Trump’s Putin fixation infects GOP: Russian propaganda ‘has invaded ranks of Republican Party’

But we begin tonight with the remarkable split screen this week from the two major parties presidential candidates. On Tuesday, while Donald Trump was in a Manhattan courtroom for the second day of his criminal trial, President Biden was in his childhood hometown of Scranton, PA, campaigning like a normal candidate, laying out his tax plan That includes ending Trump’s tax cut for billionaires and tax relief and economic boosts for regular Americans. During her stay in court, the presumptive Republican nominee spent his time looking agitated and getting admonished by the judge for intimidating A juror. Later in the day, he transitioned to campaigning, visiting a New York City bodega. Which, you know, seems totally normal for a campaign, right? Oh yeah. It was one where years ago, an employee killed a man during an altercation. The bodega visit was organized by the New York Young Republicans Club, which you might remember as the group that hosted A gala featuring white nationalists in 2022, and whose leader Gavin Wax, who was also at the bodega campaign stop, infamously told supporters at an event attended by Trump last last December. And I quote once President Trump is back in office, we won’t be playing nice anymore. It will be a time for retribution. All those responsible for destroying our once great country will be held to account after baseless years of investigations and government lies and media lies against this man. To which Trump said Gavin, that was an excellent speech. Today we had another remarkable split, a remarkable split screen. President Biden was in Pittsburgh talking about the economy under my predecessor, who’s busy right now, Pennsylvania lost 275,000 jobs. I mean, let’s let’s look at the facts on my watch. Unemployment hasn’t been this low for this long in 50 years. And where’s Trump? Well, he’s using his one day off from court this week to have dinner tonight with the right wing president of Poland, Andres Duda. Duda is a semi autocrat who, much like Trump’s favorite European autocrat, Hungary’s Viktor Orban, has clamped down on the press and judiciary and feuded with the European Union. He also once proposed naming a Polish military base sport Trump prompting much mockery in Poland. But unlike Orban, Duda is a staunch supporter of Ukraine in its war with Russia. Last month, after being hosted by Trump at Mar a Lago, Orban crowed about how Trump would end the war in Ukraine by refusing to give them a penny if he’s reelected. Donald Trump. Palling around with European strong men in what little free time he has these days is a good reminder of what he’s done to the Republican Party, making it pro autocrat and pro Putin. Even the issue at the heart of what Trump is on trial for now, touches on this. I’m sure you remember this, Russia. If you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing. Well, turns out Russia was listening because we eventually learned that that was the day that they started hacking the Democratic and the Republican National Committees. And a couple of months later, on October 7th, the Obama administration formally accused Russia of interfering in the 2016 election by hacking into the emails of both the DNC and the RNC. And on that very same day, the Access Hollywood tape at the heart of Trump’s hush money case was released, erasing news coverage of the Russian attack. Putting Republicans on the spot about how their nominee was a sex pest rather than how Russia was openly trying to re elect or trying to elect their pro Putin pro Russian nominee. Because around the same time he was calling on Russia for Hillary Clinton’s emails, his campaign was gutting language in the Republican Party platform calling for the US to provide lethal defensive weapons to the Ukrainian government, which at the time sparked outrage among Republican foreign policy Hawks. And the Washington Post reported that as the Obama White House enlist tried to enlist Congress to warn the public about the threat to election systems in the summer of 2016, Republicans resisted, arguing that to warn the public that the election was under attack would further Russia’s aim of sapping confidence in the system. Senate Majority Leader at the time, Mitch McConnell went further, officials said, voicing skepticism that the underlying intelligence truly supported the White House’s claims. In fact, additional reporting from the Post found that McConnell made clear to the administration that he would consider any effort by the White House to challenge the Russians publicly an act of partisan politics. McConnell did eventually sign on to a bipartisan letter about election security that literally did not mention the word Russia. But eight years after conveniently dismissing the threat of Russia to get a pro corporate tax cut Republican elected to president who also would deliver Mitch’s dream of a right wing Supreme Court majority, McConnell is back to playing party of Reagan and pushing hard for USA to Ukraine. Others in the Republican Party, however, now fully enthralled to Trump, are still trying to protect Putin. The Republican chair of the House Intelligence Committee, Mike Turner, said his Republican colleagues are even spreading Russian propaganda on the House floor when discussing the Russia Ukraine war, while two Republicans, Marjorie Taylor Greene and Thomas Massey of Georgia, are threatening to oust their latest speaker, Mike Johnson, if he poses a bill to provide supplemental aid to Ukraine. Joining me now is Congressman Jamie Raskin of Maryland who was a member of the House January 6th Select Committee. Congressman Raskin, it is truly stunning to watch this turn around in Republicans from being the party of Reagan who said, you know, who was very much standing up to the USSR to essentially stumping for Russia on the House floor. How do you read it? Well, Marjorie Taylor Green, for example, has been recycling direct Russian propaganda. She says that our tax dollars are going to support Ukrainian Nazis and that is a a Putin line, that he’s a de Nazifying Ukraine and that it’s a Nazi state. Of course it is a liberal democracy committed to equal rights for everybody and human rights, and it has the only Jewish president in the world outside of Israel. So calling it a Nazi state is such an affront and an insult to the Ukrainian people, and it’s just a lie. And yet we’re hearing a lot of that coming from various Republican members and different sources to the point where you’re getting now Republican chairman, finally, of committees like the Foreign Affairs Committee saying that Russian propaganda has invaded the ranks of the Republican Party. Let me play what? There are a lot of them, But this might be one of the most embarrassing and shameful moments in the Trump presidency. Let me play This was Trump in Helsinki in July 2018. All I can do is ask the question. My people came to me. Dan Coats came to me and some others. They said they think it’s Russia. I have President Putin. He just said it’s not Russia. I will say this, I don’t see any reason why it would be. I have great confidence in my intelligence people. But I will tell you that President Putin was extremely strong and powerful in his denial today, and that was on whether or not Russia was interfering in our election. And Congressman Raskin at the time, that produced gasps even among Republicans. How did we get to the point where Republicans went from fighting that to be a new tray and unacceptable comment, Even rush, even Republicans thinking that to essentially that being the bottom line, Putin is innocent, Ukraine is guilty, and essentially effectively. I guess what Mike Johnson’s caucus is saying is that the United States must back off and allow Putin to take over Ukraine. Well, Donald Trump has cemented his alliance with Vladimir Putin and Putin’s filthy imperialist invasion of Ukraine, an attack on Ukrainian democracy. It is splitting the Republican Party right now because some of the, I don’t know what to call them, the more conservative institutionalists who at least maintain some memory of an earlier Republican Party, are not willing to throw themselves completely into the Putin she autocrats camp. But of course then you’ve got the the Matt Gaetz and the Marjorie Taylor Greene and Chip Roy, the hardcore mega faction which will follow Donald Trump in that direction. We’ll see this week whether or not the Democrats are going to be able to convince Mike Johnson to hold out and to put Ukraine funding on the floor because this is the central battlefield between democracy and freedom on one side and tyranny and autocratic corruption on the other. So we just want a clean up or down vote. We know we’ve got a majority in the House that will support $61 billion for our besieged Ukrainian allies, but it is a desperate situation over there right now. And I, you know, I don’t know whether or not Trump’s obsession with Putin is psychological or emotional or economic or financial or political or ideological. It doesn’t really make any difference anymore. It’s very clear that he stands on the side of Vladimir Putin. And so the struggle between democracy and autocracy is not just between our country and other countries. It is happening within America right now, and it’s happening on the floor of the US Congress.