Month: March 2022

The Republican response to Biden’s State of the Union was, as usual, detached from reality

Posted on (Updated by Hunter

There was once a time when we might have live-blogged the Republican responses to a State of the Union address, but we're all much older and more tired now and the collective "news" broken during all State of the Union responses combined, in the past decade, consists of that time Marco Rubio needed to take a drink of water and pretty much nothing else.

The Republican response this time around was apparently given by Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds, who perhaps needed a bit of good publicity after she was discovered to have taken nearly a half million dollars of federal pandemic relief money to pay staffers in her own state government office, which isn't what the pandemic fund was intended for. Reynolds also allegedly took steps to hide where the cash was going, and has also refused to provide the documentation required for auditing the expenditure, so she's clearly been doing her be more like Donald Trump homework.

Anyhoo, Reynolds continued the long tradition of State of the Union responses that completely ignore the actual speech they're responding to in order to fire off a laundry list of pre-determined attack lines, so we're going to respect that choice by reviewing Kim Reynolds' speech without bothering to actually watch or read it. I thought the part where she promised to kill, stuff, and mount Hank, the bear breaking into South Lake Tahoe homes for winter snacks, to be unnecessarily gruesome. I don't like the part where she swore that Republicans were on Ukraine's side and against Russia, but she kept mispronouncing "Ukraine" as "eclair" so it sounded like she was defending Republican dessert rights. The part where she juggled Hummel figurines while reciting Donald Trump's favorite poem, The Snake, showed remarkable dexterity but I thought muddled her central anti-Hank messages.

There you go, you're caught up.

From actual not-entirely-imaginary news coverage, it appears the parts of Reynolds' speech we missed focused primarily on convincing America that the pandemic, the economic chaos of the pandemic, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and a new wave of our children learning uncomfortable things are all Joe Biden's fault. According to The New York Times, she was selected for the bit by Sen. Mitch McConnell "in part" because of Reynolds' anti-masking stances. Reynolds is one of the Republican governors who has signed on to efforts to ban school mask mandates, because Republican parents don't like masks and it's extremely important to Republican parents that these preferences be played out in classroom proxy battles that may or may not kill teachers or neighbors or other parents or the kids themselves outright.

Do not let anyone, anywhere tell you that Americans "love their children." Some do and some don't. For many parents, that "love" is purely conditional and predicated on their children hating the right things or hurting the right people, which is why books that portray LGBT adolescents as normal and worthy of normal lives are among the top targets on all the newest banned book lists.

The other bit of Reynolds' speech consisted of a half-hearted attempt to erase all of recent Republican history to claim that Republicans are indeed in Ukraine's corner and against Vladimir Putin's bloody war, despite the Republican Party specifically stripping support for Ukraine from the last platform it ever bothered to write, per the demands of the Trump campaign; despite Republican airwaves and conferences being awash with praise for the "smart" Putin and his "smart" white nationalist, non-woke murders and violence; and despite Gov. Kim Reynolds herself being a strong backer of Donald Trump's extortion of Ukraine during Trump's first impeachment trial. According to the Kim Reynolds of back then, holding Trump to account for blocking military aid to the at-war Ukraine so that he and Rudy Giuliani could pressure Ukraine's democratic government into announcing a thoroughly fake investigation of the Biden family was outrageous.

Now she's just another one of the insufferably ambitious Republican governors insisting that the party's previous explicit support for sabotaging the Ukrainian government using propaganda backed by pro-Putin oligarchs is nothing the rest of us should be going on about. Republicans didn't back Trump's every effort to hand Putin whatever Putin expressed even mild interest in. Republicans didn't actually nod and applaud during the countless episodes in which Trump or one of his hackish underlings attacked the very premises of NATO or flung cheap, spurious insults towards the nations that comprise it. Heavens no, and to prove it Kim will add three more Hummel figurines to her performance.

I think we've given Reynolds' response about the right amount of attention now, so we're good. The short version is that once again, Republican leaders chose as their best spokesperson an anti-mask, pandemic-prolonging, culture-war-focused hack currently under investigation for stealing government funds and who turned in a performance that had not a damn thing to do with anything, but instead was filled with the same six or seven talking points Republicans have currently chosen to flood the airwaves with while completely ignoring all the misery their incompetence bestowed on the rest of us.

