Russia-Ukraine War Flash Report - 09 FEB 2024 16:15 PDT - A Glimmer of Hope and More Carlson-Putin

Is the Tide Turning for Further U.S. Aid to Ukraine

When is the last time you remember a bi-partisan envoy of United States Congresscritters visiting Kyiv? Meeting with government officials? Promising that aid would continue?

It's been a long time. Right?

Four members of the House Intelligence Committee, Republicans Mike Turner and French Hill and Democrats Jason Crow and Abigail Spanberger, are in Kyiv. They met with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. After the private meeting, Congressman Turner told reporters, "The United States is working diligently in the House of Representatives and the Senate to secure the funding that is necessary in 2024."

Why is this a glimmer of hope?

Because this is the first visit in months by a Congressional committee, and the House Intelligence Committee has access to classified information, many of their peers won't. This is as much of a signal to Washington as it is to Kyiv.

Wait. You have two Republicans who are a lock for a "yes" vote by making this trip, and we know there are more. With the supporting Democrats, this is a lock!

Not so fast because the truth matters. Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) has already said he would not allow unanimous consent to move forward with a final version of a military aid package for Ukraine-Israel-Taiwan in the Senate. So it will be open to floor debate. If Majority Leader Chuck Schumer can't get a two-thirds majority, pro-Russian Senators will filibuster the bill until it dies. It is encouraging that Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) voted to move the debate on a final version of the bill forward. It is very discouraging that Lindsey Graham (R-SC), who was one of the most vocal supporters of Ukraine, did not.

You're dooming. They'll get the votes. Everyone can see this is important. The world intelligence agencies are screaming, and the Carlson-Putin interview further reinforced who Vladimir Putin is.

In the lower chamber of the U.S. Congress (remember U.S. readers, you make up 43% of our audience), the House has an official-unofficial rule - the Hastert Rule. The Hastert Rule says that the Speaker of the House does not have to bring any legislation to the floor vote if the measure won't pass with the votes of the majority party alone.

That's a huge problem. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-LA) only has a two-seat majority (ignoring short-term health issues of Congresspersons). The Freedom Caucus Gaetz Eight is an automatic no. Speaker Johnson can invoke the Hastert Rule, and the bill dies. 

Wait, but can't Johnson just make a deal with the Democrats? 

Of course he can, but the Hastert Rule exists to prevent the Speaker of doing just that. Nothing says that Johnson needs to invoke the Hastert Rule, but if he does put the bill to a floor vote, then a member of the Freedom Caucus, or even more extreme members of Congress could file a motion to vacate - as they did to former Speaker Mike McCarthy.

More extreme than the Freedom Caucus? I'm not here for your politics, out.

Slow down there. Congressperson Marjorie Taylor-Greene (R-GA) was kicked out of the Freedom Caucus last year for being too extreme. The truth matters. I didn't say it. The Freedom Caucus that removed her did so with their votes.

Can Speaker Johnson reach across the aisle?

Of course, he can, and at least one Democrat has said publicly that if Johnson advances military aid for Ukraine, the Democrats will vote to save him. 

Could the Democrats do that?

Yes. Next week, a vote will be held for the replacement for New York Congressperson George Santos (R-NY). Santos was removed in December by a vote led by his party after the Ethics Committee concluded that not only did Santos break multiple campaign finance rules and other ethical violations, but he likely committed multiple felonies. Santos's win in 2022 was a shock to the district, and it is clear that the Democratic Party didn't do - anything - in that district. A lot of Santos's secrets weren't secrets; they were in the public domain. A single day of oppositional research would have sunk Santos. 

What does any of this have to do with a hypothetical vote to vacate Speaker Johnson? The polls are close, and I concluded several years ago that political polls in the United States that are in the public domain are pretty close to useless. With that caveat, that seat will very likely go to the Democrat for more reasons than I care to list (it's a very blue district). Johnson's margin is about to get thinner, with the House at 216-214, assuming everyone shows up on a vote (two more GOP seats are vacant).

Would Johnson do it?

That's the $95 billion question that Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan are wondering. If he does it, he's politically dead, and he knows it. He'll be at high risk of being primaried in his own district and getting booted from Congress in January 2025.

So I shouldn't hope then. Got it.

Not so fast. Johnson tried to advance a stand-alone bill for Israel that his own party rejected (ouch), and when it comes to foreign adversaries, the Republican party considers China public enemy number one. If Johnson were to invoke the Hastert Rule, it would be an equally bad look for his party.

What is your opinion?

You don't pay me for my opinion - mostly - so this is opinion/assessment.

No matter what Johnson does, he's already politically dead. If he continues to refuse to put forward an FY2024 Budget for the government, blocks immigration reform, blocks border security, and blocks military aid to the allies of the U.S., these become campaign talking points. If he reaches across the aisle to get anything done - something done - he'll be pushed out by his own party one way or another.

If Johnson realizes he is a metaphorical dead man walking (hello, nice men with the Secret Service - METAPHOR), I believe he'll do the right thing. U.S. politics has repeatedly shown that the moment a politician is free of the broader party message, their views mostly move closer to the center. There are exceptions. The impossible-to-answer question is: If Johnson accepts his political mortality, which way will he go? 

