Why Putin’s M.O. Feels So Right to Trumpists

If you deny your opponents’ legitimate claim to power, then you can justify any means to deprive them of it.

February 25, 2022, 5:48pm

Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks during a joint press conference with the German chancellor following their meeting over Ukraine security at the Kremlin, in Moscow, on February 15, 2022. (Photo by MIKHAIL KLIMENTYEV/Sputnik/AFP via Getty Images)

The following content is from the latest installment of VICE News’ weekly Breaking the Vote newsletter from D.C. Deputy Bureau Chief Todd Zwillich.

Vladimir Putin had plenty of pretexts for unleashing his unprovoked invasion on Ukraine this week. Pundits and officials can argue over what mix of geopolitical opportunism, domestic inadequacy, and shirtless equestrian energy explains it.

The real reason for Putin’s aggression is that he considers the very idea of Ukraine’s self-governance illegitimate. Ukrainians have no right to choose their own leaders, so those democratically elected leaders have no authority. The intimidation and violence Putin brings against them is justified, for they have no right to what they claim.

That’s terrifying for Ukrainians, and it should be a blaring alarm for Americans. Because it’s the exact same contempt that festers at the heart of the Trumpist GOP’s attack on our democracy. And Trumpism’s most powerful propagandists spent the week celebrating it.

Pardoned felon and podcaster Steve Bannon used the specter of Russia’s invasion to gleefully urge his listeners to follow Putin because he’s “anti-woke” and doesn’t tolerate debates over what bathroom people should use. In other words, the only relevant thing about an aggressive Russian dictator with a history of murdering his opponents is that he knows how to properly menace the people you can’t stand.

That’s a gross attack on LGBTQ people, to be sure. But Bannon’s true target is Democrats, since every objectionable preference, from infrastructure to Supreme Court nominees to not intimidating trans kids, is labeled “woke” for the 2022 midterms. (It poll-tests really well with Republicans. Check out CPAC this week!)

Ohio GOP Senate primary candidate JD Vance tried on a version of this too, saying he “doesn’t really care” about Ukraine, and blaming “transgender rights” for wrecking his “hands off Putin” argument. (He later released a statement about how much he cares.)

Tucker Carlson devoted much more time and detail to the idea. He led the Wednesday night episode of his No. 1 primetime show with a direct-to-camera appeal, in which he told viewers to question elites’ “mandate” to “hate Putin” for the impending war in Ukraine.

“Why do I hate Putin so much?” Carlson encouraged viewers to ask themselves. “Has Putin ever called me a racist? Has he threatened to get me fired for disagreeing with him?... Is he teaching my children to embrace racial discrimination?”

“Vladimir Putin didn’t do any of that,” Carlson said. “You should be mad at the people who are making your life worse, who are preventing you from saying what you think is true, who are calling you a racist” and “are allowing your country to become polluted and overrun and filled with drugs and the homeless.”

Will Saletan at The Bulwark noticed how closely Carlson tracked with Father Charles Coughlin, the antisemitic priest who in the 1930s urged listeners of his popular, isolationist radio show to train their contempt not on Adolf Hitler but on the real enemy at home: Jews.

Carlson wants viewers to grant minorities, LGBTQ people, and Democrats the same agency and legitimacy Coughlin reserved for Jews. Maybe Putin is bad, and maybe he isn’t, but you know who’s worse? Democrats.

“In 35 seconds here, @TuckerCarlson basically said: ‘Putin isn’t your enemy. Your fellow American is,’” January 6 committee member GOP Rep. Adam Kinzinger tweeted. “This is beyond dangerous, to say the least.”

Or, in the Trumpist GOP, it’s just Thursday. Yesterday, away from the chaos of Ukraine, Arizona GOP Gov. Doug Ducey, also a Senate candidate, was asked about GOP State Sen. Wendy Rogers’ open embrace of white nationalism. (Rogers was scheduled to speak at a white nationalist “groypers” conference organized by Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes.)

“She’s still better than her opponent, Felicia French,” Ducey said, referring to a combat veteran who’s also a Democrat. Asked again to clarify how he feels about the white nationalist wing of the GOP, Ducey wasn’t shy: “I said she’s still better than Felicia French.”

Ducey, Carlson, and Donald Trump already understand about the GOP what Putin understands about Russians following Ukraine. First, you grant your opponents no legitimate claim to power, and thus no right to govern. Then you can justify any means to deprive them of it.