Who else were they going to pick? The still-indicted Texas attorney general? The Florida governor just caught on camera yelling at students for wearing masks in his presence? Tucker?

Abbreviated Pundit Roundup: The state of the Union is sound, but Europe is at war

Posted on by Greg Dworkin

Greg Sargent/WaPo:

Five vile things Trump did to Zelensky and Ukraine that you forgot about

The obvious rejoinder to this spin is that Trump got impeached for withholding military aid to strong-arm Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky into manufacturing propaganda to help Trump’s reelection. This came even as Zelensky pleaded for help against Russian aggression, which the world is now witnessing unfold in all its horror.

But the focus only on that episode risks oversimplifying the story. It casts this recent history as being mainly about Trump’s personal corruption, i.e., his effort to use foreign policy to smear his campaign opponent.

Belarusians have formed at least five military units in #Ukraine right now and are fighting alongside Ukrainians. Many of them could have fled Ukraine and stayed safe but they decided to support them. Here is an appeal to the Belarusian military not to go to war in Ukraine. pic.twitter.com/PMFXHiF0XG

— Hanna Liubakova (@HannaLiubakova) March 1, 2022

Some news pieces to catch you up:

NY Times:

Senior EU officials tell me the EU is considering offering qualified Russian 🇷🇺 citizens EU 🇪🇺 passports - to accelerate Russian economic brain drain This is just one of many innovative measures being considered to complement economic sanctions now in place 🇪🇺🇺🇦

— Mujtaba (Mij) Rahman (@Mij_Europe) March 1, 2022

WaPo:

In just 72 hours, Europe overhauled its entire post-Cold War relationship with Russia

Just last week, many European countries were still so somnolent about the threat Russia posed to Ukraine that Germany’s spy chief was caught unawares in Kyiv when the Kremlin invasion started. He had to be extracted in a special operation.

But over just a handful of days, Europe has been shocked out of a post-Cold War era — and state of mind — in which it left many of the democratic world’s most burning security problems to the United States.

Switzerland no longer neutral? That’s not as shocking as Germany deciding to rearm.

The wording by French finance minister @BrunoLeMaire is important. “We are going to wage a total economic and financial war on Russia” https://t.co/t2EAuydqpb https://t.co/SWMvwNjoyH

— Andrew S. Weiss (@andrewsweiss) March 1, 2022

Mitchell A Orenstein/Bulwark:

What Changed Germany’s Mind

Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s decision to give weapons to Ukraine overturned decades of tradition.

Until yesterday, Germany remained extremely reluctant to create even the faintest appearance that it was threatening Russia militarily—hence its refusal even to allow overflight rights to NATO allies exporting arms to Ukraine. For its own domestic and moral reasons, Germany needed to be a peacemaker to the last.

Putin’s blatant and unprovoked assault on Ukraine changed that calculus. Now, no one in their right mind could possibly blame Germany, so it is finally safe to act. Germany can play a key role as a supporter of Ukraine, both by sending arms to help the poor people in Kyiv and throughout the country and by rearming itself, as Scholz has promised to do, to meet the obvious threat from Russia.

The new era has long been coming. For years, Germany’s leaders, committed to good relations, studiously refused to treat Russia as a threat, but rather as a potential partner. Putin made it easy for them to change their minds.

In decades past, when America’s national interest was at stake, especially with a threat from abroad, members of both parties showed solidarity and support for the president. It is fundamental patriotism. Now lacking among a majority of congressional Republicans.

— Norman Ornstein (@NormOrnstein) March 2, 2022

David Dayen/TAP:

Biden Wants to Take Down the Ocean Shipping Cartel

New initiatives would beef up investigations into anti-competitive conduct from the industry, which is enjoying astronomical profits.

President Biden will target the ocean shipping cartel in tomorrow night’s State of the Union address, outlining new steps to crack down on suspected anti-competitive behavior priced into the cost of every transported good, which has led to astronomical profits for the industry.

The steps include an executive action to commence investigations into ocean shipping excess profit-taking, and a legislative recommendation to bolster the Ocean Shipping Reform Act now working its way through Congress by taking away the industry’s antitrust exemption for so-called “ocean shipping alliances.”

