Pawns of Putin
By: Judd Garrett
Objectivity is the Objective
March 13, 2022
According to the Democrats and the media, anyone who does not support the United States of America engaging in a war with Russia in Ukraine is a “pawn of Putin” or a “Russian stooge”. So, if we do not want our sons and daughters maimed or killed defending Ukraine’s border while our border is being invaded by millions of foreign nationals from 84 different countries, then we must support Putin’s evil invasion of Ukraine. By that logic, everyone who does not want to invade China to liberate their Uyghur concentration camps must support China’s slavery and genocide. These days, very few political arguments pass basic logic. This tactic of trying to discredit people the Democrats disagree with by tying them to Vladimir Putin and Russia started during the 2016 Presidential campaign. Many Democrats and the mainstream media have tried to lead us to believe that Donald Trump was a “pawn of Putin”, a “Russian stooge”, or an agent of Russia, by pushing their false narrative that Trump colluded with the Russians to win the 2016 election.
This conspiracy theory never made sense because how could Vladimir Putin change the outcome of a United States Presidential election? Does Putin have that much control over our election system? Is our election system that unsecure? Did Putin have operatives break into our voting machines and change votes? Did Russian agents turn in fraudulent ballots? Are we Nicaragua, and is our CIA working for Putin? We were told after the 2020 election, that our elections are the most secure in the world, so now we are to believe that our election system went from one of the least secure in the world in 2016 to the most secure 4 years later simply by repealing the laws designed to ensure voter integrity? It is much more reasonable to believe that the Democrats exploited the pandemic to repeal the voter integrity laws in our country to commit voter fraud to steal the 2020 election, than it is to believe that a Presidential candidate colluded with a foreign enemy, Russia, to change the outcome of an election.
The Russian collusion conspiracy theory reminds me of the 9/11 truthers who believed that George W. Bush colluded with Osama Bin Laden to commit the worst terrorist act on American soil, killing over 3,000 U.S. citizens, so he would have an excuse to avenge his father’s victory against Iraq 10 years earlier, but then chose to use that terrorist attack as grounds to invade Afghanistan instead. The Democrats always choose the most sinister conspiracy theory rather than the most logical or believable one. But either way, multiple investigations, most notably the one conducted by Robert Mueller, have proven there is zero evidence to support the accusation Donald Trump or anyone in his campaign colluded with Russia. On the contrary, multiple investigations have shown it was Hilary Clinton who was colluding with the Russians when she paid for the fabrication of a false “Russian dossier” against Trump to try to sway the 2016 election in her favor.
But none of these facts have stopped the Democrats from pushing lies tying Republicans to Russia because that accusation has been used effectively to discredit any charge of wrongdoing against them. Every piece of evidence that comes out which exposes the Democrats’ corruption, i.e., the Hunter Biden laptop, Hilary Clinton spying on the Trump campaign, the Democrats dismiss as “Russian disinformation” knowing full well when their followers hear those two words together, they will nod along, and dismiss the accusation against them.
It is important to be clear on which side of the aisle the Russian apologists and enablers sit. Throughout the 1980s, while Ronald Reagan was fighting the cold war and bringing the Soviet Union to its knees, the Democrats opposed him every step of the way. They fought Reagan’s arms race with the Soviets and mocked his Strategic Defense Initiative. Ted Kennedy dismissed the program as “Star Wars”, and John Kerry called it “a dream based on illusion”. The Democrats supported a nuclear freeze as opposed to Reagan’s nuclear build-up which eventually caused the Soviet Union to collapse. After Reagan called on President Gorbachev to “tear down” the Berlin Wall, Democratic Speaker of the House Jim Wright claimed that Reagan had “spoiled the chance for a dramatic breakthrough in relations between our two countries.” And after Reagan labeled the Soviet Union as an “Evil Empire”, Ted Kennedy criticized him for using “misleading Red-scare tactics.”
