As MAGA members of Congress including Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), Thomas Massie (R-WV), and Matt Gaetz (R-FL) oppose sending additional aid to Ukraine as it fights against a Russian invasion, GOP Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX), Chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, has said Russian propaganda has “infected a good chunk of my party’s base.”
A resurgence of Russian influence in U.S. politics is noted in The Washington Post‘s new expose, Inside Donald Trump’s Secret Plan to End the Ukraine-Russia War. The Post portrays former President Donald Trump as one who “has consistently complimented Putin, expressed admiration for his dictatorial rule and gone out of his way to avoid criticizing him.”
(NOTE: Trump’s plan to end the war reportedly includes pressuring Ukraine to cede land which foreign policy experts and some Russia-hawk Republicans warn would “reward Putin.”)
Richard Grenell, who served as Acting Director of National Intelligence in President Donald Trump’s Cabinet in 2020, and as the United States Ambassador to Germany from 2018 to 2020, responded to the Post reporting by criticizing one of the investigative political writers behind the expose, Josh Dawsey.
Grenell responded: “The Washington Post newsroom is hiding the fact that Vladimir Putin has endorsed Joe Biden. Josh Dawsey writes entire pieces on Putin, Trump and Biden and hides this fact. Why?”
The Washington Post newsroom is hiding the fact that Vladimir Putin has endorsed Joe Biden. @jdawsey1 writes entire pieces on Putin, Trump and Biden and hides this fact.
Why?
— Richard Grenell (@RichardGrenell) April 9, 2024
Grenell likely refers to remarks Putin made earlier this year, which were widely viewed as deliberately provocative. Putin said that while Russia would “work with” any U.S. President, he thinks a Biden presidency is better for Russia.
“Biden, he’s more experienced, more predictable, he’s a politician of the old formation,” Putin said.
“You asked me which is better for us,” Putin said in reply to a Russian media interviewer, as translated by Reuters. “I said it then that, and I still think I can repeat it: Biden.” (Putin did not present his beliefs on Biden’s predictability as an endorsement.)
Note: President Joe Biden has not regarded Putin as a friend of the United States and said during his most recent State of the Union address, “I will not bow down” to Putin on Ukraine. Biden has also blamed the Kremlin for Putin’s rival Alexei Navalny’s death in a Russian prison, asserting that there can be “no doubt” that Putin was to blame for Navalny’s untimely death at age 47.
In 2022, Biden expressed an openness to seeing Putin removed from the leadership in Russia — “this man cannot remain in power,” Biden said — comments which Biden later affirmed, saying: “I was expressing the moral outrage that I feel, and I make no apologies for it.”