The Witness Chronicles, February 18, 2024
Week Eight, Election Year 2024, Tying It All Together
Navalny, Putin, Trump selling sneakers, a $354 million fine, the shame of the House Republicans, whew
This week will not reflect well for Republicans when the historians look back and document the extraordinary events that hit us every day. It started with Trump’s declaration that he would tell Putin to do whatever he wanted with our NATO allies if they didn’t pay. Then some idiot seeking PR named Tucker Carlson gave the Russian dictator two hours to babble on about his version of reality.
Meanwhile, Putin had decided to murder his biggest Russian adversary, Alexei Navalny, who many consider a great Russian Patriot, as he rotted in an Arctic prison camp. Here in the US, where public opinion overwhelmingly supports funding Ukraine in its desperate fight for freedom against war criminal Putin, the Republican House of Representatives went on a two week vacation to avoid an aid bill that had a good chance of passing with bipartisan support, all while Ukrainians die daily.
That bill was killed by Donald Trump because it would give his opponent Joe Biden a win, a win the American people want. The same Donald Trump who leads a wind shift in his party to somehow find Vladimir Putin an admirable guy, even as he ruthlessly murders his opponents. But Trump’s actions are backfiring, as is his Party’s sickening bowing to his wishes.
In the race to win a special House election replacing disgraced Republican liar Geo Santos, the Democrat won by eight points in what was projected to be a close race. It wasn’t and the main issue that decided the race was the GOP decision to kill a border bill, once again at Trump’s orders.
Are you keeping up?
On Friday February 15 we found out Alexei Navalny had died one day after appearing on Russian TV in court smiling, from unexplained causes. The House adjourned, avoiding taking up a bipartisan foreign aid bill funding Ukraine, Israel, and our allies in Southeast Asia . That bill passed in the Senate with 70 votes, a substantial majority.
News of Navalny’s assassination came after the adjournment, creating an embarrassing situation for House Speaker Mike Johnson and giving Democrats another weapon to prove the GOP was a do-nothing Congress. They already had plenty.
But that was not the end of the news on Friday. In his NY civil case, where he was convicted of massive business fraud, the Trump Organization was fined $354 million, plus interest which could add another $90 million, and can no longer do business in the state for three years.
New York is the banking and commercial capital of the world and Trump’s business is frozen there. As if that was not enough, a judge called Trump’s bluff to delay his first criminal trial and set an opening date of March 25, a major blow which will see him in court in the middle of primary season.
Another court hearing attempting to stall the Georgia election fraud trial by claiming the prosecutor Fani Willis was disqualified, appears to have achieved nothing, paving the way for that case to move forward, despite Willis and her father, an attorney, being badgered for hours, on TV, by six Trump lawyers.
This sets a court and primary calendar for the ex-president that has him shuttling between criminal courts and campaign stops. Watching Trump’s face after the announcement of the massive fine revealed a man in shock as his tactics and whining are not bearing fruit. What did he do?
He went to a sneaker convention called SneakerCon to sell $400 Trump sneakers and was booed during the announcement. It was, to say the least, a weird response to his troubles, to go and hawk shoes while facing a wall of very serious legal issues. Pitiful actually, but he does not seem to care, it got him on the news briefly.
The damage of this week to the Republican Party remains to be seen but it could be a turning point. Comments made by party extremists on Russia could be seen as treasonous. Their vacation, announced suddenly, looks like a desperate move by a House leader who had no other option, other than defying Trump, which cannot do, for some reason.
That decision will reverberate across the election landscape. But it is the Russian/Ukraine events which carry the most emotional impact in the United States, bringing Ukraine back into the forefront of US news and showing once again how Putin works, thumbing his nose at Americans and the world.
Navalny’s death was a genuine shocker, though not surprising. It was the timing, so obviously in the face of the world that showed how confident the Russian war criminal is in his commitment to authoritarian power.
That a Party, a candidate, and a substantial number of American voters would justify supporting that Putin is beyond shameful and shame is what we should all feel when watching our fellow Americans reject democracy and the rule of law.
Quite a week. I’d rather not see another like it. I’d like to think it is a turning point but this year nothing is predictable.
Note: if this is not enough, we had our 48th mass shooting this year in Kansas City. An FBI informant whose testimony is the only evidence against Biden in the attempted House impeachment snafu was indicted for lying, leaving the far right with exactly no evidence of their alleged corruption. These would be leading stories this week except…see above.
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As Usual, Martin, in my view a fair and balanced and, more to the point perhaps, extremely accurate summary of how things stand. It is sickening. It is sad, It is immoral. It is frightening.
Perhaps you or others can explain to me but I fail to understand how, for all its failings and issues with equity and such, a freedom loving people and a nation once a leader of the 'Free World', which despite mistakes and self-serving interference in other nations, seemed always to have right, justice, and freedom as at least part of its aims, can have fallen into such a travesty of irrationality, stubbornly entrenched views that defy any logic, and reached a state where out of a population of around 340 million people, apparently neither of the major political parties is able to find a pool, or even one, superior candidate to lead the nation.
How can that be? Should it not be an issue that demands serious discussion?
Another great article Martin.
And I can tell you, these things do not go unnoticed in the rest of the world. Here in Europe, Trump's threat, (promise?), that Putin will be given a free pass to march into NATO countries, was greeted with shock and horror. As was the decision by Trump's puppets in The House, to go on vacation, rather than help Ukraine's fight against Russia.
I keep thinking that the GOP have sunk as low as they can get - but they manage to prove me wrong on a daily basis.