The executive action results from a joint agreement between the Federal Maritime Commission (FMC), the main regulator of ocean carriers, and the Antitrust Division of the Justice Department. Under the arrangement, the Antitrust Division will essentially act as the FMC’s counsel in investigating conduct in the industry, providing the lawyer-power for what would otherwise be an impossible task for an understaffed and under-resourced agency.

This is a powerful speech and everyone should listen. But I'm also interested in the framing of it. Is there any evidence this is not just a random room with a chair and a flag? Plus the shot is so low, as if hiding the absence of a desk or something else. https://t.co/6dUpHQMvAF

— emptywheel (@emptywheel) March 1, 2022

David Remnick/New Yorker:

The Ambassador Caught Between Ukraine and Trump

In her first major interview since testifying against Trump, Marie Yovanovitch, the former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine, discusses Russia’s war on the nation and Trump’s attack on her.

How far will Putin take this? The invasion hasn’t gone the way he would’ve liked, but maybe time is on his side. The sheer volume of arms is on his side. What does he want here?

I think he wants to control Ukraine. When I was in the country, from 2016 to 2019, I always felt that he didn’t really want to own Ukraine, because then there’s at least a modicum of responsibility. He would have to provide services. But he wanted to make sure that Ukraine didn’t have the power of self-determination. He wanted to keep it in his sphere of influence. What he discovered—due, ironically, to his own actions, particularly the annexation of Crimea and the invasion of the Donbass—was that he is the single biggest driver since independence, in 1991, of bringing the Ukrainian people together.

As Zelensky fights for his country, for democracy, for his own life, it's crucial that Trump & the GOP hacks who defended his alliance with Putin & his criminal behaviors toward Ukraine be named, quoted, & relentlessly reminded of their votes on impeachment and Jan. 6.

— Joe Hagan (@joehagansays) March 1, 2022

John Cassidy/New Yorker:

How Vladimir Putin Miscalculated the Economic Cost of Invading Ukraine

The Russian leader apparently failed to anticipate the unprecedented targeting of the Central Bank of Russia, a step that has battered the ruble and shaken the country’s financial system.

In wartime, it is wise to treat statements from all sides skeptically. In this case, we don’t need to rely on the assessments of anonymous U.S. officials. When the international markets opened on Monday morning, the value of Russia’s currency plunged by a third. To stem the decline, the Russian Central Bank more than doubled its key interest rate, from 9.5 per cent to twenty per cent, and ordered Russian exporting companies to sell foreign currencies and buy rubles. These desperate moves helped trim losses, but at the close of trading in Moscow the ruble was still down by almost twenty per cent—a huge decline for any currency. In a briefing with reporters, Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, conceded that “economic reality had significantly changed.”

In Washington, meanwhile, the Biden Administration intensified its economic offensive by imposing a freeze on the Central Bank of Russia’s assets held in U.S. financial institutions. The Treasury Department also prohibited any U.S. person, including American banks and businesses, from engaging in transactions with Russia’s Central Bank, finance ministry, or sovereign wealth fund. “This action effectively immobilizes any assets of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation held in the United States or by U.S. persons, wherever located,” the Treasury said, in a statement announcing the new policy. In London, the U.K government has introduced a policy along the same lines.

It wasn’t immediately clear just how much money the Central Bank of Russia still holds in New York, London, and other Western financial centers—and which it will no longer be able to access. (According to some estimates, about two-thirds of Russian reserves are now blocked off in countries that have introduced sanctions.) Even so, experts on economic sanctions described the targeting as unprecedented and highly effective. “The G-7 sanctions against the Russian Central Bank, not the swift sanctions, are the real hammer, and they’re showing effect,” Jonathan Hackenbroich, a policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, said. “Russia’s Central Bank might struggle to fight massive inflation and panic even after it doubled interest rates and introduced capital controls.”

