Stefanik turns on people of Ukraine, supports Russia
Trump showing how he is a master of propaganda
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Rep. Elise Stefanik was always popular in the 21st Congressional District as the fresh young face of a new generation.
She became even more popular when she did a U-turn from moderate reaching-across-the aisle-Elise to extreme anything-Donald-Trump-says-is-true Elise.
That's Elise at middle age.
This past Election Day, 215,996 voters enthusiastically voted for Elise Stefanik from Massena to Malone to Plattsburgh down to Glens Falls despite little to show for her time in Congress and an uneasy relationship with the truth.
But at least she was against dictators and onboard with democracy.
But not anymore.
Three years ago, she posted on her official government website - stefanik.house.gov - "I join the American people in praying for the safety of innocent Ukrainians as they endure an unwarranted and unjustified invasion by a gutless, bloodthirsty, authoritarian dictator. Vladimir Putin is a war criminal and deranged thug. We must stand with democracies under assault.
"If peace is to prevail, the United States and NATO must respond with the only language Putin understands - strength. It's long past time President Biden take swift and devastating action to cripple the Russian economy and impose severe irrecoverable consequences on the corrupt regime of Vladimir Putin."
That's what President Joe Biden did.
That foreign policy was one of few unifying issues all Americans agreed about and in the three years since Stefanik made those statements Putin has not changed.
You may remember in the early days of the war when Russia was closing in on Zelensky in Kiev and he said to the world, “The fight is here. I need ammunition, not a ride.”
It was inspirational and we rallied around Ukraine because that is what Americans do when freedom is on the line.
But on Monday at the United Nations, the United States voted against a U.N. resolution demanding Russia leave Ukraine.
It voted AGAINST!
The country that is the beacon of hope for every country wanting freedom refused to condemn Russia for the first time.
U.S. Deputy U.N. Ambassador, Dorothy Shea, said similar resolutions had not stopped the war as the reason for the turnabout with the Trump administration.
So the United States voted with Russia AGAINST the resolution.
Let me repeat, it voted WITH Russia. It still passed by a 93-18 vote.
Afterward, Elise Stefanik posted on social media her support for the United States voting with Russia.
Putin is still a dictator.
Putin is still a war criminal.
Putin is still a thug just as she pointed out three years ago.
Did she forget?
Substack columnist Heather Cox Richardson reported Monday The editorial board of The London’s Financial Times wrote “in the past ten days, (Trump) has all but incinerated 80 years of postwar American leadership.”
"Incinerated!"
That's what the rest of the world is seeing while we watch the Super Bowl and complain about the price of eggs.
“There should be no doubt that Trump’s contempt for allies and admiration for strongmen is real and will endure,” The London Financial Times wrote. He is “instinctively committed to the idea that the world is a jungle in which the big players take what they want…. He divides the world into spheres of interest.”
And finally, this chilling conclusion, “America,” the board concluded, “has turned.”
Have Americans in the 21st Congressional District turned as well?
Have the 215,966 that voted for Elise Stefanik, that recite the Pledge of Allegiance passionately at town hall meetings, that put their hands over their hearts at local sporting events during the national anthem, turned too?
Have they abandoned Ukraine also?
Ukrainian Deputy Foreign Minister Mariana Betsa said, "As we mark three years of this devastation - Russia's full invasion against Ukraine - we call on all nations to stand firm to take ... the side of the charter, the side of humanity and the side of just and lasting peace, peace through strength."
The United States quietly shifted that strength toward Russia Monday with Elise Stefanik on board 100 percent.
More on the war
Anne Applebaum reported in The Atlantic these facts about the war in Ukraine.
- Civilian society in Ukraine has volunteered for the war effort, and the defense industry has transformed to produce both hardware and software to hit Russian targets.
_ Ukraine now leads the world in AI-enabled drone technology.
- The Ukraine army has become the largest in Europe, with a million people.
- Ukraine has suffered attacks on civilians, hospitals, and the energy sector, and at least 46,000 soldiers have died, with another 380,000 wounded.
- Russia’s economy is crumbling as its military production takes from the civilian economy and sanctions prevent other countries from taking up the slack.
- Inflation is through the roof in Russia.
_ More than 700,000 of those fighting for Russia have been killed or wounded.
Applebaum concluded that the Institute for the Study of War estimates that at the rate it’s moving, Russia would need 83 years to capture the remaining 80% of Ukraine.
“The only way Putin wins now,” Applebaum writes, “is by persuading Ukraine’s allies to be sick of the war…by persuading Trump to cut off Ukraine…and by convincing Europeans that they can’t win either.”
That's what the U.N. vote was all about Monday.
To end the war Trump just has to sell out the people in Ukraine.
The lying
It probably can never be said enough about how much lying in disinformation is being articulated by the Trump administration.
I'm surprised they do not have a minister of propaganda.
Here is one person's view from a story in the New York Times:
Trump is a highly skilled narrator and propagandist,” said Ruth Ben-Ghiat, author of “Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present” and a historian at New York University who specializes in fascism and authoritarianism. “Actually he is one of the most skilled propagandists in history.”
Dr. Ben-Ghiat said what made Mr. Trump’s “easily refutable lie” about the 2020 election so remarkable was that he was “working not in a one-party state or authoritarian context with a controlled media, but in a totally open society with a free press.”
And then there was this:
Mr. Trump’s aides have long recognized his penchant for prevarication and either adjusted or eventually broke with him. John F. Kelly, his longest-serving White House chief of staff in his first term, has said that Mr. Trump would tell his press aides to publicly repeat something that he had just made up. When Mr. Kelly would object, saying, “but that’s not true,” Mr. Trump would say, “but it sounds good.”
Stephanie Grisham, who served as a White House press secretary in the first term, once recalled that Mr. Trump would tell aides that “as long as you keep repeating something, it doesn’t matter what you say.” And that trickled down to the staff. “Casual dishonesty filtered through the White House as though it were in the air-conditioning system,” she wrote in her memoir.
Ken Tingley spent more than four decades working in small community newspapers in upstate New York. Since retirement in 2020 he has written three books and is currently adapting his second book "The Last American Newspaper" into a play. He currently lives in Queensbury, N.Y.
At the rate we are going, I have a very dire thought about the future of this country, and I hope I'm WRONG! I see in the future as long as the orange baboon is dictator, that the rest of the world will have no choice but to destroy us. He is making us the weakest link, and a threat to the rest of the world! Sounds drastic, but I see no good coming from this administration. There should be no wiggle room at all for Musk, and he should be arrested for what he is trying to do.
"There is no nonsense so gross that society will not, at some time, make a doctrine of it and defend it with every weapon of communal stupidity." - Robertson Davies
Felonpotus is a traitor. Full stop.