Propaganda: The GOP’s pro-Putin wing

Russia’s info-war machine has breached the Capitol building, said Chris Brennan in USA Today. “That’s not just me talking.” In recent weeks,

GOP House Foreign Affairs Committee chair

Rep. Michael McCaul has warned that much of his party’s base has been “infected” by Kremlin propaganda, while Rep. Michael Turner has said fellow Republicans are repeating anti-Ukrainian talking points “on the House floor.” The two “didn’t name names. They didn’t have to.” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who’s threatened to boot House Speaker Mike Johnson if he advances an aid bill for Ukraine, has spouted lies about the Ukrainian government “executing priests” and “attacking Christians.” Putin’s useful idiots are also in the Senate, said Noah Rothman in National Review. In a

New York Times op-ed last week, Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance implied that Ukrainian soldiers want “nothing more than to surrender” to the Russian invaders, and that the U.S. doesn’t have the “bandwidth” to arm Kyiv. None of that is true.

“Have Russian operatives paid any Republican officials?” asked Alex Finley in The New Republic. Authorities in Europe recently “uncovered a vast corruption network” in which politicians in Germany, France, Belgium, and elsewhere got cash to spread Kremlin propaganda. While there’s no evidence of American politicians receiving payouts from Moscow, Greene last year retweeted a bogus claim from a Russia-based propaganda outlet that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky had bought luxury yachts with American aid money. Others, such as Vance and Arizona Rep. Eli Crane, echo Moscow’s line that U.S. aid is prolonging the war and keeping Ukraine from the negotiating table. In reality, Putin doesn’t want peace, said Nicholas Grossman in The Daily Beast.

He “wants to dominate Ukraine.” Putin might honor a cease-fire for a few months—but then he’d resume his decade-long quest to swallow the country whole.

The Russian tyrant “seems to have pulled off the most successful foreign-influence operation in American history,” said Mona Charen in The Bulwark. Putin’s disinformation campaign helped Trump get elected in 2016, and Trump in turn remade the GOP into the “pro-authoritarian party.” Now many Republicans “indulge fictions that even many Russians can see through”: that Ukraine is run by Nazis, that Russia is a foe of “wokeness,” and that NATO is a threat to global security. “Putin must be pinching himself.”