You might find yourself rationalizing your candidate accepting foreign interference in a presidential election; or countenancing two years of obvious lies that usurpers didn’t win 2020, but must have stolen it; or signing off on laws designed to make sure fewer Americans vote. You might realize you’d rather risk COVID (remember COVID? Deep cut, I know) than wear a mask like the “fake president” wears.

You might even decide that a crowd that formed a violent mob, assault police, and stormed the Capitol to stop the peaceful transfer of power had its reasons. Riots aren’t pretty, but allowing the true enemy to take the White House is worse.

As Donald Trump said of Putin’s invasion this week, “How smart is that?”

What better way to show your friends you’re a genius like we’ve never seen before than signing ’em up for Breaking the Vote?

T.W.I.S.™ Notes

This Week in Subpoenas, it appears that America’s mayor and very-sanctioned lawyer Rudy Giuliani is fixing to cooperate with the January 6 committee. Caveats up front: This could easily be Rudy posturing with no intention to tell the truth but also hoping to avoid contempt charges. It’s also unclear he’ll ever go under oath where it counts.

But Rudy is reportedly negotiating a deal to tell some of what he knows. He can talk about lawmakers and the plan to upend the electoral vote count and facilitate the coup; he led meetings of the “war room” group of Trump acolytes at the Willard Hotel; and he was there when Trump discussed using the military to seize voting machines and using Mike Pence to help overturn the election.

That last part may never see the light of day. Rudy apparently wants to keep most of his direct contacts with Trump protected by attorney-client privilege. Reminder: caveats.

• Legume appreciator Ivanka Trump also appears to be in talks to appear before the committee voluntarily. Chairman Benny Thompson requested an Ivanka interview last month, noting she was in the room when her dad talked to Pence on the phone on Jan. 6. She also reportedly fielded lots of frantic requests for Trump to call off the riot, requests he ignored for more than three hours.

• Roger Stone claims he’s sued the January 6 committee to protect his phone records, and also mentions he could use some money.

Those who trespass against us

In late May 2021, an alarm went off at a secure warehouse storing election ballots in Fulton County, Georgia. Soon, right-wing websites launched a new conspiracy that a door had mysteriously (probably nefariously) been left wide open. The right amplified it. Trump issued a statement about it. By July, it was on Fox News primetime.

Turns out, not only was the entire thing bullshit but the alarm was actually triggered by investigators hired by Georgia “stolen election” sleuths to watch the warehouse. How do we know? Because VICE News Tonight’s Alexis Johnson and Madeleine May got the warehouse security video.

Come for the deconstruction of a baseless conspiracy theory, with receipts; stay for the holy-shit news that “Stop the Steal” investigators in Fulton use moonlighting, off-duty cops from a neighboring county as enforcers.

Open the books

The Supreme Court formally rejected Donald Trump’s bid to hide White House documents from the January 6 committee. Last month it refused to stop a lower court’s order for Trump to hand over roughly 800 pages of notes, logs, draft speeches, and records from around Jan. 6. This week, justice refused to reverse the appeals court’s decision on Trump’s privilege claim.

• Meanwhile, a federal judge ruled that three civil suits from lawmakers and Capitol Police, pinning the Jan. 6 mayhem on Trump, can go forward. Judge Amit Mehta ruled the suits can proceed because Trump’s actions and words plausibly incited the Capitol mob, and they had nothing to do with his official duties. “They entirely concern his efforts to remain in office for a second term. These are unofficial acts… so the President’s broad immunity (is) not present here.”

Regardless of how this pans out, Judge Mehta’s ruling is worth reading, because it does a great job deconstructing how insidious and destructive Trump’s “stolen election” mythos was. Trump is sure to appeal. But ots of other people think Judge Mehta’s ruling gives DOJ all the rationale it needs to begin investigating Trump for criminal charges.

“President Trump’s January 6 rally speech was akin to telling an excited mob that corn-dealers starve the poor in front of the corn-dealers’ home.” - U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta, ruling Trump must face lawsuits alleging he’s responsible for the Jan. 6 insurrection.

Reply all — Coup-memo craftsman John Eastman, who rocked the Fifth nearly 150 times in front of the January 6 committee, is still fighting to keep more than 560 pages of his emails secret on the grounds of attorney-client privilege. Eastman is claiming privilege over his Chapman University email between Jan. 4 and Jan. 7, 2021.

A flat circle — Secretary of state races are getting worse and worse, as stolen-election conspiracists run to control elections. Fortunately Ohio won’t get a chance to “keep it weird” in 2022. QAnon election fantasist and self-described time traveler Terpsehore “Tore” Maras announced her run for secretary of state, but alas, the bid this week fell flat. Like time itself.