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Tucker Carlson's 'Fatal Attraction' To The Kremlin Dictator

Tucker Carlson's 'Fatal Attraction' To The Kremlin Dictator

The title of my 2003 book, Useful Idiots, was a reference to a perhaps apocryphal quote sometimes attributed to Lenin to the effect that gullible liberals in the West would prove useful idiots for the Soviet Union. I wrote about Democrats. Twenty-one years later, the epithet belongs wholeheartedly to the GOP. Their choice to support Trump — Putin's biddable spaniel — for the party's nomination; their decision to sabotage aid to Ukraine; and Tucker Carlson's ring-kissing visit to the dictator's lair cements the status of Republicans as the useful idiots of the 21st century.

The party has turned its back on America's world role and very identity as a tent pole of global stability. Republicans are well down the path of handing Putin an historic victory in his war of conquest against Ukraine, and so dies the consensus in place since 1945 that aggression must never be rewarded. Think of what this will do to NATO, whose membership has expanded in response to Russian belligerence. Think of what it conveys to China about American resolve on Taiwan. Think of what it says to Iran, whose proxies have been firing at American forces and international shipping for three months. And consider what it conveys to friends who may rethink their relationships with a country so clearly unreliable. The Republicans, who imagine themselves "tough," are signaling the very opposite — cringing capitulation to a despot.

Tucker Carlson is not a useful idiot. The term implies naivete, but he seems to know exactly what he's doing. He claims to be in Moscow to interview Putin because the rest of the press refuses to do so. In fact, Putin's press secretary, Dmitry Peskov, was just one of many who have pointed out that major press organizations have repeatedly requested interviews and been rebuffed. Peskov explained that Carlson had been approved because "he has a position that differs from the rest of (Western media)." Yes, supine.

For the past several years, Carlson's project has been consonant with Putin's. Both seek to sow division in the United States. Both seek to flood the zone with shit so that people won't know what to believe or whom to trust.

Carlson played a leading role in spreading the big lie about the 2020 election and distorting the events of January 6. He's the one to whom Kevin McCarthy released thousands of hours of surveillance tape so that Carlson could then cherry pick a few anodyne frames and say to his millions of viewers (I'm paraphrasing) "See, a normal tourist visit."

Months later, in a display of his dominance over Republicans, Carlson forced Ted Cruz to grovel on the air for having called the Jan. 6 rioters "terrorists." Carlson has been one of the chief conduits for Russian disinformation in the United States, peddling lies such as the story that the U.S. government was involved in chemical and biological research labs in Ukraine. The truth is easy enough to find: The American bioweapons program was shut down in the 1960s, while Russia's bioweapons program probably still exists in secret. Not that Carlson investigates things.

His Fox News show was appointment viewing in Russia, where reruns were featured on state-controlled TV. After Volodymyr Zelenskyy addressed Congress dressed in army fatigues, Carlson was unmoved by the mien of the brave leader of a nation under unprovoked attack: "As far as we know, no one's ever addressed the United States Congress in a sweatshirt before." In another monologue, Carlson spouted the vilest Russian propaganda: "Zelenskyy himself is a very dark force. ... It is unmistakable. ... This man is a destroyer."

Just before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, he famously accused Democrats of trying to gin up hatred of Putin, asking "(W)hat is this really about? 'Why do I hate Putin so much?' Has Putin ever called me a racist? Has he threatened to get me fired for disagreeing with him?"

Putin has, as Carlson knows full well, arrested more than 20,000 people for protesting the war. As for his cruel attack on Ukraine — for no reason other than Putin's appetite — it has claimed the lives of half a million soldiers (two-thirds of them Russian) and at least 10,000 Ukrainian civilians. Russian forces have deliberately targeted power plants, hospitals, and civilian apartments. Putin is a war criminal. The world knows this. Carlson knows it, too.

Carlson says he went to Moscow because he's a journalist. He isn't. He's a tool. Putin has kidnapped and jailed two real Americans journalists: the Wall Street Journal's Evan Gershkovich, who has been rotting in a Russian prison for 11 months, and Alsu Kurmasheva of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, who committed the crime of visiting her sick mother while being an American.

