“Most Americans have no idea why Putin invaded Ukraine or what his goals are now,” the pundit-poodle Tucker Carlson observed before his Feb. 6 interview of Russian President Vladimir Putin. “They’ve never heard his voice. That’s wrong.”
What total claptrap.
We’ve never been under any illusions about why Putin invaded Ukraine, his being a naked grab for power and control at the expense of a sovereign nation. Putin’s goals, any fool can see, are the subjugation of a proud and independent people with (for the record) a long history here in Chicago. This particular editorial board would be delighted never to hear Putin’s voice again. And, actually, Mr. Carlson, that’s right.
The emergence of what Liz Cheney this weekend called the “pro-Putin wing” of the GOP is about as bizarre a turn in the political discourse as the serious likelihood of Donald Trump being nominated by the Republicans this summer for a second term.
The world currently has to deal with a dictatorial Kremlin operative who does his dirty work with a wink and a nod and a bushel of Tucker-friendly bloviation. History suggests there is little reason to doubt that Putin was somehow involved with the death of the opposition standard bearer Alexei Navalny, who reportedly died Friday in the remote Arctic prison he was forced to call home. To call the death of this charismatic man a devastating blow to the pro-democracy movement in Russia is to understate.
On Monday, Alexei Navalny’s widow, Yulia Navalnaya, alleged to E.U. officials and the media that the reason she had been told she would not be able to see her husband’s body for several days was because the Kremlin is waiting for traces of the Novichok nerve agent to disappear from Navalny’s body. Navalnaya has no doubt who ordered the death of her husband.
And what did Trump finally say Monday on his Truth Social account after a weekend of appalling silence? “The sudden death of Alexei Navalny has made me more and more aware of what is happening in our Country. It is a slow, steady progression, with CROOKED, Radical Left Politicians, Prosecutors, and Judges leading us down a path to destruction. Open Borders, Rigged Elections, and Grossly Unfair Courtroom Decisions are DESTROYING AMERICA. WE ARE A NATION IN DECLINE, A FAILING NATION! MAGA2024.”
The narcissism boggles our minds as much as the gibberish. But we remain most amazed by how such a statement does not result in Trump’s immediate repudiation by any and all decent Americans of all political stripes and persuade Republicans to stop the Trump-influenced stalling of military aid to Ukraine. The stance is especially galling after Trump seemingly invited Russia to invade those NATO members who Trump deemed had failed to pay their fair share of the alliance’s military spending. At least Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley called Trump “weak at the knees” when it came to condemning, or rather not condemning, the death of Navalny.
She was right, if overly benign.
Contrast Trump’s dangerous nonsense with what Alicia Kearns, the Conservative Party chair of Britain’s Foreign Affairs Select Committee had to say Monday in the House of Commons: “Alexei Navalny was murdered and it is important that we in this House call it out for what it was, because that is what he deserves.” The Foreign Office minister Leo Docherty replied: “She is right to use the word murder,” saying that the British government “sought to hold the state and the Russian leadership to account.”
That would be holding Putin to account, not giving him a microphone.
Kearns went even further on X. “The US threatened significant repercussions if Navalny was murdered,” she wrote Monday. “(Joe) Biden must follow through or more lives will be stolen.”
Kearns was referencing the Geneva meeting between Biden and Putin in 2021, wherein the U.S. president warned there would be “devastating consequences” should Navalny die in Russian custody. As just happened.
The question now, of course, is what “devastating consequences” means in practical terms. Kearns suggested a G20 agreement on the seizing of Russian Central Bank Assets and a Special Tribunal on the Crime of Aggression. A good start.
Biden’s initial response was to note that there have been consequences since that meeting in terms of sanctions, military losses and U.S. support for Ukraine, which is true. Then again, the waging of a war is inarguably a separate matter from the apparent assassination of the leading domestic opposition figure. And, self-evidently, those war-related consequences didn’t keep Navalny alive. That is the tricky question the world now faces vis-a-vis Putin. If a U.S. president promises “devastating consequences” if something occurs and then does nothing when that something occurs, logic suggests that any future such threat will have a limited impact. That’s one of the many problems of the moment at the White House.
But our fears are extending to the November election.
“An unstable narcissist such as Trump cannot be considered a serious candidate for president,” the former Republican senator and Clinton-era defense secretary, William Cohen, told the British newspaper The Telegraph on Monday.
Precisely.
Biden has to step up, and Republican voters should deny Trump the nomination while they still can. And as for Carlson, the goofy, sideshow comedian in all of this?
We’d like to see him look Navalnaya in the eye and tell her how important it is that the world hears more about the Putin point of view.
,
