From Republican Red to Russian Red

(By American Zen's Mike Flannigan, on loan from Ari)

Perhaps that's why Republicans are incapable of seeing the not so subtle difference in its latter-day incarnation. What used to be proud conservative red is now a deep shade of Soviet-Russian crimson. And one would have to be as blind as the proverbial bat to not see that your Mom and Dad's Republican Party has been completely subsumed and absorbed by the Russian government.

     There's no sense in belaboring whether or not Russia interfered in our election. The heads of all 17 of our intelligence agencies plus James Clapper, our former DNI, unanimously agree that Russia did meddle in the 2016 election. That intelligence assessment was backed by the 22 month-long Mueller report that unequivocally proved the Russians offered their "help" and the Trump campaign chose not to stand in their way. In July 2016, Trump openly invited the Russians to hack Hillary's emails on national TV. The next day they were released on Wikipedia.

     So there's no doubt in the mind of any rational adult that Putin's vote was the one that counted far more than the 127,000,000 that were cast by Americans on Super Tuesday 2016. If Trump hadn't gotten that one vote from the Kremlin, there would have been no hacked emails, no propaganda campaign that made Zuckerberg 100,000 roubles richer, no Russian bots on Twitter releasing screengrabs of those hacked emails. Instead, we'd be chasing news stories of Bill Clinton dicking bimbos in the Executive Mansion while Hillary was abroad on state business.

     But Donald Trump was almost like the Trojan Horse that brought the Russians into the White House and, literally, as on May 10, 2017 (the day after he fired Comey to "relieve the pressure of the Russia investigation.") into the Oval Office. One can easily imagine Trump letting Sergey Lavrov, the hard-nosed Russian Foreign Minister, sit in his easy chair behind the Resolute desk. And we love or hate. depending on your take, to say that Trump's softer than a Hefty bag of baby shit but the fact remains that everything Trump does on both the domestic and foreign fronts weakens America and/or strengthens Putin in one way or the other and brings the little tyrant ever closer to his goal of world domination.

      We've gotten a painful and unavoidably vivid glimpse into how much Trump has sold out the United States and its interests to Putin's Russia in the last month or so. First the news broke late last month that Trump had held up $391,000,000 in military aid to Ukraine so they could continue fighting Russian separatist forces. Putin would love nothing more than take over Europe's largest nation just as he had Crimea in 2014. The reason? Well, we all now know it was contingent on the Ukrainians digging up non-existent dirt on Joe Biden and his son Hunter, who'd sat on the board of a Ukrainian gas company named Burisma. Was Hunter's presence on the board and his $50,000 a month salary dependent on his father being at the time vice president, was it nepotism? Well, even by today's casually corrupt standards, yes. Hunter Biden even admitted it in a rare interview this week. But was it illegal? No.

       And "No collusion, no obstruction" has been replaced with "No quid pro quo" but that's exactly what it was. Trump admitted it was. His acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney admitted as much in a 45 minute-long diatribe before the WH press pool yesterday (before he tried to walk it back and, in true right wing fashion, blame the media for quoting his own words). As an amusing aside, the Trump campaign is so arrogant about their guy and Putin's guy breaking election laws that they'd actually printed up "Get Over It" tee shirts. Yes, an admission of corruption on the part of the Acting White.House Chief of Staff is now being used as part of a fundraising drive.)

It's Manly to Pull Out

The other news story that broke on the heels of the Ukraine scandal that's provided the 4th and 5th Estates with bombshell headlines on a literal daily basis was 12 days ago when Donald Trump decided, after speaking with another belligerent little tyrant, this one Erdogan of Turkey, that he was pulling our troops out of northeastern Syria that alone had served as the fabled "tripwire" of 50 Special Forces operators who kept the Turkish and Turkish-aligned forces at bay. The Kurds, our allies, had almost singlehandedly captured 10,000 ISIS terrorists, thereby keeping the rest of the world (including us) safe from them and we kept the Kurds safe.

     Then, two days after that other notorious phone call between Trump and another world leader, the atrocities and war crimes began. It started when a rabid pack of animals stopped a car ridden by Kurdish politician Hevrin Khalaf of the Future Party. They then executed her, filmed their own war crime, then hideously mutilated her corpse until there was virtually nothing left of it.

     This, not coincidentally, strengthened Putin's and Russia's hand in that part of the world because our former allies, the Kurds, were forced to thrown in their lot with them and the Syrian forces backed by Putin who don't give a shit about the Kurds any more than Trump does. 

