Rep. Jamie Raskin took a whack at Republicans and Trump for doing Putin's bidding with blocking aid to Ukraine. As I already discussed here, Rep. Mike Turner was trying to put a happy face on that aid making its way through the House this week.
Raskin wasn't so optimistic during an interview with MSNBC's Jen Psaki, and did a nice job of laying out just who's running the show these days in the Republican party:
PSAKI: I know, we've also seen this movie before, but right now, House Speaker Mike Johnson is fighting to hang onto his gavel as the far right flank of the Republican Party threatens to take it away. And it says a lot about the Republican Party that the one person Speaker Johnson believed could get him out of this pickle he's in is Donald Trump.
It says even more about the Republican Party that the one issue they figured everyone could really rally around is what they're calling election integrity, which I'm putting in quotes because it actually means peddling conspiracy theories.
That's the great unifying issue, the glue that's keeping this party together. This time, Johnson and Trump pushed a bill to keep non-citizens from voting. Now that is already illegal, just so everybody knows, and very rare.
So that should be good news to the men who are apparently so concerned about it. But of course, it's not really about this bill. It's about, once again, laying the groundwork ahead of the election to challenge the results if Trump doesn't like them.
And this focus on election interference really is so rich coming from Mike Johnson, who himself was an enabler in trying to help overturn the 2020 election, coming from Donald Trump, who is literally going on trial tomorrow for his efforts to interfere in the 2016 election.
Joining me now is Democratic Congressman Jamie Raskin of Maryland. He's the ranking Democrat on the House Oversight Committee. So I don't even know how else to start other than when you were watching, if you watched, or if you saw clips of Mike Johnson standing next to Donald Trump spouting lies about election integrity, what was going through your head?
RASKIN: Well, you reminded me of Kevin McCarthy's journey south to Mar-a-Lago, the $18 million palatial home Trump was bragging about, where he was on bended knee, begging for Trump's support in raising money.
Johnson is on life support in the House because under the MAGA rules, anybody can move to vacate the chair and basically topple the leadership just by unilateral direction. So Marjorie, Taylor Greene can do it, Matt Gaetz can do it, Jim Jordan can do it.
And so Trump likes having Johnson over the barrel because he controls them. And so, for example, on Ukraine aid, which is so central, Trump can keep Johnson from bringing Ukraine to the floor. We are begging Johnson to bring Ukraine aid to the floor.
It would pass overwhelmingly with 60 or 70 percent of the votes. And so it means that Donald Trump is basically steering the bus. And of course, the person who's steering Donald Trump is Vladimir Putin. It's like Trump is the fourth branch of government and Putin's the fifth branch of government.
And the Republicans can't do anything unless Trump approves it. And Trump can't do anything if his friend, Vladimir Putin, doesn't want him to.
PSAKI: Which is exactly why it's not gonna be in the package currently, that may move itself finally to the House this week.
RASKIN: We've been wanting to vote for $61 billion dollars and aid to the Ukrainian people who are completely under the gun and outgunned and they need artillery and it's a very dangerous situation right now.
We've known this for some time now, and even some of their party leaders are finally admitting that Russian propaganda has infected their representatives and their base.
Republicans are going to find some excuse to try to block the aid to Ukraine. How Democrats counter that remains to be seen.