As of this writing, it seems Carlson got the interview he craved with Putin. Doubtless Trump will find it very interesting and urge his people to "take a look," which will be the signal for the rest of the GOP to agree that we've really been getting only half of the story, haven't we? And it's really Biden, not Putin, and not certainly not Trump, who's a threat to world peace.

What a catastrophic turn for a once great political party.

Mona Charen is policy editor of The Bulwark and host of the "Beg to Differ" podcast. Her new book, Hard Right: The GOP's Drift Toward Extremism, is available now.

Trump Befriends Authoritarian Rule Everywhere — Except Cuba

Trump Befriends Authoritarian Rule Everywhere — Except Cuba

Donald Trump has often been faulted for recklessly upending established U.S. government policies, inviting harmful consequences. But in the case of Latin America, he has chosen to follow in a long U.S. tradition that has its own harmful consequences: pushing our neighbors around like it’s our job.

Last Tuesday, he expanded Washington’s campaign to starve the Cuban government into submission. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin announced a ban on organized group travel to the island, which had been allowed for the first time in decades under Barack Obama.

Never mind that the United States has conducted a 60-year experiment in using economic ostracism to force a change in the Communist government of Cuba — and it has been a failure. The regime has held fast to power despite — or because of — the enmity of the colossus to the north.

The comical part of the new travel restriction was Mnuchin’s explanation. “Cuba continues to play a destabilizing role in the Western Hemisphere,” he claimed, “providing a communist foothold in the region and propping up U.S. adversaries in places like Venezuela and Nicaragua by fomenting instability, undermining the rule of law, and suppressing democratic processes.”

Fomenting instability and propping up undemocratic governments, you see, are activities that only the United States is allowed to do. Much of the turmoil in the Middle East stems from the U.S. invasion of Iraq, a massively destabilizing venture whose consequences are still being felt.

Trump, of course, does not fret about the undemocratic governments in Saudi Arabia, Russia and Egypt. Of North Korea’s dictator, he said: “He likes me. I like him. Some people say, ‘Oh, you shouldn’t like him.’ I said, ‘Why shouldn’t I like him?'”

“Communist foothold” is one of those phrases that had meaning during the Cold War, when Washington and Moscow strove to maximize their influence around the world. But the Havana regime is no longer the spearhead of Soviet expansionism; it’s an established homegrown entity. It supports the leftist president Nicolas Maduro of Venezuela because of a common ideology and a common enemy — natural behavior for any government.

Trump’s policies follow a clear pattern. He has called for regime change in Venezuela and raised the possibility of military action. He suspended aid to El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras to punish their people for seeking asylum here. He has announced a plan to impose 25 percent tariffs on goods from Mexico unless it stops unauthorized migration. He behaves as though he is not just president of the United States but anointed ruler of the Western Hemisphere.

That approach has a lengthy, embarrassing pedigree. The CIA helped military officers mount a coup against an elected president in Guatemala in 1954. It supported the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion, an effort to overthrow Cuba’s Fidel Castro. In 1965, it sent troops to install a friendly regime in the Dominican Republic.

The CIA assisted a military coup against an elected leftist president in Chile in 1973. The U.S. financed a right-wing insurgency in Nicaragua in the 1980s. It invaded Grenada in 1983 to depose a pro-Castro regime. It invaded Panama in 1989 to remove a hostile dictator.

The presumption that we are entitled to impose our will anywhere in Latin America goes back even further. President Theodore Roosevelt asserted a sweeping U.S. prerogative in the region.

“All that this country desires is to see the neighboring countries stable, orderly and prosperous,” he said in 1904. “Any country whose people conduct themselves well can count upon our hearty friendship.” But “chronic wrongdoing” or “a general loosening of the ties of civilized society” may “require intervention” by the U.S. In his view, we had the right to use force whenever we saw a need.

