Here is Jordan Klepper's entire special on how the GOP became the Party of Putin.
Brace yourself in that vid for another display of MAGA ignorance and stupidity.
The Kremlin is still using unmoderated social media and fake news sites to push disinformation and propaganda into the conspiracy-loving minds of Trump supporters. GOP members of Congress are among them.
The MAGA love for Putin is not due only to media manipulation. Putin's domestic policies closely mirror how the far right would govern in our country: official homophobia, greater income inequality, special treatment for billionaire oligarchs, rigged elections, a de facto official religion, poor consumer protection, censorship, restrictions on abortion, assassination of political opponents, and a lot more. What's not to like in Russia for a US far right fundamentalist? The fringe right pines for the days when women were in the kitchen, Jesus was in the classroom, gays were in the closet, and blacks were completely out of sight.
To truly understand Russia, it's absolutely necessary to talk with its neighbors – not with Tucker Carlson. So Jordan visited Estonia and met with Prime Minister Kaja Kallas.
IMHO, part of the Putin love by some Americans stems from an almost pathological ignorance of Eastern Europe. After the collapse of the USSR in 1991, some idiots began proclaiming "the end of history" and whatever little learning about Eastern Europe which may have taken place in K-12 education then vanished totally.
Putin, a former officer in the Soviet secret police, wants to revive the Soviet Union in all but name. And imperialism is part of that plan.
People in the US who cheer Putin are like the Americans who applauded Hitler in the 1930s. As long as there is substantial support for Putin here we should worry about such people trying to make the US more like totalitarian Russia.