     Therefore, Trump has empowered in one fell swoop the Russians, the Syrians, the Iranians and even the ISIS terrorists  who were being secured by Kurdish forces until the Turkish shelling began even before our own forces could leave the area. That means, Trump voters, your so-called Commander in Chief, with one feckless act of cowardice, strengthened the hand of many of our, until very recently, sworn enemies. Then today he tried to make an hours-long "cease fire" engineered by Pence and Pompeo sound like a victory.

      He even coined a quasi-unique phrase for the tender ministrations of the Turks and their subhuman allies toward the Kurds: "Rough love." And, in an unmistakable nod to any other geniocidal dictator, Trump even added that northern Syria needed to be "cleaned out." However, it's more accurate to call this Pontius Pilate move by Trump what Chris Wallace called it today: "A surrender."

     In typical Trump fashion, he even insulted our onetime allies by saying before the Italian president the Kurds were "no angels" and that they and the Turks have "a lot of sand to play with." As if this is a fucking game and Turkey and the Kurds were two kids having a disagreement in the sand traps in which Trump finds himself every weekend. In that same press conference, as the Italian note taker continued looking at Trump with undisguised horror and loathing, he called his reckless and feckless move, "strategically brilliant."

The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming!

But to me, the depth of Trump's treachery, as if it wasn't already made manifest, was fully brought home when I saw this news item on the intertubez this morning: The Russians had taken over our base in Manbij in northeastern Syria then had filmed themselves taking it over in a video entitled, "Manbij is ours!"

     Let me put that in even simpler and starker terms for any Trumpanzees who are confused by words that consist of more than two or three syllables- Vladimir Putin's army has just grabbed one of our bases from which our fighting men and women, as well as the fighting men and women of the Kurdish forces, literally kept the world safe from terrorism. The gloating video tells a shocking story- Our troops were told to bug out so quickly, some left half-eaten meals behind, an Anasazi for the 21st century. The Russians are now planting their flag on a base on which, until mere days ago, a US military color guard had hoisted the American flag. What used to be American soil is now Russian soil. Because of Trump. One is half amazed Trump didn't fly to Syria to give them the personal ten cent tour.

        Thanks again, Trump voters.

        But the Russian treachery, as we should all know, doesn't extend merely to what used to be the presidency of the United States but is now the vice presidency of Russia but also to recent down ballot races and state offices. And if you need an example of one of those offices look no further than the discouraged penis of America or the great State of Florida.

       The infestation of Russia in our politics was brought into an even more merciless light when Rudy Giuliani began making the headlines again. This was made possible by not only his increasingly bizarre TV appearances but also on which of his old associates/clients were getting arrested at airports. Two of those clients, Igor Fruman and Lev Parnas, two Soviet-born mobsters, actually own businesses named Mafia Rave and Fraud Guarantee in Florida. When they were arrested on suspicion of committing campaign finance fraud (the same thing that got Trump's next-to-last fixer, Michael Cohen, sent to prison), they were captured at JFK International in Trump's home city with one way tickets out of the country. When Ron DeSantis heard the news, he immediately began snapping his fingers and saying, "Fruman and Parnas? Don't they do a dancing bear routine out of Vegas?"

     Then the Tampa Bay Times jogged the governor's memory a bit by providing pictures and a gif of DeSantis giving a back-rubbing, crotch-grinding hug to none other than Fruman and Parnas during his victory celebration after "winning" his election. Note Mrs. DeSantis is nowhere near him. meaning Mayor Rudy's mobster buddies are literally closer to the Governor-elect than his own wife. They also kicked in a cool $50,000 to his campaign. The Russians are coming, indeed! And if they're not coming, they're certainly breathing heavily!

     The evidence that Russia fiddle-fucked with Florida's election in 2016 was so unavoidable that even DeSantis himself had to admit it last May. Of course, the Russians had nothing to do with him "winning" his own election with their totally gregarious and non self-interested help. Oh, heavens to Betsy, no. That's why DeSantis had to resort to the retroactive spiritual deodorant of giving to charity the $50,000 given to him by the aforementioned and long since groped Soviet-born mobsters now cooling their heels in a federal lockup.

       And if you, any random Trump fan reading this, is comfortable with any of these revolting developments and continue thinking Donald Trump is the most stable genius and strategically brilliant tactician and strategist this nation ever produced, then you deserve the country he transforms and makes you live in. Go run it up the flagpole and see who salutes it. Only don't be surprised if, as with Manbij, what you ignorantly run up is the flag of the Russian Federation.