First it was 3,000. Then it was 500. Now they don’t even want to talk numbers. https://t.co/oQDgM4hI5q

— The Daily Beast (@thedailybeast) March 1, 2022

I don’t know whether the alleged Zelensky assassination plot was, in fact, foiled by FSB snitches, as the Ukrainians say. But saying the tip came from with the FSB itself is maximally designed to send the FSB into a counterintelligence ouroboros.https://t.co/t4TK9OoSrs

— Zach Dorfman (@zachsdorfman) March 1, 2022

Fiona Hill: Putin tried to warn Trump he would go nuclear, but Trump didn’t understand the warning

Posted on (Updated by Laura Clawson

If you remember the name Fiona Hill, it’s likely because of her testimony in Donald Trump’s first impeachment inquiry, at which she distinguished herself as a forceful, knowledgeable, and fearless public servant. Hill is a Russia expert who was speaking about her time as the senior director for European and Russian affairs at the National Security Council under Trump. She offered a strong warning about Russia’s efforts to undermine U.S. democracy in that testimony. So she’s an interesting and important person to hear from about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine—even as we should keep in mind that Hill is known as a Russia hawk and speaks from that perspective—and Politico’s Maura Reynolds gives us that chance with an in-depth interview.

It’s scary stuff, even beyond Hill’s warning that Putin really might use nuclear weapons—and in fact that he had tried to warn Trump about his willingness to do so (only Trump didn’t understand the warning). “The thing about Putin is, if he has an instrument, he wants to use it. Why have it if you can’t?” Hill said. Running through Russia’s recent history of poisonings with radioactive polonium and the Novichok nerve agent, Hill concluded, “So if anybody thinks that Putin wouldn’t use something that he’s got that is unusual and cruel, think again. Every time you think, ‘No, he wouldn’t, would he?’ Well, yes, he would. And he wants us to know that, of course.”

She continued, “It’s not that we should be intimidated and scared. That’s exactly what he wants us to be. We have to prepare for those contingencies and figure out what is it that we’re going to do to head them off.”

Hill faults the United States and NATO on failure to be prepared for contingencies, going back years. “I think there’s been a logical, methodical plan that goes back a very long way, at least to 2007 when [Putin] put the world, and certainly Europe, on notice that Moscow would not accept the further expansion of NATO. And then, within a year in 2008, NATO gave an open door to Georgia and Ukraine. It absolutely goes back to that juncture,” she told Reynolds. “Back then, I was a national intelligence officer, and the National Intelligence Council was analyzing what Russia was likely to do in response to the NATO Open Door declaration. One of our assessments was that there was a real, genuine risk of some kind of preemptive Russian military action, not just confined to the annexation of Crimea, but some much larger action taken against Ukraine along with Georgia. And of course, four months after NATO’s Bucharest Summit, there was the invasion of Georgia. There wasn’t an invasion of Ukraine then because the Ukrainian government pulled back from seeking NATO membership. But we should have seriously addressed how we were going to deal with this potential outcome and our relations with Russia.”

Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, though, is not mostly about NATO, in Hill’s assessment. It’s not even entirely about restoring the borders of the Soviet Union. Hill thinks Putin is looking back further in time.

“I’ve kind of quipped about this, but I also worry about it in all seriousness—Putin’s been down in the archives of the Kremlin during COVID looking through old maps and treaties and all the different borders that Russia has had over the centuries,” she said.

“He’s said, repeatedly, that Russian and European borders have changed many times. And in his speeches, he’s gone after various former Russian and Soviet leaders, he’s gone after Lenin and he’s gone after the communists, because in his view they ruptured the Russian empire, they lost Russian lands in the revolution, and yes, Stalin brought some of them back into the fold again, like the Baltic States and some of the lands of Ukraine that had been divided up during World War II, but they were lost again with the dissolution of the USSR. Putin’s view is that borders change, and so the borders of the old Russian imperium are still in play for Moscow to dominate now.”

Domination doesn’t necessarily mean occupying or annexing another country. “You can establish dominance by marginalizing regional countries, by making sure that their leaders are completely dependent on Moscow, either by Moscow practically appointing them through rigged elections or ensuring they are tethered to Russian economic and political and security networks,” Hill noted. “You can see this now across the former Soviet space,” including Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Belarus, with Ukraine being “the country that got away.”

Putin’s determination to break Ukraine could mean occupation, but, Hill said, “What Putin wants isn’t necessarily to occupy the whole country, but really to divide it up. He’s looked at Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and other places where there’s a division of the country between the officially sanctioned forces on the one hand, and the rebel forces on the other. That’s something that Putin could definitely live with—a fractured, shattered Ukraine with different bits being in different statuses.”

