Thread by @AmoneyResists

Donald Trump Jr. met with Russian spies in Trump Tower; Eric said they get most of their funding from Russia; Trump got impeached (the 1st time) for trying to extort the Ukrainian President to fabricate dirt on the Bidens; & Trump took Putin’s word over our intelligence agencies.

Mueller documented 14 instances in which Trump committed obstruction of justice in interfering with his investigation. We watched him fire Comey; purge officials from the FOJ, FBI, and DNI. We watched him be subservient to Putin in every interaction, never once criticizing him.

Trump’s business dealings with Russia went back to the late 1980’s (even before the rest of the @GOP was compromised); they laundered money through his shitty hotels, golf courses, & properties & gave him hundreds of millions in loans when no American banks would lend him money.

We watched him parrot bizarre Kremlin talking points on national television that no one outside of the top Kremlin propaganda outlets claimed to believe (e.g. that Ukraine would ‘be happier with Russia’ & Montenegro had been showing increasing aggressiveness toward Belarus’) 🤔

Trump is a firm believer that repeating a lie enough times can make it true. So can tell his most egregious lies by how often he repeats them. How many times did he say “no collusion” or “witch hunt”? Meanwhile, he said “I’m fucked” when he learned about Mueller’s investigation.

I documented most of Trump’s treasonous acts in which he made his disdain for 🇺🇸 & allegiance to (or subservience to/ownership by) hostile foreign nations in my thread on his impeachable offenses. Trump was a useful idiot for Putin. This is a great summary

Putin despises democracy; he is a former KGB-agent turned autocrat. He basically repossessed the entire wealth of his nation for himself when he took power and is now on a crusade to weaken and eliminate democracies across the world (e.g. Ukraine, Europe, & the United States)

The right still talks about “the Russia hoax” and “collusion delusion” as if it hasn’t been unequivocally established that Trump is a Russian puppet; it has and he is. We may never know the full extent of it until we see his tax returns, but it’s undeniably clear. Putin owns him.

What Putin wanted most was a weakened America pitted against itself so it was neutralized in its ability to combat Russian aggression abroad. He saw Trump as his way to achieve this as well as a compromised @GOP that hacking their headquarters allowed him to finalize control over

And look at how successful he was; he tore us apart. He understood that a United America could never be defeated. But through Trump, the GOP, and the right wing echo chamber of disinformation and propaganda he’s been able to convince tens of millions that Dems are the true enemy.

He’s been able to convince almost a third of the nation to remain unvaccinated while his puppet sabotaged our response and set the stage for the GOP to go all in on continuing these efforts; he’s killed nearly a million Americans without firing a single shot. Now he wants Ukraine

It frustrates me that people were so quick to dismiss Russia’s influence in 2016 and beyond. It was obvious to me even though it was only the third Presidentual election I was old enough to vote in. The extent of it wasn’t apparent; but it was clear we were being targeted.

The @GOP’s love affair with the Kremlin is much simple; they decided in the mid-1990s that Russia’s religious fundamentalism and overt white supremacy aligned much more with their “values” than the increasingly egalitarian, multiracial & progressive democratic America.

I’ll post links at the end with resources for those interested in reading more about the history of both Trump and the @GOP being co-opted by a hostile foreign power whose primary goal is ending democracy across the globe. Russia completed this takeover of the @GOP in 2016.

But the purpose of this is to remind you that we had a President directly under the influence of hostile foreign powers (all of which are enemies with diametrically opposite priorities & values to that of America) which still controls most of the Republican leadership in the U.S.

So while it’s fine to criticize Biden on his foreign policy initiatives and approaches and suggest ways you think he could improve diplomatic relations with our adversaries as well as our allies; it’s also important to appreciate that Biden works for the United States of America.

I have never pretended to be a foreign policy expert. But I have educated myself about how Trump came under the thumb of the Kremlin as well as the rest of the @GOP because it’s both fascinating, infuriating, and necessary to know in commenting on the current Ukraine situation.

We still have a man who is at best an “unwitting agent of Russia” as the @GOP’s first choice to lead their party. We have @GOP senators and members of Congress who continue to exhibit allegiance to Russia over America; & they’re still trying to end democracy in the United States.

Why did Trump’s entire team have suspicious ties to Kremlin oligarchs; why did he repeatedly capitulate to Russia against the U.S.; why has he gone to such extreme lengths to keep his tax returns hidden; and why does he praise Putin incessantly while attacking our government?

I’m hopeful that we will still get answers to these questions. But in the meantime, this is an important framework through which to evaluate all @GOP commentary on Biden’s moves toward Putin and the escalating situation in Ukraine.

Great follows on Russia, Ukraine, and U.S. foreign policy: @McFaul; @brhodes; @JuliaDavisNews; @OlgaNYC1211; @CFR_org; @ForeignPolicy; @MollyMcKew; @juliaioffe; @BeschlossDC; @MarkLGoldberg; @djrothkopf; @emptywheel; @edwardlucas; @SethAbramson; @AngelaStent; @MFA_Ukraine

History of Russia and the @GOP’s current lovefest, which began in the 1990’s, as documented by @thinkprogress:
cc: @VoteMarsha @LindseyGrahamSC @SenRonJohnson @SenShelby @SteveDaines @SenJohnHoeven @SenJohnKennedy @SenJohnThune @RepKayGranger @JerryMoran
archive.thinkprogress.org/history-of-chr…

My thread documenting all of Trump’s actions/statements making it clear he is an unwitting agent of Russia:

https://twitter.com/amoneyresists/status/1109324062243909632

.@Teri_Kanefield’s thread on how the whole search for “collusion” missed the point as it doesn’t have much meaning from a legal standpoint and documenting Trump’s longstanding ties to Russian oligarchs and organized crime:

https://twitter.com/teri_kanefield/status/1042072592897593345

Here’s an article that provides the complete timeline of all of Trump’s Russia ties (there are hundreds if not thousands of connections here).
sutori.com/story/timeline…

And here’s one from @NYMag on Trump’s long-standing Kremlin ties in comprehensive length and detail. What’s incredible is how much of this information was publicly available in the lead up to the 2016 election. Yet instead we heard about Hillary’s emails.
nymag.com/intelligencer/…

Lastly, my thread of Trump’s impeachable offenses documents nearly all of his betrayals of his oath of office, particularly when it came to consistently siding with Russia over the United States, from the 2016 election to Mueller to Helsinki and beyond. It’s all here:

https://twitter.com/AmoneyResists/status/1120555910630342657

Russia is not a very formidable adversary in terms of military power or GDP. It thrives on sowing chaos & division through disinformation/propaganda to undermine faith in government & weaken democratic alliances across Europe (e.g. NATO and the EU) & splinter democracy in America

However, they are highly skilled at grooming assets; weaponizing lies; and using stolen/hacked material to bribe/extort individuals into complying with their demands. Remember how they hacked the RNC in 2016 too but never released anything? That’s because the entire @GOP complied

I highly recommend the film Active Measures, which goes into detail about how they deceived large portions of the American electorate to get Donald Trump into the WH. They also worked with Cambridge analytica to target key areas with disinformation via Facebook & other platforms.

As we learn more and try to disentangle the seemingly inextricable links between Russia and other hostile foreign governments and the @GOP, we’ll see this party is being funded and blackmailed by just about the worst people and groups on the planet. We must vote it out completely