The Only Thing We Learned From Carlson-Putin

The teaser clip attached to the Flash Report had to be shared because - ouch. It also showed the West who Putin is beyond his carefully curated image. While this was funny to watch, Putin, the KGB agent interrogating a prisoner, suddenly slipped into view. The smirk at the end made it clear - that was meant to cut.

Unlike the famous Frost-Nixon interviews, David Frost, who didn't have to worry about becoming depressed after his interview and falling out of a closed five-story window, could continue to push Nixon. Tucker Carlson could only wince.

That's not what we learned. When Carlson asked Putin if he talked to President Zelenskyy since February 2022, Putin said no. Carlson then carried water for the Kremlin, asking about the Nazis in Ukraine, and Putin told this story.

“I once talked to him about this. I said: 'Volodya, what are you doing? Why do you support neo-Nazis in Ukraine today when your father fought against fascism? He is a front-line soldier.' I won’t say what he answered. This is a separate issue, and I think it’s incorrect."

You've probably seen the headlines blaring that this story is a lie because Zelenskyy's father was born on December 23, 1947. It would be completely impossible for him to have fought in World War II. We almost included this one in the Situation Report, but I vetoed the decision because more fact-checking was needed.

That point that this was impossible and is an easily disproven lie is the wrong assessment.

Zelenskyy's grandfather was a Colonel in the Red Army and did fight in World War II. 

The 71-year-old Vladimir Putin had a moment.

Like President Joe Biden mixing up Mitarand and Macron.

Or former President Trump mixing up Haley and Pelosi.

Did this phone conversation between Zelenskyy and Putin happen? Did Putin actually say these things? Probably not. The whole story was almost certainly a lie. But for a brief moment, the image-obsessed Putin, who is 3% Botox and 6% fillers, had a short circuit. When you get to 71, it happens.

Wait, there's more.

After the interview, the Kremlin required seeing the rough cut before it went to final editing and made significant changes. The truth matters, and this is not a defense of Carlson. The original version the world did not see reportedly did have more pushback and attempts by Carlson to take back control of the interview. We don't know what other lapses if there were any more, ended up on the cutting room floor.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov claimed that no question was off limits for the interview, but there are portions we will never get to see. No questions were off-limits, but we have full editorial control of the final interview.

Wait, control the interview?

Absolutely. Fox News argued in court and won that Tucker Carlson is not a journalist. He is an entertainer. Carlson argued in court that anything he says should not be taken seriously, and the average person should know this.

So it is with clenched teeth that I write that a journalist controls the interview. It is the journalist's job to stay on topic and get hard questions answered. Carlson probably didn't fail as badly as the Kremlin cut makes it appear (the truth matters), but you didn't have to dig too deep to find three talking points emerging in the Russian disinformation space. 

• What did I just watch - Putin blew it by giving a boring interview focusing on the minutia of history that Westerners don't care about - but he's still amazing.
• This interview wasn't meant for Westerners; this was meant for the Russian audience, and everything Putin said was true anyway.
• The purpose of this interview was to humiliate Carlson to show the West that Russia is the one in control; not even the United States's best "journalist" could get Putin to squirm.

What is your opinion?

Other than wanting 2 hours and 16 minutes of my life back and then another three-ish hours in discussion with the team, reading notes, and scrambling to write the key talking points? 

Putin didn't discuss anything that the Kremlin hasn't already floated, for the most part. The shifting of the "blame" for the creation of Ukraine onto Poland and Stalin was new, considering that in 1922, Lenin was in power. Wait. Was that another moment? Not being snarky - as I wrote this, I'm now left to wonder, did Putin have a second moment of the wires being crossed? Did he confuse Lenin and Stalin? The Kremlin messaging that Lenin "created Ukraine" has been consistent since Putin wrote his mini-version of Mein Kampf in 2011.

Interesting.

While Soviet history ignored the events from August 23, 1939, to June 20, 1941, in 1989, the Kremlin revealed the secret protocols of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. It wasn't just a non-aggression agreement. It was a plan to divide Europe between two murderous dictators. Soviet Russia under Josef Stalin would get Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Belarus, the eastern third of Poland, Romania, and parts of Hungary. Hitler and the Nazis would get the rest of Europe. 

It was also a trade agreement. Russian oil, coal, metals, and timber literally fueled the Nazis as they stormed across Europe to the beaches of Dunkirk. Both leaders planned to betray each other, but Hitler got to it first.

Stalin and Hitler invaded Poland - together. In the end, the Soviets deported over 1.2 million people, mostly Jews, with hundreds of thousands dying in slave labor camps in Siberia. They killed up to 100,000 Polish soldiers in combat and executed 25,000 Polish military officers. The massacre was so brutal and violent that when German SS troops found the site, even they were horrified.

Putin's attempt to rewrite history to support his own actions in Ukraine reveals how fascist Russia has become. Putin argued that Poland forced Germany to invade due to provocations, failing to mention the Soviet role. Not only did Stalin have full knowledge of the invasion, the casus belli, and the Nazi battle plan, they were part of it. Internal documents from Germany showed that by September 10, 1939, the Chancellery was worried that Stalin had already betrayed Hitler, and they would not join the invasion as agreed. Moscow was only waiting to complete their non-aggression pact with Japan to be sure they didn't have wars on two fronts.

You don't have to squint to realize that in justifying his own war, Putin defended Adolf Hitler as the victim of Polish aggression.

A Nazi talking point since 1939.