Tommy Tuberville Claims Putin Does Not Want Ukraine, He Just Sent His Army For Takeout Borscht

Then what are all those Russian tanks and soldiers and guns doing there?

Exclusive: A photo of Tommy Tuberville as a child, MUST CREDIT WONKETTE.

Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama continues to amaze. Nor for anything senatorial, mind you. Not because he’s a policy nerd like Elizabeth Warren or a canny political strategist like Mitch McConnell or a passionate ideologue like Bernie Sanders.

No, Tuberville continues to amaze because he has no higher brain functions. He is basically just a walking autonomic nervous system, a series of physiological processes (heartbeat, breathing) that keep him technically, biologically alive. He is incapable of deep or even shallow thought, which he proves on the rare occasions he tries to use the pile of rusty bike chains that is his brain to form an idea, or to speak coherently about any imaginable topic — the alphabet, how to use soap, his favorite color. If you saw him engaged in a battle of wits with a doorknob, you would bet your life savings on the doorknob. He is literally a carrot.

Remember when Strom Thurmond was so old and decrepit that his aides had to wheel him onto the Senate floor and tell him which button to push so he voted the way he would have voted before his brain turned into melted butter? Strom Thurmond was an intellectual giant at that point compared to Tommy Tuberville.

This week Tuberville tried to talk about Russia’s war in Ukraine on Steve Bannon’s War Room, in what might well be his final appearance for a while, since the podcast is about to take a four-month hiatus. Bannon asked him about whether Russia would agree to a peace deal if it got to keep the parts of Ukraine it already annexed. Asking Tuberville this question is like asking a folding chair to solve the Hodge conjecture. Nevertheless:

Tuberville tried to make the case that there is a lull in armed conflict in Ukraine because Putin has no interest in fighting there. […]

“He doesn’t want Ukraine. He doesn’t want Europe. Hell, he’s got enough land of his own,” Tuberville insisted.

Now, Russia’s invasion was almost two and a half years ago. The causes for it are long established. There have been intensive debates about the level of support the United States should offer Ukraine, and why, in committee rooms and on the floor of the Senate. Presumably there have been briefings and white papers and documents from policy experts presented to senators describing Vladimir Putin’s belief that Ukraine is a phony nation and its entire culture is made up, but really the country has been part of Russia for centuries, and now, sadly, it has been overrun by Nazis and therefore must be subdued by force and ushered back into peaceful harmony with the Russian motherland.

America’s Dumbest Senator Calls The Cops Because Former CIA Chief Made Fun Of Him

Can Someone Please Explain To Tommy Tuberville That Killing A Newborn Baby Is Homicide?

In short, there is zero reason for a sitting senator to say what Tuberville said. Putin doesn’t want Ukraine? Does a fish not want water? Of course he wants Ukraine. All you have to do to know this is read anything he has said since early 2022.

Just to cap that off, Steve Benen at MaddowBlog points out that Tuberville said the exact opposite two years ago:

Two years ago, the Alabaman insisted that Putin launched an invasion of Ukraine in order to acquire “more farmland” because “he can’t feed his people.” 

As far as we know, even Putin never offered that up as a justification. Russia has its problems, but famine is not to our knowledge one of them.

Back to the War Room, where Tubby was nowhere near done. Instead, he pulled out the old shibboleth that it was the West that forced Putin into the invasion:

“He just wants to make sure that he does not have United States weapons in Ukraine pointing at Moscow.”

Christ, has he been talking to Max Blumenthal? The US was not flooding Ukraine with weapons and making Putin nervous. And if the US had had troops and equipment stationed in Ukraine, Putin never would have invaded in the first place. Crazy, not stupid.

Maybe we’re being unfair to Tubs. We can’t expect a senator who sits on the — let’s see here, committee assignments, committee assignments — the friggin’ Senate Armed Services Committee to have a working knowledge of foreign conflicts.

The Democrats should rotate someone to pretend to get Tuberville’s nose every time he’s on the Senate floor. We bet he’d keep falling for it.

[Daily Beast / MaddowBlog]

Wonkette is made possible by giant fucking idiots like Tommy Tuberville and generous donations from our readers.