November 16, 2019

When you're right, you're right, and Malcolm Nance was right a loooong time ago. He joined Joy Reid, who played a clip from three long years ago of Nance saying the following:

NANCE: I think we are in a situation of a national security crisis that is only going to get bigger. I think the Russians are running a strategic political warfare operation against the United States. I think Katy Tur hit it right on the head -- do you have any pause about what you're doing? He had no pause whatsoever.

Nance's last book was about Trump alone, but his new book focuses on TEAM Trump, and how they've embraced the enemy Russia and endangered our country and its very foundations. It's not just Donald Trump that Russia has bought and received lock stock and barrel — they've got the entire Republican party in the palm of their hands now. Joy said as much earlier in the same show in an exchange with Evelyn Farkas:

REID: The thing that I'm not sure that Russia anticipated they would get for their money, and not even a lot of money that they spent to interfere in our election, is they got an American political party that used to be the most hard[-core anti-Russia, anti-then-Soviet party. They got the Republican party because we now see the Republican party also adopting the pro-Russian line.

FARKAS: Well, yeah, Joy, this is the most distressing development that I've taken note of, certainly with regard to the hearings this week. You have Republican members of the Intelligence Committee, of all committees, actually giving credence to these ridiculous falsehoods about Ukraine's involvement, so we need the Intelligence Community to have an Intelligence Committee that stands up for the truth, and unfortunately now the Republicans are getting dragged into a situation where they're on the side of the Kremlin.

REID: Yeah. And where oligarchs can pump money into states like Kentucky, you know, money into the NRA. They got themselves a political party along with the bargain.

So, while sitting down with Nance, Reid mentioned that Trump himself had been of interest to Russia since the 1970s, but now it's the entire Republican party that's all in with Russia. Nance ran with it as only he can, saying, "Team Trump is a wide-ranging organization of dirty tricksters, cons, and frauds. And you know what's funny? One of them just got convicted yesterday." Roger Stone, of course.

NANCE: The chips for these guys are falling everywhere. But the danger here is they have really compromised U.S. national security. We are in grave danger in some instances, the whole intercepted phone call thing, you know, from Ukraine is a good example of that. But working with Saudi Arabia, Michael Flynn to get them Russian nuclear reactors, which the Trump administration has already gone ahead and approved, working with Turkey to extradite U.S. citizens and then allowing them to buy Russian weapons systems, so long as Trump Tower Istanbul stays in. I mean, the whole thing is a disaster and it will damage us for decades to come.

REID: You write in the book about the Republicans. "By the time Trump had sworn the oath of office in January of 2017 and gave his inaugural carnage speech, his followers had come to believe that their loyalty to his love of Russia was purely patriotic, and their devotion to him superseded any loyalty to the Constitution of the United States. Such a transformation from a rabidly anti-Russian party to docile admirers in less than four years was Putin's dream come true." I mean, even the Javelins that they bragged Trump gave to Ukraine, the condition on them was that they couldn't use them against Russia.

Nance answers this point by getting to the core of what it was about Russia's core operating values that makes it so appealing to Republicans. It's so simple, one wonders why it took so long for the GOP to cross over to the Putin and Russian-loving party they've become.

NANCE: Right. You like that? What has happened to the Republican party is no less than a complete co-option. You know, I've written about this before in one of my other books. I refer to this as an American Fifth Column now, to where people who were formerly against the Soviet Union -- after the year 2000, when Russia was going through its own counterterrorism paroxysm there after the Beslan massacre, conservatives started admiring Vladimir Putin and the way he would take on Islam. And then over ten years, with some Russian assistance, they were actually co-opting Evangelicals. We saw them actually send agents into the National Rifle Association. The Alt-Right. We found that some of their biggest leaders -- David Duke, Richard Spencer -- had homes in Moscow and were meeting over there with these fascist groups. These groups view Moscow as a natural ally, as a center of white Christianity in their view a war against immigration and Islam. And that's why they all now love Russia.

White supremacy. Of course. That, and money.

NANCE: There is a pot of money out there from the Russian oligarchy that I think was introduced to Donald Trump in 2014. I've said this many times. At the Miss Universe pageant, when he had a secret meeting at the Noble restaurant with the 12 richest oligarchs in Russia. When he came out of that meeting, all he talked about was Trump Tower 2.0 in Moscow's a go, and then from that minute on, he has done nothing but lavish devoted praise to Vladimir Putin, ex-KGB spymaster, which tells me there is a pot of money that is bigger and deeper than the Constitution of the United States and loyalty to our flag.

Greed and racism. Money and white supremacy. What more does the GOP need to switch teams? And how long will it take for people in THIS country to realize the GOP isn't coming back from that?

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