Rep. Jamie Raskin took a whack at Republicans and Trump for accomplishing Putin’s bidding with blocking help to Ukraine. As I presently discussed here, Rep. Mike Turner was making an attempt to place a happy confront on that help building its way by means of the Residence this 7 days.
Raskin wasn’t so optimistic in the course of an job interview with MSNBC’s Jen Psaki, and did a wonderful task of laying out just who’s operating the present these times in the Republican occasion:
PSAKI: I know, we’ve also viewed this film just before, but ideal now, Residence Speaker Mike Johnson is combating to hold onto his gavel as the much right flank of the Republican Bash threatens to get it absent. And it suggests a whole lot about the Republican Bash that the just one individual Speaker Johnson believed could get him out of this pickle he’s in is Donald Trump.
It says even more about the Republican Occasion that the a single situation they figured everyone could truly rally all over is what they’re calling election integrity, which I am putting in prices since it essentially implies peddling conspiracy theories.
That is the excellent unifying concern, the glue which is preserving this party with each other. This time, Johnson and Trump pushed a monthly bill to continue to keep non-citizens from voting. Now that is presently unlawful, just so most people appreciates, and pretty uncommon.
So that must be great news to the adult men who are seemingly so involved about it. But of program, it truly is not definitely about this monthly bill. It is really about, once all over again, laying the groundwork ahead of the election to problem the effects if Trump isn’t going to like them.
And this focus on election interference seriously is so abundant coming from Mike Johnson, who himself was an enabler in attempting to enable overturn the 2020 election, coming from Donald Trump, who is actually heading on trial tomorrow for his endeavours to interfere in the 2016 election.
Joining me now is Democratic Congressman Jamie Raskin of Maryland. He’s the ranking Democrat on the Property Oversight Committee. So I will not even know how else to start off other than when you have been looking at, if you watched, or if you observed clips of Mike Johnson standing following to Donald Trump spouting lies about election integrity, what was heading by your head?
RASKIN: Effectively, you reminded me of Kevin McCarthy’s journey south to Mar-a-Lago, the $18 million palatial house Trump was bragging about, the place he was on bended knee, begging for Trump’s support in elevating money.
Johnson is on daily life assist in the Household due to the fact underneath the MAGA procedures, any person can shift to vacate the chair and generally topple the leadership just by unilateral direction. So Marjorie, Taylor Greene can do it, Matt Gaetz can do it, Jim Jordan can do it.
And so Trump likes getting Johnson more than the barrel due to the fact he controls them. And so, for illustration, on Ukraine assist, which is so central, Trump can maintain Johnson from bringing Ukraine to the floor. We are begging Johnson to deliver Ukraine help to the floor.
It would go overwhelmingly with sixty or 70 % of the votes. And so it usually means that Donald Trump is fundamentally steering the bus. And of course, the human being who’s steering Donald Trump is Vladimir Putin. It really is like Trump is the fourth department of federal government and Putin’s the fifth department of government.
And the Republicans cannot do something unless of course Trump approves it. And Trump can’t do nearly anything if his close friend, Vladimir Putin, won’t want him to.
PSAKI: Which is particularly why it can be not gonna be in the package now, that may possibly shift alone at last to the Household this week.
RASKIN: We’ve been wanting to vote for $61 billion pounds and support to the Ukrainian persons who are totally beneath the gun and outgunned and they need artillery and it truly is a quite dangerous condition right now.
Republicans are likely to come across some justification to test to block the help to Ukraine. How Democrats counter that remains to be seen.
