The pro-Russia columnists at WorldNetDaily are complaining that the U.S. wants to help Ukraine fight off the Russian invasion. Terry Jeffrey complained in his Feb. 21 column:
From February 2022 to December 2023, Congress appropriated about three times as much money for its response to the conflict in Ukraine as the federal government spent on Customs and Border Protection.
Congress approved approximately $113.4 billion in spending related to the Ukraine conflict during this period, while the government spent only $37.82 billion on Customs and Border Protection.
Jeffrey complained that the money actually helped Ukraine hold its own against Russia — note that he would call it only a “conflict,” not a war, as if Ukraine bears equal responsibility for provoking it — before parroting right-wing narratives about immigration and adding, “Which poses a greater security threat to the American people: Terrorists coming across our southern border, or a war between Russia and Ukraine?”
Mike Pottage gushed over Vladimir Putin’s lecturing of Tucker Carlson (as much of WND did) in his Feb. 27 column:
Before there was war in Ukraine, there was war in Ukraine.
When Vladimir Putin devoted a substantial portion of his two-hour conversation with Tucker Carlson to the history of Russia and Ukraine, he had a purpose. Anyone who listened learned Russia will not walk away from Ukraine. Thus, Russia will not accept the expansion of NATO into Ukraine.
Putin also declared, “The U.N. charter and international law have become obsolete.” And NATO, in Putin’s view, is sustaining a war footing among the nations of Europe, Russia included. NATO is a Cold War relic.
So what does Putin want? What Putin wants, like him or not, must be part of any consideration short of nuclear war.
Clearly, he wants to align Russia more closely with European nations. All he asked, before he sent a single Russian soldier to the border with Ukraine, was an assurance NATO would not expand to include Ukraine. Team Biden responded by forcefully committing to bring Ukraine into NATO and taking on the role of the defender of Ukraine. Now two years in, Ukraine is mortally wounded and a fortune in U.S. tax dollars have exploded.
Pottage didn’t mention that NATO is a defensive alliance that does not pose a threat to a peaceful Russia. Instead, he insisted it was somehow Joe Biden’s fault that Russia invaded Ukraine:
Putin’s overtures were not given serious attention in Washington, D.C., where so many careers and no many agencies depend upon a worldwide war footing for their livelihood. An almost mindless reaction suggested anyone who wished to talk to Putin or consider Russian overtures for peace, is a traitor to the United States of America.
A substantial part of the Biden reelection campaign is tied to the “evil Russian” theme of 70 years ago. The accusation that Republicans are Russian agents for not approving another $60 billion for the war in Ukraine is being waged because the Democrat strategists believe it will mean more votes for their party. Peace be damned.
As a result, the potential to shift the nuclear standoff and perhaps re-unify Europe on a competitive, free market economic basis, is ignored.
History may record this as the greatest diplomatic failure of all time. A world leader sits down with a reporter and says his nation expected to be invited in, and offers, “Let’s negotiate,” and Team Biden rants about Russia, smears Russia and uses the existence of Russia to tar and feather Americans who do not want war and who might respond to Russia in civil, diplomatic terms.
Even if one assumes Putin did not mean what he said, the U.S. response should be to open discussion, not hurl insults. Instead, America appears to the world as the aggressor, the party with hostile intent.
From there, Pottage likened the prison death of Putin critic Alexei Navalny to the imprisonment of a police officer who killed a man:
The Democrats wet all over themselves at the prospect of the Carlson interview, and then lashed out. The Republican Party cowered in the corner, silent, fearful of Democrat and media criticism. The GOP might as well have announced, “We cannot be seen near a kind word or a hopeful expression, regarding anything to do with Putin or with Russia.” And so with the passage of time, the media was handed a story of the prison death of a Putin foe, and automatically, like Police Officer Derrick Chauvin, Putin was convicted of murder.
Pottage concluded by insisting that Donald Trump is the only person who can solve this situation:
There is a single American leader who speaks truth to intrenched power. That is Donald J. Trump. In his first term, the Democrat Party [sic] tried to use the mere existence of Russia as a means to smear Trump and remove him from office. Trump found virulent opponents in the Department of State, Pentagon and the intelligence agencies, and these groups bring the industrial might of weapons production with them.
If he wins a second term, Trump will be free of petty partisan games and vested interests. He can pick up the phone and display the art of the deal. If Vladimir Putin, in his interview with Tucker Carlson, was straight with the world, a second term for Donald Trump might finish what Ronald Reagan started and tamp down frictions that sustain a war footing through the decades.
The Team Biden approach to Russia is so “last century.”
Trump is the only national leader who understands that NATO has no more value than a peace treaty in the hands of Neville Chamberlain. Trump’s powerful responses to the outrageous attacks, his willingness to sacrifice his golden years and much of his treasure, for the nation, is obvious.
So what will it be, America? The demented coward of Afghanistan, or a committed national leader?
Or, you know, Putin could simply stop murdering people for no reason and withdraw from Ukraine.
Andy Schlafly joined Jeffrey in cheering right-wing wavering over Ukraine in his Feb. 27 column:
A dramatic meeting Tuesday at the White House to discuss sending $60 billion more to the NATO war in Ukraine was stacked 4-to-1 against conservatives. That is hardly fair but reflects the intense pressure by globalists to pour more money down this bottomless pit of war.
[…]Russia’s military-based economy produces far more munitions than the West. Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, who opposes more funding of the war in Ukraine, told a conference of globalists last week in Munich that Ukraine uses in a month as many Patriot missile interceptors as it takes the United States a year to make, and the Patriot is now on a five-year back order.
On Tuesday, the U.S. Army announced its elimination of 24,000 positions, partly because of the shortfall in enlistment. Recruiting into our military has fallen far below expectations, and threats by D.C. politicians to send American troops to defend the borders of small NATO member countries will not be tolerated by voters.
Phyllis Schlafly called for disbanding NATO at the end of the Cold War, and she opposed the “mission creep” that has led NATO to meddle in Ukraine, in provocation of Russia. We should not support Ukrainian President Zelensky’s ambition to capture the Crimean peninsula, where the Russian navy has been stationed at Sevastopol for 240 years.
Zelensky canceled national elections that had been scheduled for this spring, and the globalists who pretend to care about promoting democracy should object to that. There is a large constituency of Ukrainian Americans in Ohio, where their Sen. Vance outspokenly opposes continued American funding of this war.
Like Pottage, Schlafly ignored the obvious solution and insisted that only Trump could solve the war: “Trump promises to end this war by forcing Ukraine and Russia into a negotiated settlement, which is the sensible approach.” Actually, the sensible approach is for Putin to stop his unprovoked aggression, but Schlafly didn’t talk about that.