Senate Just Passed Ukraine Aid Over Hysterical Screams From Elon Musk And All Putin's MAGA Boys
Next up, figuring out how to get this around that extremist creep who's running the House.
They finally did it. Despite the fact that MAGA Republicans really really really support Vladimir Putin’s genocidal fantasies and really really really want him to win, the Senate managed to push through its Ukraine aid package last night. It was a 70-29 vote, it was $95 billion, and it also included aid for Israel and Taiwan. (Ukraine is the biggest chunk, at $60.1 billion.)
And ohhhhhh how those MAGA Republicans have been screamin’, before, during and afterward.
Trump screamed this weekend that foreign aid should only be done as loans, at the same time as he’s prematurely ejaculating about the idea of abandoning NATO allies to Russia’s murderous intentions. As The Bulwark notes, that was enough to get Lindsey Graham to roll over and play dead for Trump, even as he has been a defender of Ukraine in the past.
During the hearing, Rand Paul tried to turn it into a talking filibuster, babbling about whatever Rand Paul babbles about. Lindsey Graham continued showing his ass, shouting at a printed out tweet from the Polish prime minister, which said, “Dear Republican Senators of America. Ronald Reagan, who helped millions of us to win back our freedom and independence, must be turning in his grave today. Shame on you.” Lindsey Graham did not like that.
“To the Prime Minister of Poland: I could care less what you think. To the Prime Minister of Poland: If Ronald Reagan were alive today, we wouldn’t have this broken border. To the Prime Minister of Poland: I want to help Ukraine. I want to help make a stronger NATO. But my country is on fire. We’ve had seven million people come across a broken border. How would you feel if seven million people came in illegally into Poland? Would you have this attitude? We’ve got to put Ukraine ahead of Poland? I am not going to put Ukraine, Israel, or anybody else ahead of America.”
So dramatic! Also so not true!
Out there in the hinterlands, Putin’s biggest little fan boy Elon Musk held a panicked “X Spaces” Twitter circle jerk last night with Republican Senators Ron Johnson, JD Vance, and Mike Lee, plus yappy hanger-on Vivek Ramaswamy, where they all screamed their opposition to saving Ukraine from being murdered and raped by Putin.
Elon said there’s “no way in hell” Ukraine can win, because that’s a thing the Russia apologists really love saying. Here’s a bunch more quotes, courtesy of the Daily Beast:
Sen. Johnson opined that the “only way” that the war in Ukraine could end “is in a settlement.” He added that sending another $60 billion in aid would senselessly add “fuel to the flames of a bloody stalemate.” “As evil a war criminal as Putin is, he’s not going to lose this war, and our colleagues here just aren’t willing to accept that reality and they’re living in a fantasy world thinking Ukraine can win this thing—they can’t.”
“That’s exactly right,” Musk agreed.
They can’t, they just can’t! Wethinks these motherfuckers doth protest too much.
(“Putin will not lose,” Johnson also said on a different right-wing propaganda outlet yesterday, while bitching about the fact that we still have sanctions on Russia. And these people wonder why everybody thinks they’re traitors.)
[Musk] said that losing lives in war “must be for a purpose” and “not just a mile here, a mile there” like those lost on a daily basis in Ukraine. “For what purpose?” he asked. “As you say, there is no way in hell that Putin is going to lose.” He also claimed that if the Russian leader backed off from the war then “he would be assassinated,” likely leading to an even more “hardcore” replacement.
Who is filling Elon’s impressionable head with all these silly notions? And when Elon’s head is getting filled, does it require a Russian-to-English translator?
At the end of the conversation, Musk said: “Hopefully the public, American public, is able to listen to this and indeed contact their elected representatives.”
“The really important thing to bear in mind here is that this spending does not help Ukraine,” Musk said. “Prolonging the war does not help Ukraine. This is very important to appreciate.”
Wow, he just never turns that Russian propaganda spigot off, does he?
Never mind that actual Ukrainians want to keep fighting to save their country, which Vladimir Putin invaded based on his sick fantasies about the divine right of Russia to own any lands it’s ever controlled at any point during the last 1,200 years.
Elon Musk says they’re dying for no reason, and he’s panicking over Congress actually getting it together to fund Ukraine.
Tucker Carlson, who can still probably smell Putin on the clothes in his suitcase, is panicking over Congress getting it together to fund Ukraine.
They are all just very panicked.