Trump is reviving a tradition that never really lapsed. George W. Bush was exceptionally unpopular in the region for a variety of reasons, including his suspected support of an attempted 2002 coup in Venezuela, his stance toward Cuba, and the prison camp at the Navy base in Guantanamo Bay — itself a relic of U.S. imperialism. Even Obama, who restored diplomatic relations and allowed more travel, didn’t entirely lift the embargo.

In 1933, Franklin Roosevelt announced a shift in the American approach, declaring that he was “opposed to armed intervention” in the region. In the end, his Good Neighbor Policy didn’t last. To Latin America, we have often been a very bad neighbor. But there is always room to be worse.

Steve Chapman blogs at http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/chapman. Follow him on Twitter @SteveChapman13 or at https://www.facebook.com/stevechapman13. To find out more about Steve Chapman and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

IMAGE: Cuban President Raul Castro reacts during a news conference with U.S. President Barack Obama (not pictured) as part of President Obama’s three-day visit to Cuba in Havana, March 21, 2016. REUTERS/Carlos Barria

John McCain: Suppressing Free Press Is ‘How Dictators Get Started’

John McCain: Suppressing Free Press Is ‘How Dictators Get Started’

MUNICH (Reuters) – Senator John McCain, defending the media against the latest attack by President Donald Trump, warned that suppressing the free press was “how dictators get started”.

The Arizona Republican, a frequent critic of Trump, was responding to a tweet in which Trump accused the media of being “the enemy of the American people”.

The international order established after World War Two was built in part on a free press, McCain said in an excerpt of an interview with NBC’s Meet the Press that was released in advance of the full Sunday morning broadcast.

“I hate the press. I hate you especially,” he told interviewer Chuck Todd from an international security conference in Munich. “But the fact is we need you. We need a free press. We must have it. It’s vital.”

“If you want to preserve – I’m very serious now – if you want to preserve democracy as we know it, you have to have a free and many times adversarial press. And without it, I am afraid that we would lose so much of our individual liberties over time. That’s how dictators get started,” he continued.

“They get started by suppressing free press. In other words, a consolidation of power. When you look at history, the first thing that dictators do is shut down the press. And I’m not saying that President Trump is trying to be a dictator. I’m just saying we need to learn the lessons of history,” McCain said.

U.S. Senator Jeanne Shaheen, a Democrat from New Hampshire, told the conference on Sunday she was also concerned about Trump’s comments.

“The real danger is the president’s criticism of the media,” Shaheen told the conference. “A free press … is very important to maintaining democracy, and efforts on the part of a president to undermine and manipulate the press are very dangerous.”

The comments from U.S. lawmakers followed Trump’s tweet and came days after the president held a raucous news conference at which he repeatedly criticized news reports about disorder in the White House and leaks of his telephone conversations with the leaders of Mexico and Australia.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel emphasized the importance of a free press at the conference on Saturday, saying, “I have high respect for journalists. We’ve always had good results, at least in Germany, by relying on mutual respect.”

(Reporting by Jonathan Landay and Andrea Shalal; Editing by Mark Potter and David Stamp)

IMAGE: U.S. Senator John McCain speaks at the opening of the 53rd Munich Security Conference in Munich, Germany, February 17, 2017. REUTERS/Michael Dalder

Rick Scott Figures Some Dictators Aren’t So Bad — If They’ve Got Money

Rick Scott Figures Some Dictators Aren’t So Bad — If They’ve Got Money

Florida Gov. Rick Scott is now dabbling in foreign policy, trying to look like a tough guy in advance of his U.S. Senate run in 2018.

He recently warned Florida’s seaports that they could lose critical state funding if they make any shipping deals with Cuba. Scott later told reporters: “I don’t believe any port in our state, none of them, should be doing business with a brutal dictator.”

These would be stirring words if they didn’t reek with hypocrisy. The governor has been a gushing supporter of free trade with China, where human rights are trampled daily by the government.

In fact, under Scott, lots of Florida taxpayer dollars have been spent trying to drum up more business with the leadership in Beijing.