But what the Democrats have done more recently has enabled and empowered Russia to do what it is doing now in Ukraine. On March 6, 2009, in Geneva, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton under Barack Obama, met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and presented him with a big red button with the word “reset” on it. It was a photo-op symbolizing a promise by the Obama administration to “push the reset button” on the relationship between the United States and Moscow creating a new beginning, a non-adversarial relationship. The Democrats led by Barack Obama wanted to recast Russia from the “evil Empire” that Reagan had dubbed them, into a co-equal partner. This approach of making nice with brutal dictators is similar to what Obama did with Castro and Cuba in 2015. He tried to change our adversarial relationship with Cuba and its evil dictator, and restore “fully normal relations between the United States and Cuba” which is also what his goal was with Russia.
On March 26, 2012, during a bilateral meeting at the Nuclear Security Summit in Seoul, South Korea, Barack Obama was caught on an open microphone telling outgoing Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to give a message to the incoming President, Vladimir Putin. He said, “On all these issues, but particularly missile defense, this can be solved, but it’s important for him [Putin] to give me space… This is my last election. After my election, I have more flexibility.” Medvedev responded, “I understand. I will transmit this information to Vladimir.”
During Obama’s first year in office, he canceled the missile-defense system which Poland and Czechoslovakia had previously agreed to host which were intended to deter Russian threats, and now, he was telling the Russian President that he would have even more “flexibility” on the remaining missile defense systems in Eastern Europe, all of which helped to open the door to Russian aggression in that region. That is a glimpse of how Obama operated – telling the American people that he wanted to keep the remaining missile defense system in Europe to contain Russian aggression, but when he thought no one was listening, he told the Russians, he would have more flexibility to draw down that missile defense system after his “last election”.
This is the type of behavior that makes most people cynical about our government. If Obama wanted to draw down our missile defense system in Europe, he should have told the American people on the campaign trail, so the voters would know what they are getting. Too many politicians tell the voters they will do one thing but are planning all along to do the exact opposite once they win the election. After his re-election, Obama removed the missile systems in East Europe, thus removing a major deterrence designed to prevent Russia from taking aggressive action against its neighbors.
A few months later, during one Presidential Debate, when Republican nominee, Mitt Romney, stated that our number one geopolitical foe in the world was Russia, the people on the left mocked him mercifully, and Barack Obama replied, “the 1980s are now calling for their foreign policy back. The cold war has been over for 20 years”. Almost predictably, in 2014, during Obama’s second term, Russia invaded Ukraine twice – annexing Crimea, and then invading the Donetsk and Luhansk regions in the eastern part of Ukraine – and Obama did absolutely nothing about it.
In 2014, while Joe Biden was Vice President, it was his son, Hunter, who received $3.5 million from a Russian Oligarch, Elena Baturina, the richest woman in Russia and the widow of Yury Luzhkov, the former mayor of Moscow, as part of a “financial relationship”. The precise details of their “relationship” have never been exposed or explained, nor has what the younger Biden did to warrant receiving that much money, and how Joe Biden was connected to that relationship. And as the media has been continually trying to tie Donald Trump, and every Republican to Russia, they remain conspicuously non-curious about the son of the current President’s multi-million-dollar relationship with a known Russian oligarch.
The first year of the Biden administration was almost like living in a dream for Vladimir Putin. It appeared that Biden was purposely emboldening Putin to do what has always hoped to do, take aggressive action in Eastern Europe, and rebuild the old Soviet Empire, the same Empire that Ted Kennedy, John Kerry, and Jim Wright wanted to normalize relations with because they did not see it as an “evil”. On Biden’s first days in office, he sanctioned America’s oil industry by closing pipelines and canceling drilling permits on federal land, and then a few months later, Biden removed the sanctions from Russia’s Nord Stream Pipeline which allowed Putin to transport his oil to the rest of Europe which has enriched, empowered, and enabled him to execute his invasion of Ukraine.
Every step along the way, it was the Democrats who sympathized with the Russians, offered them olive branches, and tried to normalize relations with them. The Democrats want to memory-hole all of their cozy relationships with Russia, while they continually push the false narrative that Republicans are Putin puppets. But the only friendly connections that Republicans have with Russia are the specious ones that the Democrats try to create in the media by claiming that any Republican accusation of wrongdoing against the Democrats them pushing “Russian disinformation”. But it has always been the Democrats who were soft on Russia because inherently their political worldview aligns with the Marxist ideology which has infected that country since the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, and is what Putin is trying to restore in Russia by rebuilding the Soviet Empire as we witness him invade Ukraine in 2022.