Extremist creepshow House Speaker Mike Johnson says not to worry, because he’s not bringing this bill to the floor, because why? Because BORDER. (Wink, wink.) He says “the House will have to continue to work its own will on these important matters.” Because BORDER. (Nudge, nudge.)
Democratic Senator Chris Murphy responded:
That quote, from the very dignified senator from Connecticut, is:
the speaker said he wouldn’t pass ukraine funding without a border deal and we got a deal and then he killed the deal because he said we didn’t need a deal and now he says he won’t pass our ukraine funding bill bc it doesn’t include a border deal honestly wtf
Yes, honestly wtf, it is amazing learning for the first time what these MAGA Republicans are like.
Josh Rogin has an excellent column in the Washington Post urging decent folks in the House to find ways to get around this garbage. Key grafs:
“Johnson’s team are not even going to try to pass the bill the Senate sends over. They are scared of MTG,” one GOP congressional source told me, referring to Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) who has worked for years to kill Ukraine aid and who has referred to Ukrainian forces as a “Nazi” army. “In fact, they don’t really have the political incentive to do anything quickly.”
In the face of this, Ukraine supporters have begun discussing ways to force the Senate bill to the House floor. One method under discussion is something called a discharge petition, which could initiate a floor vote without the speaker’s cooperation. These types of legislative maneuvers are tricky and rare, but they might be the only way to get the aid package to the president’s desk.
Do it, whatever it takes.
As Republican Senator Thom Tillis said yesterday to Punchbowl, “Our base cannot possibly know what’s at stake at the level that any well-briefed U.S. senator should know about what’s at stake if Putin wins.” He added, “Some people around here — if they really are being driven just by the perceptions of their base, they should grow a spine and explain if they think it’s a tough vote.” (Also, regarding the PUTIN MUST WIN! crowd, Tillis said, “This is not a stalemate. This guy [Putin] is on life support… He will not survive if NATO gets stronger.”)
Every member of Congress knows what’s at stake here. They’ve chosen their sides. Some of them have sided with America’s enemies.
Sidenote: If you want to get mad about this all over again, please watch the Academy Award-nominated 20 Days In Mariupol. Holy shit, that’s our review, holy shit. You’ve probably seen some of the footage before, as it’s the film by those AP reporters who stayed in Mariupol as Russia was invading, and they sent their footage out to the media as they were able in real time.
[Daily Beast / Washington Post]
YESTERDAY!
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Jeff Tiedrich wrote a very good piece about how Democrats have been lying down for the past 30 years trying to appear unbiased, while Republicans don't give a rat's ass about appearing unbiased, or even fair. This is how we end up with a bunch of traitors blocking aid to our allies:
"Robert Hur’s biased and unprofessional hit job on Joe Biden didn’t happen in a vacuum. this high-minded mania that Democrats have for allowing themselves to get played by right-wing Special Counsels goes back at least 30 years.
in 1994, the wingnut howler-monkey infrastructure was shrieking for an investigation into a land deal in which Bill and Hillary Clinton lost money. then-Attorney General Janet Reno, wanting to appear all fair-minded and non-partisan and shit, appointed a Republican Special Counsel, Robert Fiske, to head what became known as the Whitewater Investigation.
Fiske concluded that the Clintons had done nothing criminal, but the panel of three ultra-conservative judges who oversaw the Counsel were all fuck no, you useless dick, “innocent” not the answer we’re looking for and — because this is how the Special Counsel thing worked back then, thanks to a law signed by Bill Clinton, who also didn’t want to appear partisan — they fired Fiske and replaced him with pantysniffing prig Kenneth Starr.
Starr, of course, quite famously wasted tens of millions of taxpayer dollars and turned the failed-land-deal investigation into a prosecution and impeachment over a blow job.
(fun true fact: did you know that the Starr Report — which was pretty much low-grade pornographic filth from cover to cover — was partially authored by none other than Brett Kavanaugh, the future Supreme Court Justice who was so blackout drunk all the way through prep school and college that he literally has no idea how many women he assaulted? weird how the same shitweasels keep popping up every time there’s fuckery afoot.)
all of this happened because Janet Reno didn’t want to appear “partisan.”"
"Never mind that actual Ukrainians want to keep fighting to save their country, which Vladimir Putin invaded based on his sick fantasies about the divine right of Russia to own any lands it’s ever controlled at any point during the last 1,200 years."
For at least 2 or 3 hundred years the Mongol Empire ruled most of what is now Russia.
Give it back to the Mongols...