During the first impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump in 2019, former Trump national security aide Fiona Hill made an extraordinary plea. Seated in front of congressional Republicans, she implored them not to spread Russian propaganda.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the course of this investigation, I would ask that you please not promote politically driven falsehoods that so clearly advance Russian interests,\u201d she told them. She was referring to comments they had made during her earlier deposition breathing life into a baseless, Trump-backed suggestion that Ukraine, rather than Russia, interfered in the 2016 U.S. election.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese fictions are harmful even if they\u2019re deployed for purely domestic political purposes,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n
Republicans on the committee blanched at the suggestion that they had served as conduits for Russian misinformation, but Hill refused to back down.<\/p>\n
Five years later, Republicans are starting to grapple more publicly with the idea that this kind of thing is happening in their ranks.<\/p>\n
The most striking example came this week. In an interview with Puck News\u2019s Julia Ioffe, Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Tex.) \u2014 none other than the GOP chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee \u2014 flat-out said that Russian propaganda had \u201cinfected a good chunk of my party\u2019s base.\u201d<\/p>\n
McCaul suggested conservative media was to blame.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are some more nighttime entertainment shows that seem to spin, like, I see the Russian propaganda in some of it \u2014 and it\u2019s almost identical [to what they\u2019re saying on Russian state television] \u2014 on our airwaves,\u201d McCaul said.<\/p>\n
He also cited \u201cthese people that read various conspiracy-theory outlets that are just not accurate, and they actually model Russian propaganda.\u201d<\/p>\n
Asked which Republicans specifically he was talking about, McCaul said it was \u201cobvious,\u201d before staff intervened and asked that the conversation go off the record.<\/p>\n
These comments are the most significant to date, but they\u2019re not the only ones.<\/p>\n
A GOP impasse over additional funding for Ukraine\u2019s defense against Russia \u2014 combined recently with Tucker Carlson\u2019s deeply weird promotion of Russia and Trump\u2019s comments about not defending NATO allies from Moscow \u2014 has apparently occasioned some self-reflection among Republicans about their colleagues and allies:<\/p>\n
Former vice president Mike Pence, Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) and a top aide to Sen. Todd Young (R-Ill.) have warned their party against serving as apologists for Russian President Vladimir Putin.<\/span>Recent presidential candidate Nikki Haley said Trump\u2019s comments about not defending NATO allies, among others, \u201cempower Putin.\u201d<\/span>And Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.) shot back at criticism from Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) about Cornyn\u2019s support for Ukraine, urging Paxton to \u201cspend less time pushing Russian propaganda.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Around the same time, former congresswoman Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) said there is now \u201ca Putin wing of the Republican Party.\u201d<\/p>\n In 2022, Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) called the pro-Putin sentiments in some corners of his party \u201calmost treasonous,\u201d while allowing that perhaps his fellow Republicans were just attention-seekers.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s unthinkable to me, it\u2019s almost treasonous and it just makes me ill to see some of these people do that,\u201d Romney said. \u201cBut, of course, they do it because if they get shock value and it\u2019s good to get more eyeballs and maybe make a little more money for them or their network. It\u2019s disgusting.\u201d<\/p>\n And then there is what may be the most famous example: when House GOP leaders in 2016 privately joked about Trump being compromised by Russia, as later reported by The Washington Post.<\/p>\n The day after The Post broke the news that the Russians had hacked the Democratic National Committee, then-House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) quipped that perhaps Russia had gotten Democrats\u2019 opposition research about Trump.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s two people, I think, Putin pays,\u201d McCarthy added, \u201c[Rep. Dana] Rohrabacher and Trump.\u201d (Rohrabacher was an openly pro-Russian Republican from California.)<\/p>\n Then-House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) quickly tried to steer the conversation in another direction and urged people to be discreet.<\/p>\n It appeared to be a joke, but perhaps a joke born of real concerns about Trump\u2019s commentary on Russia.<\/p>\n Eight years later, such concerns clearly remain for some prominent Republicans about their colleagues and allies.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n During the first impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump in 2019, former Trump national security aide Fiona Hill made an extraordinary plea. Seated in front of congressional Republicans, she implored them not to spread Russian propaganda. \u201cIn the course of this investigation, I would ask that you please not promote politically driven falsehoods that so […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":2827,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2826","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2826","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2826"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2826\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2827"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2826"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2826"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2826"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}