Biden Campaign Gonna Use Senate's Dumbest Republican Ron Johnson As Chew Toy Now

Gotta fight Russian propaganda where it is, after all.

We like this kind of aggressive behavior from the Biden campaign!

Tuesday, we had two related stories. First off, the Democratic members of the congressional Gang of Eight are requesting an all-Congress defensive briefing from FBI Director Christopher Wray on what they say is an apparent Russian influence campaign targeting Congress. Reportedly, it at least in part involves World's Dumbest GOP Senator Ron Johnson's BS investigation into Joe Biden and Hunter Biden and their activities in Ukraine, an "investigation" that is just chock-full of Kremlin propaganda.

We also had a story about a pretty remarkable statement Joe Biden released on how he plans to deal with Russian interference in his presidency, effectively putting the Kremlin on notice. Spoiler: Biden will respond to it as an actual American president, as opposed to whatever thing we've been dealing with the past three and a half years.

Now, the Biden campaign has tied the two stories together and sent out a really mean and direct memo specifically calling out Johnson's work to spread Vladimir Putin's propaganda all over the 2020 American presidential election. Get familiar with this stuff, because at this point, 104 days from the election, it's the most obvious evidence we have yet that Russia is doing its thing for Trump again.

Senator Ron Johnson, who during the coronavirus pandemic has made a number of appalling statements about the value he places on American lives [ YES   HE HAS — Ed. ], is diverting the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee away from the rapidly worsening outbreak in order to waste taxpayer dollars on a farcical, long-debunked, hardcore rightwing conspiracy theory.

And he is the least credible person in the entire United States government to lead such a desperate taxpayer-funded smear campaign, because until less than a year ago he himself formally supported the bipartisan, international anti-corruption victory for which he's now investigating Joe Biden for delivering in Ukraine.Whether he will call himself as a witness remains unclear.

Ooh, snarky! Indeed, Ron Johnson very much supported reforming the corrupt prosecutor's office in Ukraine, because pretty much the entire Western world did. And that's the prosecutor Biden told the Ukrainian government to fire, Viktor Shokin, which was very much official American foreign policy at the time.

Does Ron Johnson remember that? Well, he is very stupid, so we don't know. But remember Republicans are also evil, so let's just assume he remembers.

The Biden campaign memo goes through each assertion in those first two paragraphs. How so far 140,000 Americans have died because of Donald Trump's malevolently botched handling of the coronavirus pandemic, and how Johnson — the chair of the Homeland Security Committee , which might could make itself useful during a pandemic — is watching with Trump as the bodies pile up, so that he can investigate bullshit that happens to be full of Russian propaganda.

Then it lists ALLLLLL THE TIMES Ron Johnson openly and loudly supported the firing of Viktor Shokin, which Johnson and Republicans now say was Joe Biden doing NEFARIOUS DEEDS to protect his son Hunter. Johnson admitted this in October of 2019, as the impeachment of Donald Trump was really getting going. As the memo explains, "Senator Johnson executed one of the most ham-handed flip flops in recent history" when he suddenly changed his mind on all this. (That's their way of calling him the Senate's Dumbest Republican, we think.)

This makes it impossible to believe that Senator Johnson is sincere. Because if he were, he would have to believe that he himself was in on this supposedly sordid worldwide scheme executed by Joe Biden. Maybe 2020 Ron Johnson should call 2016-2019 Ron Johnson as a witness?

Maybe?

The Biden memo quotes other Senate Republicans like Richard Burr and Lindsey Graham and Marco Rubio pissing on the idea that information coming from secret special Ukrainian sources — you know, like the kinds Ron Johnson is trying to subpoena — would be credible, as opposed to being literal unfiltered Russian propaganda. "Any documents coming out of the Ukraine against any American, Republican or Democrat, need to be looked at by the intelligence services," said Graham in February, "because Russia is playing all of us like a fiddle." (He was specifically talking about Rudy Giuliani's senile Ukraine adventure, which is pretty much the same as Johnson's, with a very similar cast of characters. )

The memo strongly suggests Johnson, Trump, and Mike Pompeo's State Department are participating in this "foreign influence operation" together, citing pro-Russian Ukrainians who are releasing doctored videos of Joe Biden doing things in Ukraine. The Ukrainian leading that effort? Andriy Derkach, a former KGB guy who used to be part of the same pro-Russia Ukrainian political party Paul Manafort worked for.

Oh yeah, and then the memo concludes with a whole section with receipts on how every single fucking bit of this Ukraine shit — for which Donald Trump was literally impeached! — has been debunked. The Joe Biden part, the part about how Ukraine was the REAL COLLUSIONS!111!!@!! and all the rest.

 Read it all. 

The next 104 days are going to be vile, and luckily we still think this particular non-scandal is so abstract to the average American voter that it won't do much. It just doesn't boil easily down to "BUT HER EMAILS," you know?

But it's good that the Biden campaign is on it, and is being mean about it. And we are always here to watch people being mean to stupid dumb idiot Senator Ron Johnson, because he deserves it.

If the Lincoln Project would like to augment this message with an ad, we wouldn't be mad.

Follow Evan Hurst on Twitter RIGHT HERE, DO IT RIGHT HERE! 

Wonkette is fully funded by readers like YOU. If you love Wonkette, WE NEED YOUR LOVE GIFTS TO KEEP US GOING.

 Do your Amazon shopping through this link, because reasons .