The latest installment of the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) has been unfolding recently in Orlando, Florida — and on Friday, the political action committee known as Remove Ron (in reference to Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis) shared an image of a banner flying near the event that put the GOP’s increasing embrace of Putin, or at least rhetoric favorable to Putin, on clear display. The banner mockingly stated that “Putin welcomes CPAC to Orlando,” and in a follow-up tweet, the Remove Ron group added that “Republicans are openly siding with Putin. That’s why we need to stop them.” Trump was scheduled to give a speech at the Florida conservative event on Saturday. Check out an image of the banner below:
The critical presentation of the ideological ties between certain figures in the present-day GOP and Vladimir Putin is on-point — and its basis doesn’t exactly require a lot of digging to uncover. Recently, after Russian authorities rolled out recognition for two independent countries on Ukrainian territory and announced troop deployment plans for the areas (but before the full-fledged invasion), Trump characterized Putin as “very savvy” — making clear that Trump would pose a likely serious threat to democracy if able to once again obtain the presidency. When he was previously in office, military aid for Ukraine was held up while a pressure campaign unfolded that was angled to try and cajole the Ukrainians into launching investigations that would be politically favorable to the Trump team. That — not some non-existent foreign policy aptitude — is the real-world Trump legacy. Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) recently noted that “Putin’s impunity predictably follows our tepid response to his previous horrors in Georgia and Crimea, our naive efforts at a one-sided ‘reset,’ and the shortsightedness of ‘America First.’”
Now would be a good time for news outlets to revisit (in detail) Paul Manafort’s efforts in Ukraine on behalf of pro-Russian interests and why the FBI was clearly justified in trying to figure out what he was up to in the Trump campaign in 2016. Oh, and that Trump pardoned him
— Asha Rangappa (@AshaRangappa_) February 26, 2022
