A group of Russian nationals were able to donate to newly elected House Speaker Mike Johnson's campaign in 2018 by funneling the money through a U.S. company.
The Texas-based American Ethane company previously donated tens of thousands of dollars to the campaigns of Louisiana Republicans including Johnson, who was voted by the House to replace Rep. Kevin McCarthy as Speaker on Wednesday following three weeks of GOP chaos in the lower chamber.
While American Ethane was run in 2018 by American John Houghtaling, 88 percent of the firm was owned by three Russian nationals—Konstantin Nikolaev, Mikhail Yuriev, and Andrey Kunatbaev.
The frontrunner for the republican president is well known to have had ties and been compromised long before 2016 (remember the pee-pee- tape?). And plenty of republicans straight up flew to russia for july 4th a few years back.
Nobody cares. Their base will still vote for them and the rest of us are waiting for the end.
That's because Democrats don't know how to do rhetoric. Remember how we don't actually have a federal budget for the next fiscal year? If this were due to democratic infighting, republicans would be on air every day talking about how "they can't even manage their own party, they shouldn't be trusted with managing our government".
A competent democratic party should be talking about how we went over the cliff on the antarctic ice shelf melting because republicans don't believe in climate change, they should be talking about how republicans are prepared to abandon democracy, they should be talking about the incompetence of the republican party.
Nobody with a modicum of intelligence blames the Democrats for the impending shutdown.
It is just that people have largely made their mind up over that and there is the expectation of "a brief shutdown" because of how dysfunctional the government is.
In the likely event this continues? Then we will probably see that become a strong part of messaging. But even that only directly impacts a comparatively small part of the voting populace. Most people will instead blame "park rangers" for shutting down national parks and "lazy TSA" for the inevitable shitshow of airports. And continue to blame the USPS for everything else. Rather than realize there is one big connection between all those.
Well that's the thing, rhetoric isn't for the people that agree with you, it's for the people that don't. Conservatives aren't completely hopeless, but their fear and anger are being weaponized to ignore fascist movements in their party while actively having their class consciousness suppressed. Deprogramming them will require a constant reminder about the failures of their party to actually improve their life through policy.
Except Republicans and their voting base
Nobody with a modicum of intelligence
Touché
There are also the low-info that might not be exactly stupid, but are so tuned out/busy that they fall for the "both sides" bullshit and take the "a pox on both their houses" route.
Don't forget that Gaetz got what he wants too, a russian ally 3rd in line. I just put Gaetz and russia in and this is what I got:
https://www.businessinsider.com/matt-gaetz-russia-not-ukraine-join-nato-anti-china-alliance-2023-7?op=1
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/09/28/gaetz-ukraine-republicans/
https://www.newsweek.com/matt-gaetz-would-rather-have-russia-ukraine-nato-1812588