Here’s a peek at what goes on there, as detailed in Amnesty International’s 2015-2016 report:

Start with a “massive nationwide crackdown” on human-rights lawyers, whose homes and offices got raided. More than 240 attorneys and activists were detained or questioned by Chinese state security agents, and 25 were still in custody or “missing” at the time the report was compiled.

In a narrower purge, five women were arrested for “picking quarrels and provoking troubles” because they tried to start a national campaign against sexual harassment. Meanwhile, in the province of Zhejiang, Chinese authorities continued a very public program of destroying churches and tearing down Christian crosses.

And if it’s government brutality that really disturbs Gov. Scott, he should be aware that torture remains “widespread” in Chinese detention facilities, according to Amnesty and other groups.

One case cited was that of human-rights lawyer Yu Wensheng, who was abused in a Beijing prison from October 2014 to January 2015. He was handcuffed in a “restraint chair,” interrogated for 15 to 16 hours every day and denied sleep.

Horrifically, human-rights investigators also reported last summer that the Chinese government has been harvesting organs from thousands of executed prisoners, including many who were jailed for religious or political reasons.

Of course, China remains a key trade partner of the United States, and owns a jaw-dropping $1.2 trillion of our national debt. For years we have, for the sake of profit, overlooked Beijing’s suppression of dissent and persecution of activists and journalists.

President Trump complains loudly about Chinese monetary policy — not the treatment of political prisoners.

Enterprise Florida, a controversial pro-business consortium that gets 90 percent of its funding from state taxpayers, opened offices in Shanghai and Hong Kong in March 2014.

Its press release boasted that China was “Florida’s No. 1 largest import market” and “the No. 1 customer for the Port of Miami in overall tonnage.”

The board of Enterprise Florida is chaired by Gov. Scott, who at the time clearly had no qualms about our seaports accepting cargo from a communist regime.

Not long after Enterprise Florida opened its doors in Hong Kong, police in that city began rounding up pro-democracy protesters. In all, 955 people were arrested.

Not a peep of outrage was heard then from Scott. Yet now he surfaces, bristling with phony alarm because Port Everglades and the Port of Palm Beach were hosting a trade delegation from Cuba.

Officials at those ports had planned to sign memoranda opening future business discussions with Havana. “Disappointed some FL ports would enter into any agreement with Cuban dictatorship,” Scott tweeted. “I will recommend restricting state funds for ports that work with Cuba….”

Both Port Everglades and the Port of Palm Beach quickly backed away from signing cooperation papers. Last week the governor submitted a budget that included a threat to withhold infrastructure funds from any port that expands trade with Cuba.

The ports wouldn’t be breaking any laws. Exports of certain commodities and medical supplies to Cuba are legal, and since 2010 U.S. companies have shipped 4.8 million tons, about one-sixth of it from Florida ports.

How odd that Scott hasn’t confronted the major airlines that are now flying direct to the island from Florida, or the cruise lines seeking berths in Havana Harbor.

Maybe he forgot about them, or maybe just doesn’t want to piss off big corporations that might donate to his Senate campaign.

The same sort of human-rights crimes that occur in Cuba are happening throughout China and other countries with which we freely do business. For American politicians, lambasting Chinese leaders is risky, because China has lots of money, and manufactures lots of stuff we want: computers, clothes, sneakers.

It’s much easier to act indignant about the Cuban government, because Cuba is poor and doesn’t have much to sell us.

Thus appears Rick Scott, intrepid crusader for human rights.

But if there was serious money in old Havana, you can bet that Enterprise Florida would put an office there.

Carl Hiaasen is a columnist for the Miami Herald. Readers may write to him at: The Miami Herald, 3511 N.W. 91 Avenue, Doral, Fla. 33172; email: chiaasen@miamiherald.com.

IMAGE: Florida Gov. Rick Scott speaks at a press conference about the Zika virus in Doral, Florida, U.S. August 4, 2016.  REUTERS/Joe Skipper