Putin is also engaged in what Hill describes as “a full-spectrum information war.” In that information war, “You get the Tucker Carlsons and Donald Trumps doing your job for you. The fact that Putin managed to persuade Trump that Ukraine belongs to Russia and that Trump would be willing to give up Ukraine without any kind of fight, that’s a major success for Putin’s information war.”

Hill said that the response to Putin’s invasion of Ukraine must go beyond NATO. “I’m not saying that that means an international military response that’s larger than NATO, but the push back has to be international,” she clarified. That means an economic response that goes beyond sanctions.

”Sanctions are not going to be enough. You need to have a major international response, where governments decide on their own accord that they can’t do business with Russia for a period of time until this is resolved. We need a temporary suspension of business activity with Russia,” Hill said. “Just as we wouldn’t be having a full-blown diplomatic negotiation for anything but a ceasefire and withdrawal while Ukraine is still being actively invaded, so it’s the same thing with business. Right now you’re fueling the invasion of Ukraine. So what we need is a suspension of business activity with Russia until Moscow ceases hostilities and withdraws its troops.”

And, Hill said in a conversation that repeatedly invoked World War II as a precedent, Putin will not stop at Ukraine unless the response is such that he has no choice. There’s a lot more there. Agree or disagree with her, Hill’s take as an expert not just on Russia but on Putin specifically is worth reading in full.

Rep. Elise Stefanik shifts her message on Russia-Ukraine, at least for nearly two minutes

Posted on by Laura Clawson

Rep. Elise Stefanik, who was a key part of the Republican effort to fight Donald Trump’s first, Ukraine-related impeachment in the House, has a message for the people of Ukraine. It’s not an apology for her support of Trump’s extortion of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in an attempt to gain an election advantage over now-President Joe Biden. But—and this is big coming from Stefanik—her message sticks to Ukraine and Russia without overtly attacking Biden.

Last week, as Russia invaded Ukraine, Stefanik was part of a statement from House Republican leaders that blamed Biden for “appeasement,” and she released her own statement railing as much against Biden as against Putin. So her new video message (see below) to the people of Ukraine and to Zelenskyy is a real departure for her. Is that because, in speaking in theory to Zelenskyy, she wanted to avoid echoes of Trump withholding military aid from Ukraine in an attempt to get Zelenskyy to manufacture a scandal about Biden? Is it in some minor way a recognition that Biden’s approach—assembling a major international response with devastating sanctions on Russia—is looking more successful than Republicans were hoping? 

Either way, what Stefanik also isn’t doing is putting distance between herself and Trump. While her descriptions of Putin as “a gutless, bloodthirsty, authoritarian dictator” and a “war criminal” are a far cry from Trump’s descriptions of Putin as “smart” and “savvy” and “genius,” Stefanik is part of a broader Republican pattern of criticizing Putin while refusing to answer questions about Trump’s praise.

But Stefanik’s role in defending Trump’s attempted extortion of Ukraine makes her approach here particularly nauseating. This is someone who rose to prominence in her party by participating in stunts intended to disrupt the impeachment inquiry, and relentlessly tried to use the inquiry into Trump’s extortion effort to promote the very thing he had been getting at to begin with, dragging Biden and his son Hunter into her questioning at every opportunity. For her to act like she has had the welfare of the people of Ukraine at heart all along is staggeringly dishonest. But then, the entire Republican approach to this issue is staggeringly dishonest.

My message to the people of @Ukraine and @ZelenskyyUa: The United States of America stands firmly with you against Russia’s unprovoked and heinous attack on your country. pic.twitter.com/s4d96sWxb2

— Rep. Elise Stefanik (@RepStefanik) March 1, 2022

To the people of Ukraine, the United States of America stands firmly with you against Russia’s unprovoked and heinous attacks on your country. Your bravery, sacrifice, and resistance against a gutless, bloodthirsty, authoritarian dictator is a beacon of hope for freedom and democracy around the world.

A beacon of hope, but I’m not going to say a word about my party’s leader calling those unprovoked and heinous attacks “savvy.”

