Trump Proves his Impeachment was Justified

[K Graham]

He is at it again, asking a foreign country for help with his own personal political ambitions. This time he's begging a guy who is murdering children in real time. That's what the GOP has given us.

Trump asks for Putin’s help — again

Putin is a pariah. Trump still sees him as a political asset.

When presidential candidate Donald Trump asked Russia to find his 2016 opponent’s emails — i.e., “Russia, if you’re listening” — Republicans hinted that maybe this was a bad idea. So Trump claimed it was a joke. And Republicans moved on and stood by him.

When Trump in 2020 used the presidency to leverage Ukraine for an investigation into his next opponent, a number of Republicans admitted it was unseemly, but said it wasn’t impeachable. They moved on and stood by him. One of them even ventured that Trump had learned a “pretty big lesson” about asking a foreign country to investigate a political rival, and predicted he would “be much more cautious in the future.”

Trump wasn’t joking. He will not be more cautious in the future. And if anything, the big lesson he learned seems to have been that he has so effectively demolished this norm that it no longer encumbers him whatsoever.

He is so unencumbered, in fact, that he’s now seeking foreign political help from perhaps the man most reviled by Americans.

In a new interview on a website that just so happens to be run by a key figure in the Ukraine scandal, Trump came out and said that Russian President Vladimir Putin should provide more purported dirt on Hunter Biden.

Trump suggested that the Russian leader had a window into some of Hunter Biden’s work in the region, recycling an unproven claim about money flowing from the then-wife of Moscow’s former mayor to the president’s son. Trump added: “I would think Putin would know the answer to that. I think he should release it. I think we should know that answer.”

Trump also made clear this wasn’t just an off-the-cuff comment, saying again, “I think Putin now would be willing to probably give that answer. I’m sure he knows.”

Just to put this in perspective, it was pretty objectionable when Trump asked Russia for help in 2016, but Putin wasn’t nearly the pariah he is now. A poll this week showed that just 1 percent of Americans have a positive view of Putin, compared with 88 percent who have a negative one (including 80 percent very negative). That’s entering territory generally reserved for your Osama bin Ladens, your Saddam Husseins and your Ayatollah Khomeinis.

To Trump, though, this appears to be merely a chance for yet more leverage. The logic seems to be: The American people hate you, so why not do something that at least a fair number of them might appreciate? (Indeed, that seems to be implicit in Trump’s comment that Putin “now would be willing” to do such a thing — apparently because the war in Ukraine has gone poorly for Russia?)

And indeed, that might not be a terrible bet. When is the last time a really substantial number of Republicans said they liked Putin? Right after Trump won in 2016, and we learned that Russia had interfered to assist in that victory. Favorable GOP views of Putin shot up from 16 percent the previous summer to 37 percent in one poll.

[MeDotOrg]

[Gadianton]

What Trump means to say, is for his fellow conservative to manufacture evidence and send it on over. If that helps him -- God knows why it would, as his base believe it either way, and there will be no way to verify any of it in good faith for everyone else -- then in a 2024 win he'll look the other way while his fellow does what he needs to with Europe.

[Father Francis]

What happened to "Better Dead than Red"?

[Chap]

What happened to "Better Dead than Red"?

Yes, I remember those days!

Ordinary American people were brought up to believe that theirs was the country that stood for freedom and democracy (hence strong anti-communism, simplified to mean Russia is Bad), and who could be stronger and noisier on those topics than the Republicans? Of course that attitude had its uses for those who payrolled them - union membership was really quite communist-flavoured, and the unrestrained profit generation activities of corporations were the sacred source of all good things - hence governments should do nothing that might block any activities that might maximise such profits on spurious grounds of social goods such as the safety and well-being of citizens. Great for big tobacco and big oil. And so on.

Now the world has changed. The paymasters of the GOP are different people, and they actually feel more in common with the internationalised hyper-rich oligarchs who looted the state at the fall of the Soviet Union than they do with the American middle class. "They" (all those poor wage or salary earning jerks who are complaining of falling living standards for themselves, and hugely diminished life-chances for their kids) "are coming for our money". So now we see Trump promoting adulation of the oligarch looter in chief, Putin, and asking him for help in ensuring that the nasty Democrats (woke socialists every one) don't persuade the voters that rich people may owe something to the society from which their riches (increasingly their parents' riches) were extracted. So nowadays we are told we must be very careful not to fall into "anti-Russian" attitudes - in the UK Prime Minister Johnson is very firm on that point (something to do with all the Russian money that has flowed into his party's coffers over the last decade or so?).

Very, very rich people do not have enduring friends (who needs friends when you are that rich?). But they do have enduring interests, and those are not the same as the interests of ordinary people. Whatever they may want the rest of us to believe, the very rich have no country like the rest of us: their wealth is such that they can live legally wherever they wish, while their money sits safely in the super-national 'fourth dimension' of offshore trusts. They will pursue those interests ruthlessly, wherever it leads them. And at the moment it leads them to kiss up to Putin.