Putin’s propagandists are giving rave reviews to GOP presidential hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy after last week’s Republican presidential debate. The arrogant, misinformed biotech entrepreneur was the only candidate to decisively raise his hand when Fox News moderator Bret Baier asked whether anyone onstage would oppose providing more funding to Ukraine.
“I would not and I think that this is disastrous that we’re protecting against an invasion across somebody else’s border when we should use those same military resources to prevent … the invasion of our own southern border here in the United States of America,” Ramaswamy said before getting into a heated argument with former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley.
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Ramaswamy added:
“I find it offensive that we have professional politicians on the stage that will make a pilgrimage to Kyiv, to their pope Zelenskyy without doing the same thing for people in Maui or the south side of Chicago … I think that we have to put the interest of Americans first.”
And he declared that ”Ukraine is not a priority for the United States of America.”
All of that was music to the ears of Russia’s TV propagandists. Still, they made clear that Donald Trump remains number one in their hearts. They believe Trump’s indictments have only boosted his standing in the polls as the favorite to win the Republican presidential nomination. Julia Davis, who monitors Russian media, wrote in The Daily Beast:
Referring to Trump’s booking record in Georgia, reporter Valentin Bogdanov, who is based in New York City, told the audience of 60 Minutes, “Our strawberry blonde! There is only one like him in the United States.” In his report for the evening edition of Vesti on channel Rossiya-1, Bogdanov showcased Trump’s mugshot along with that of Frank Sinatra, Michael Jackson, and Elvis Presley. He mused that in his legal struggle, Trump likely sees his rightful place alongside Martin Luther King Jr. and Nelson Mandela, like someone “who suffered for the sake of truth.”
During his Saturday show on channel Solovyov Live, Yevgeny Satanovsky continued the same train of thought, lionizing Trump alongside some of the most prominent historic figures: “He is like Nelson Mandela, like Martin Luther King Jr., he is being persecuted by an evil shadow government!” Satanovsky feverishly claimed that Trump might be assassinated, like Abraham Lincoln or John F. Kennedy.
The same combination of mugshots have been featured in social media posts by MAGA cult members. And Fox News’ Will Cain compared Trump’s mugshot with King’s.
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And while Trump remains Russia’s favorite, clips of Ramaswamy’s debate performance were featured all over Russian state media, Davis reported. On Friday’s broadcast of the Russian “60 Minutes,” Ramaswamy’s debate remarks were set to Johnny Thunder’s 1968 song, “I’m Alive.”
Political scientist Vladimir Kornilov noted the Milwaukee audience’s enthusiastic response to Ramaswamy’s remarks about Ukraine.
“What’s most important—the most telling moment—did you hear the excitement in the audience when Ramaswamy said he wouldn’t support continued U.S. aid to Ukraine? There was an ovation in the auditorium! This shows that Ukraine will certainly experience problems!”
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis just slightly waved his hand in response to the question about funding for Ukraine, giving a wishy-washy response that Europe step up funding to help Ukraine while the U.S. devotes resources to sending special forces over the border into Mexico to take out drug cartels.
So Ramaswamy has apparently replaced DeSantis as Russia’s Plan B should Trump falter in the presidential race. As “60 Minutes” host Yevgeny Popov said: “We should take a closer look at this Mr. Ramaswamy. The last time, we had installed President Trump for Americans, but our bet didn’t quite work out. Why not try again? Let’s give it another try and see how Ramaswamy will perform, in case Trump doesn’t manage to win the post of the president.” Popov then added, “Just kidding.” Or was he?
But still, Putin’s pals remain convinced that Trump will win the Republican nomination. “The debate has demonstrated that Trump has no real competition within the Republican party,” Kornilov said.
Trump has declared that he would negotiate with Putin and end the war in Ukraine within 24 hours without giving any specifics. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy panned Trump’s claim, saying Ukraine would reject any plan that ceded occupied territories to Russia.
But what Trump, Ramaswamy, and MAGA cultists are doing is giving aid and comfort to the enemy, giving Putin every motivation to prolong the war through the November 2024 election. Russia’s best hope for a successful outcome is the election of an isolationist “American First” Republican president who will withdraw support from Ukraine and undermine NATO.
Ramaswamy, who is a foreign policy naif, has taken an even more radical “America First” position than Trump. He unveiled his foreign policy platform on Monday in an article in The American Conservative. Ramaswamy wrote:
I will go to Moscow in 2025. I will deliver peace in Ukraine under the only terms that should matter to us—terms that put American interests first. The Biden administration has foolishly tried to get Xi to dump Putin. In reality, we should get Putin to dump Xi.
A good deal requires all parties to get something out of it. To that end, I will accept Russian control of the occupied territories and pledge to block Ukraine’s candidacy for NATO in exchange for Russia exiting its military alliance with China. I will end sanctions and bring Russia back into the world market. In this way, I will elevate Russia as a strategic check on China’s designs in East Asia.
It is preposterous to think that selling out Ukraine would cause Putin to dump General Secretary of China Xi Jinping. During the debate, Haley called out Ramaswamy, saying: “A win for Russia is a win for China. Under your watch, you will make America less safe. You have no foreign policy experience and it shows.”
And this brings us to our very own made-in-the-U.S.A. Putin propagandist Tucker Carlson, the ousted Fox News host. During the GOP debate, Carlson aired his pre-taped interview with Trump on his show on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter. Now Carlson wants to follow that up by interviewing Putin.
Top Putin propagandist Margarita Simonyan, the editor-in-chief of the Russian state-controlled media organization Russia Today, revealed Carlson’s interview request in a comment during a broadcast Sunday on state TV channel Russia-1.
”Tucker is doing a great job. By the way, he’s really asking for an interview with Vladimir Putin. it would be great if someone hears this and gets this message to the president. The most popular host in all of U.S. history. So what, he was thrown out of Fox News even though he didn’t say anything especially radical. He just didn’t sing in tune with the rest of the choir. So they threw him out. ”
Because I’m sure we all need to know if Putin thinks anyone is trying to kill him, like Jeffrey Epstein, or whether Russia is headed toward civil war.
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