What Is The Conservative Fawning Over Russia All About?

[RANT]
At one time the Republican and the conservatives thought Russia was the arch-enemy of the United States they were the party of McCarthyism but now they are kowtowing all over Putin.

Kansas City radio station agrees to broadcast Russian-owned ‘propaganda’ program
Kansas City Star
By Steve Vockrodt
January 17, 2020

A Kansas City area radio station can broadcast Russian state-owned media programming, the type that U.S. intelligence called a “propaganda machine,” for six hours a day through a lease agreement struck by a local radio operator.

RM Broadcasting LLC, a Florida-based company that has agreements to broadcast the Russian state media program Radio Sputnik, reached a deal on Jan. 1 to lease air time through Alpine Broadcasting Corp. in Liberty. Alpine Broadcasting Corp. broadcasts on three frequencies in the Kansas City area: KCXL 1140 AM, 102.9 FM and 104.7 FM.

The lease agreement lets RM Broadcasting air its programming from 6 to 9 a.m. and 6 to 9 p.m. seven days a week. KCXL’s website, which says that it’s the radio station that will “tell you the things that the liberal media wont (sic) tell you,” lists Radio Sputnik in its morning programming.
[…]
Sputnik, along with Russian television outlet RT — formerly Russia Today — “contributed to the influence campaign by serving as a platform for Kremlin messaging to Russian and international audiences,” the DNI [Director of National Intelligence ] intelligence assessment said.

Is it because of the Republicans ties to the mega-billionaires that they are so infatuated the Russian’s oligarchies? Is that the Republican dream? To turn the US in to an oligarchy?

Politifact reported that,

In 2015-16, Blavatnik’s [Len Blavatnik, a dual U.S.-U.K. citizen - he emigrated to the United States with his family in the late 1970s and returned to Russia in the late ’80s as the Soviet Union began to collapse.] contributions went to GOP PACs and top Republican leaders, including McConnell, according to FEC records.

In that cycle, his companies contributed over $6.3 million, with $2.5 million going to McConnell’s Senate Leadership Fund. In 2017, Blavatnik donated another $1 million to the committee, records show, bringing the total to $3.5 million.

Then we have…

NRA got more money from Russia-linked sources than earlier reported
Politico
By Josh Meyer
April 11,2018

The National Rifle Association reported this week that it received more money from people with Russian ties than it has previously acknowledged, but announced that it was officially done cooperating with a congressional inquiry exploring whether illicit Kremlin-linked funding passed through the NRA and into Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) said on Wednesday.

Wyden released a letter from the NRA, dated Tuesday, in which the gun rights group reported receiving $2,512.85 in contributions and membership dues “from people associated with Russian addresses” or known Russian nationals living in the United States from 2015 to the present. In the past, a congressional aide to Wyden said, the group had confirmed receiving only one financial contribution, in the form of a lifetime membership purchased by Alexander Torshin, a Russian banker.

Then there is…

Maria Butina Pleads Guilty to Role in a Russian Effort to Influence Conservatives
The New York Times
By Matthew Rosenberg
December 13, 2018


WASHINGTON — To the conservative Americans she courted, Maria Butina was the right kind of Russian.

She loved guns and the church and networking with top officials in the National Rifle Association. She schmoozed with Republican presidential candidates, and became a supporter of Donald J. Trump. She spent Thanksgiving at a congressman’s country house, took a Trump campaign aide to see the rock band Styx and helped a Rockefeller heir organize “friendship dinners” with influential Washingtonians.

On Thursday, Ms. Butina, 30, pleaded guilty to a single charge of conspiring to act as a foreign agent in a deal with federal prosecutors. In doing so, she acknowledged that her activities were motivated by more than mere personal conviction.

As part of the deal, Ms. Butina admitted to being involved in an organized effort, backed by Russian officials, to open up unofficial lines of communication with influential Americans in the N.R.A. and in the Republican Party, and to win them over to the idea of Russia as a friend, not a foe.

And it looks like it worked.

The investigation has focused on Aleksandr P. Torshin, a Russian government official who worked closely with Ms. Butina for years. Mr. Torshin is close to Christian conservatives in Russia and has been attending N.R.A. conventions in the United States since 2011.

The Christian conservatives… the enemy of my enemy is my friend, Russia is strongly anti-LGBTQ and xenophobic and makes a good match for the Christian conservatives.

We have seen the Republican’s stalling the investigation of the Russian influence in our 2016 elections and their continued interference on our politics.

This was written back in 2017…

How the GOP Became the Party of Putin
Republicans have sold their souls to Russia. And Trump isn’t the only reason why.
Politico
By James Kirchick
July 18, 2017

[…]
None of this should surprise anyone who paid attention during last year’s campaign. Trump Sr., after all, explicitly implored Russia to hack Clinton’s private email server. He ran as the most pro-Russian candidate for president since Henry Wallace helmed the Soviet fellow-traveling Progressive Party ticket in 1948, extolling Vladimir Putin’s manly virtues at every opportunity while bringing Kremlin-style moral relativism to the campaign trail. Worst of all, GOP voters never punished him for it. This is what they voted for.

Nor was Trump Jr. the only Republican to seek Russian assistance against Clinton. In May, the Wall Street Journal reported that a Florida Republican operative sought and received hacked Democratic Party voter-turnout analyses from “Guccifer 2.0,” a hacker the U.S. government has said is working for Russia’s intelligence services. The Journal has also reported that Republican operative Peter W. Smith, who is now deceased, “mounted an independent campaign to obtain emails he believed were stolen from Hillary Clinton’s private server, likely by Russian hackers.”

This was in the Atlantic last month…

The Russification of the Republican Party
GOP lawmakers used to oppose the president’s embrace of Putin and the Kremlin. Not anymore.
By Ronald Brownstein
December 5, 2019

Just how far will Republicans go in following President Donald Trump’s embrace of Russia? An answer may be crystallizing as the GOP mobilizes its defense of the president against impeachment.

Both congressional Republicans and conservative commentators are defending Trump from impeachment partly by accusing Ukraine of intervening against him in the 2016 presidential election—despite repeated warnings from national-security and intelligence officials that those claims are not only baseless, but advance Vladimir Putin’s goal of discrediting Ukraine.

Earlier in Trump’s presidency, many Republicans sought to distance themselves from his warm tone toward Putin. But just this week alone, a number of Republican lawmakers, the official House Republican report rebutting impeachment, and the Fox News host Tucker Carlson have repeated Kremlin lines on Ukraine.

This flurry of GOP rhetoric comes as Democrats are raising alarm about the Republican-controlled Senate’s refusal to take action on the DETER Act, a bipartisan bill that would impose sanctions on Russia if it interferes again in 2020.

The Republican party is no longer the party of the fifties and sixties, the new Republican party is a divisive and drives a wedge between us, they are after only one thing… POWER. Power for their oligarchical masters.
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