vote from being counted in fair and free elections.