As a senior member of the House Armed Services Committee, I was honored to lead a bipartisan group of congressional members to Ukraine in 2018. I met with the wonderful Ukrainian people and experienced the beauty of your culture and country. Most importantly, I saw firsthand the importance of the security partnership between our two countries to counter Russian aggression, combat Vladimir Putin’s disinformation, and defend democracy and freedom. Today, I remain committed to strengthening that partnership by working with my colleagues to increase military support for the Ukrainian armed forces and establish strong and effective deterrents to counter Putin’s hostility.

It cannot be emphasized enough that these are the words of someone who defended Trump for withholding $400 million of military aid from Ukraine in an effort to gain political advantage at home. 

Additionally, we are working to sanction Putin and his corrupt oligarch cronies immediately and permanently terminate construction of the Nord Stream II pipeline, end Russian energy exports around the world, and provide additional military and financial support to Ukraine. I will not stop fighting until Ukraine receives the resources it deserves and Putin is cut off and isolated from the international community. As you continue your fight against the evil desires of the war criminal Vladimir Putin, all of Ukraine and the Ukrainian people are in our prayers and we will stand behind you in support of this fight for your country. Never stop fighting for a sovereign, self-governing, and free Ukraine.

As GOP blames Biden for Russia-Ukraine, remember these words: ‘I would like you to do us a favor’

Posted on by Laura Clawson

There are 46 Republicans in the Senate today who in 2020 voted against convicting Donald Trump for withholding military aid from Ukraine in an attempt to get President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to dig up or manufacture dirt against a political opponent Trump feared. (Fifty-two Republican senators voted to acquit Trump, but six are no longer in the Senate.) The specifics here are important as we consider how those Republicans are responding to the Russian invasion of Ukraine—and how they are characterizing President Joe Biden’s response.

During a 2019 phone call, Zelenskyy said, “We are ready to continue to cooperate for the next steps specifically we are almost. ready to buy more Javelins from the United States for defense purposes.” Javelins are an anti-tank weapon and have been essential in Ukraine’s defense against Russia. All you really need to know about Trump’s response is that it began, “I would like you to do us a favor though ...”

Trump froze $400 million in military aid to Ukraine as he made his extortion attempt, only unfreezing the aid months later after a whistleblower complaint about it. That frozen aid, coupled with his “I would like you to do us a favor, though,” as a direct response to Zelenskyy’s ask for more Javelins were at the center of Trump’s first impeachment, on which Mitt Romney was the only Republican senator to vote guilty.

Romney voted guilty, and Sens. Bill Hagerty of Tennessee, Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming, Roger Marshall of Kansas, and Tommy Tuberville of Alabama were not in the Senate at the time. Every other Republican in the Senate—along with all 195 Republicans who voted in the House—voted against holding Trump responsible. (And Hagerty, Lummis, Marshall, and Tuberville absolutely would have voted not guilty given the chance.)

Trump has praised Vladimir Putin as Russia invaded Ukraine, and insisted that the invasion would not have happened if he had been in office. Trump is now claiming credit for NATO’s strength (after he threatened to pull the U.S. out of NATO) and for U.S. military aid to Ukraine, all part of his campaign to insist that this would not be happening if he were in the White House. In reality, what Putin would or wouldn’t be doing if Trump was in the White House is a mystery, but what we absolutely know is that if Putin invaded Ukraine, a Trump-led United States would not be taking a leading role in a major international diplomatic response.

Republicans, meanwhile, have largely either dodged answering whether they’re with him on his view of Putin or have tacitly supported Trump’s stance.

The Republican talking points are much more focused on blaming Biden than on blaming Putin. “Vladimir Putin’s decision to launch a renewed invasion of Ukraine is reprehensible,” House Republican leaders said in a group statement last week, before moving directly to their real interest. “Sadly, President Biden consistently chose appeasement and his tough talk on Russia was never followed by strong action.” These are people who literally voted against impeaching Donald Trump for withholding military aid to try to create a scandal that would harm Biden’s chances in 2020. Many House Republicans followed their leaders in blaming Biden more than they blamed Putin, and the same is true in the Senate.

And no wonder. Once Trump got Republicans to back him in attempting to extort elections help from Ukraine, where wouldn’t they go with him?