Republicans who spread Vladimir Putin's propaganda are despicable

Do you shake your head in disbelief when you watch Tucker Carlson on Fox News, or members of the Vladimir Putin wing of the Republican Party spewing hate and disinformation, and hear almost no condemnation from moderate Republicans?

When you learned that Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Paul Gosar attended a white supremacy conference in Orlando and the organizer, Nick Fuentes, prayed for the brave Russian soldiers fighting to “liberate Ukraine from the Great Satan and from the evil empire in the world, which is the United States,” did you want to heave?

Did you blanch when you heard that House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy refused to punish or remove Greene and Gosar from any legislative committees, yet threatened any Republican with reprisals should they agree to testify before the Jan. 6 insurrection investigation committee? Do you wonder why every Republican in the House and the majority of senators voted against a recent budget bill that included critical funding for military and humanitarian aid to Ukraine?

Did your stomach hurt you when you heard Republicans complain about the cost of funding vaccinations and other COVID-related treatments for uninsured Americans, yet they didn’t raise an eye brow when Donald Trump gifted the mega-wealthy the largest tax break in history? I guess blue-collar working-class families don’t count in today's Republican America.

Did you gasp when Tucker Carlson knowingly twisted facts, solely to embarrass the Biden administration, claiming the U.S. partnered with Ukraine to develop biochemical weapons, without any confirmed verification, putting innocent Ukrainian civilians at risk of being killed by Russian biochemical weapons? Were you surprised that Putin exploited Carlson’s rant by repeatedly televising his tirade on Russia’s state-run television, as propaganda to garner his citizens’ support for Ukrainian genocide?

Even Russia’s ambassador to the United Nations relied on Carlson’s careless misstatements to create a potential pretext to justify Russia’s use of biochemical weapons against the Ukrainians. Exaggeration? Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov subsequently praised Fox News for its coverage of the war in Ukraine. Still think Carlson is a patriot?

It is bad enough that the Fox family continues to perpetuate Donald Trump’s known lie about the “stolen election” without a scintilla of hard evidence of widespread corruption or fraud. But spreading disinformation from a madman for ratings or political points, putting millions of innocent lives at risk of harm, is despicable.

More from Stuart Floyd:

Fringe element commandeering Republican Party with fear, fraud and fascism

Republicans need to stop the hypocrisy, be part of solving country's problems

43 Republicans chose Trump over America

Some readers still believe Russia would not have invaded Ukraine if Trump won. Nonsense. Trump always defended Putin, all four years, even taking his side about election interference in 2016 over our own intelligence community reports. He had the audacity to ransom Ukraine’s security by withholding $391 million of previously approved military aid, unless President Volodymyr Zelenskyy cooperated to find dirt on Joe Biden’s son. Of course, that’s what autocrats do.

Trump never criticized Putin. He never stood up to him — unlike Biden, who shows strength by announcing to the world that Putin is a butcher that should be removed from office. Trump cowered before Putin. He even referred to him as a “genius” immediately after Putin invaded Ukraine.

Trump had numerous private, personal meetings with Putin, while in office, where he instructed his interpreter to shred his notes and never repeat anything said. Given Trump’s questionable veracity, do you not wonder why?

The Republican’s Putin wing never offers solutions; they only say “nyet.” And now, the Trumpers can’t decide if Biden is too weak or too strong with Putin. Wow.

They should take a lesson on true democracy and patriotism by emulating the Ukrainians, standing up against authoritarianism and start supporting Biden, NATO, the European Union and virtually all the free and democratic countries that Biden brilliantly assembled (despite Trump’s efforts to weaken or dismantle NATO, while managing to marginalize and insult all our allies, except Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates) to stop Putin.

They should stop acting like Biden is the enemy, rejecting his entire agenda for political gain, and saying “nyet” to everything. True patriots don’t do that.

Stuart Floyd lives in Gainesville.

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This article originally appeared on The Gainesville Sun: Stuart Floyd: Republicans who spread Putin's propaganda are despicable