Opinion
Paul Ryan is a Republican, former Speaker of the House, and former vice presidential candidate.
He is also a creature of the old George W. Bush-Dick Cheney, pre-Donald Trump Republican.
This means that, just like Liz Cheney, Nikki Haley and others, he usually thinks and talks like a Democrat. All those old Bush Republicans are basically Democrats at this point.
So it’s no surprise that Ryan is now attacking conservative pundit Tucker Carlson as “pro-Putin.”
Just like most Democrats do.
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From Mediaite, “Former GOP House Speaker and current Fox Corp. board member Paul Ryan tore both Tucker Carlson and Donald Trump for pushing “pro-Putin” and “pro-Putin” sentiment. tyranny” in the United States”.
“Ryan spoke to Washington Post Senior Congressional Correspondent Paul Kane Wednesday during a live event for the newspaper’s “Election 2024” series. Kane asked Ryan to weigh in on the news of the day, congressional dysfunction and Carlson, who was fired from Fox News last April,” Mediaite noted.
The story continued:
“What is it about Russia where we keep going back to this sort of reverb loop that started in 2016, where they keep trying, it seems, and kind of keep succeeding?” Kane asked Ryan, referring to Tuesday’s news that the GOP’s key informant in their impeachment inquiry had ties to Russian intelligence.
“But Russia has been trying to penetrate our system for a long time, before 2016. I mean, a long time. They were very active in those days, and obviously, now, as we know, Russia tried to influence our elections,” Ryan responded, after noting that he had nothing specific to add about the latest news.
“On the other hand, what angers Republicans, deservedly so in this particular case, is that Obama’s Justice Department abused the FISA court. They abused the FISA laws on this issue, and we can delve into the Steele dossier and all that stuff,” Ryan added, referring to the Russian scandals of the Trump years.
Ryan went on to frame Russia’s attempts to sow disinformation in the United States in geopolitical terms. “They believe that our weakness is our freedom, so they polarize us into inaction,” he added. “And Russia is basically trying with a bayonet to poke and find the soft tissue of the American political system, and this is probably just another chapter in that story.”
Unfortunately for Ryan, Putin’s real goal is to mire the United States in a winless war on the other side of the world. Still.
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Russia, Russia, Russia
Ryan, a Fox News board member, wasn’t done yet.
“Yeah, I mean, what they’re going to try to do is create sympathy,” Ryan said of Russia. “What worries me most – and not just Tucker, but this is a symptom of all this – is that they are garnering sympathy in America. And they are helping to cultivate and develop an isolationist wing in my party and in our country, which I think is very, very dangerous.”
“Isolationist” is an old leftist epithet, in this case meaning anyone who doesn’t want to give billions of American taxpayer dollars to Ukraine.
The Republican establishment continued: “They are training people who want to see NATO reduced or NATO not join. Of course, former President Trump is also pushing this line. So what worries me a lot is that they are helping to curate a line of thought, a school of thought that is isolationist, that is pro-Putin, pro-Russia, pro-tyranny at the end of the day. And this is extremely dangerous for all democracy, but for ourselves as a democracy.”
Just of note, Ukraine being in NATO, as most establishment Republicans and Democrats want, would mean that US soldiers would be on the ground in Ukraine right now fighting in that war. Or it would mean nuclear war.
If you think this is a bad idea, Ryan thinks you’re an “isolationist.”
– added Ryan. “And so what I see Tucker is just a little chapter of that story. I didn’t watch the whole interview. I watched a little bit of it, but it really seemed like a kind of commercial for Putin to push his propaganda.”
“You’re still on the board of Fox, right?” Kane asked.
Ryan acknowledged that it was.
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