Friday morning former Secretary of State and truth-teller about Trump being a Russian puppet Hillary Clinton appeared on Morning Joe. She has a new article in The Atlantic entitled "A State of Emergency for Democracy."
During the long interview, Clinton went after both Republicans and right-wing media for pretending that Putin is a good guy simply because Biden is President. She notes a "lack of spine" among Republican officeholders. Heh.
Excerpts from her comments below:
...We had a bipartisan agreement, a commitment starting after World War II with Harry Truman, all the way until the Soviet Union collapsed. We would -- people who loved freedom like we do stand with the dissidents who were speaking out about human rights and against oppression and death at the hands of regimes, you know, the soviet union both cells and supported elsewhere. So this is heartbreaking, but it's also dangerous. I think it's time for what's left of the Republican Party that has any common sense not just to say, okay, go help defend Ukraine against Putin, but to stand against those people in politics and government, in the media, and elsewhere in our own country who are literally giving aid and comfort to an enemy of freedom and democracy. It can't -- it can't continue because it plays right into the ambitions of not just Putin, but also president Xi of China to undermine democracy, to literally divide and conquer the West without ever invading us, but by setting us against each other.
...Starting with the ascent of Trump, there has been, sadly, a total loss of spine and conscience among too many Republicans who at first saw no harm in echoing and parroting the kind of crazy stuff that Trump would say, totally against history, against common sense, as you know so well, and now they're kind of caught in a bit of a downward spiral where they're afraid to stand against even the most outrageous comments. There's also another element which is these people are naive in such a dangerous way. They somehow believe that because Putin presents himself as a strong leader on behalf of certain values that are, you know, anti-gay, that are anti-freedom and democracy that's so pretty that somehow that corresponds with the views of certain members and elements of the republican party. They could not be more mistaken. You know, this man is not -- you know, he takes no prisoners, he kills them, poisons them, imprisons them, whatever. And I think the naiveté we saw starting with Trump and has been accelerated is hard to understand. Nevertheless, we have to deal with it and call it out. More people in the press and in politics need to be doing that.
...Maybe this terrible aggression by Putin will stiffen the spines of a lot of Republicans in office who understand, you know, you cannot continue to give Trump and his enablers a blank check because they will lead us to a very bad place. So I'm hoping that some of the examples you just mentioned will not only happen behind closed doors but I would love to see some of the smart, articulate, you know, Republican members of congress go ahead and be more willing to take on the craziness on the far right. I mean, it is something that needs to happen. I mean, I can say from now until the cows come home and talk to half the country about how dangerous it is what is happening in what used to be the Republican Party but it would really be a profile in courage for some of these other Republicans to say, look, there are things I agree with, but I am not going to be on the side of Vladimir Putin, of Russian aggression. I am going to be on the side of America. We're going to pull the world together, we're going to show what we stand for. I think that's a winning argument. Now, will there be the crazies who keep yelling and screaming and talking the stuff they do on one of your competitor networks? Of course. But let's narrow that audience by getting voices out there that have credibility and let's show through the hard work behind the scenes what bipartisan foreign policy cooperation looks like.
