Republicans find themselves caught between how much they hate Biden and love being the righteous good guys, how much they love the idea of the American military rolling in to save the day, and how much they've been compromised by Putin over the years, and the lesson of the story is staggering around in the middle of the road only gets you hit by the semi.
While Russia’s reinvasion of Ukraine this week stress-tests the Biden administration, it’s also forcing Republicans to confront their own divisions.
The GOP is all over the map politically, as Russian President Vladimir Putin tries to redraw his own boundaries. Former President Donald Trump privately has signaled a split with more isolationist voices from the MAGA wing of the party who have excused Russia’s aggression, who themselves are at odds with more establishment Republicans over how to confront Russian aggression, if at all.
To an extent, these camps reflect a new evolution of long-standing GOP foreign policy factionalism. But as Putin moves troops into Ukraine, Republicans’ divergent approaches to the crisis are complicating their pushback on President Joe Biden’s response to the crisis.
Trump told an adviser recently that he doesn’t think Putin should be able to take Ukraine — even just from a real estate standpoint — and that he sees the Russian leader’s current actions as an attempt to steamroll Biden, according to a person familiar with the conversation.
Trump said Putin has sized up Biden and decided that he isn’t strong enough to stop Russia from rolling into Kyiv, this person recalled, adding that the former president has also blamed Biden for poking the bear by tying his legacy too closely to expanding NATO and to Russia’s Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline. Publicly and privately, he has described the current standoff as a problem for which he is the lone solution.
“This never would have happened with us had I been in office — not even thinkable,” Trump said in a Tuesday radio interview, describing Putin’s recognition of Ukrainian separatist regions as “savvy.”
Putin “sees this opportunity. I knew that he always wanted Ukraine. I used to talk to him about it. I said, ‘You can’t do it, you’re not going to do it,’” Trump added. “But I could see that he wanted it. … They say, ‘Oh, Trump was nice to Russia.’ I wasn’t nice to Russia.”
Even as Trump portrays himself as better-equipped to counter Putin, the majority of congressional Republicans are backing Biden’s vow to impose crushing sanctions on Russia after its troops entered eastern Ukraine on Tuesday. Some have even praised Biden’s moves, like the deployment of additional U.S. troops to Eastern Europe to boost NATO’s defenses.
But a vocal GOP minority on and off Capitol Hill — represented by Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), Fox News host Tucker Carlson and Ohio Senate candidate J.D. Vance, among others — has taken a third path, actively arguing against any U.S. involvement in the region while still dinging Biden. They argue that expanding the U.S. commitment to NATO is a mistake, and that the president should instead focus on countering China and securing America’s southern border.
That discordant chorus is making it harder for Republicans to craft a unified message on Russia the way it did during last year’s chaotic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan or during Putin’s invasion of Crimea when Barack Obama was president in 2014.
Now this confusion won't last much longer. Now that Daddy Trump has weighed in, Republicans are going to follow his lead and attack Biden mercilessly while praising Putin, or they'll meet the same fate as Liz Cheney and they know it.
No, by this Sunday and the talking head shows, you'll see a dozen Very Serious Republicans all telling us that Putin invading Ukraine is not our problem, and that the real issue is Them Illegals™.
President Joe Biden's administration has informed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of intelligence assessing that Russia is preparing to conduct a full-scale invasion of the neighboring country within the next 48 hours, U.S. intelligence officials have revealed to Newsweek.
"The President of Ukraine has been warned Russia will highly likely begin an invasion within 48 hours based on U.S. intelligence," a U.S. official with direct knowledge told Newsweek.
"Additionally," the U.S. official added, "reporting from aircraft observers indicates Russia violated Ukrainian airspace earlier today, flying possible reconnaissance aircraft for a short period over Ukraine."
A source close to Zelenskyy's government also confirmed to Newsweek that such a warning was received, but noted that this was the third time in a month Kyiv was told to prepare for imminent large-scale military action order by Russian President Vladimir Putin.
We'll see.
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