John Bolton Being Mean To Newsmax Idiots Who Say Trump Was Tough On Russia
Still mad that he wasn't mean about this during Donald Trump's impeachment trial.
Let's be clear about something. John Bolton is an ass, and when we hear his voice, we prefer it to be in a room testifying to Congress in the impeachment of Donald Trump for extorting the nation of Ukraine to do his dirty work in exchange for the missiles Ukraine desperately needs to defend itself from Russia. Remember? Bolton famously called it a "drug deal" that then-EU Ambassador Gordon Sondland and then-(acting)-Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney were "cooking up."
But that bird has flown, and oh look, the entire world is getting a dreadful show-and-tell lesson about what that impeachment was all about right now. This means Bolton is going on Newsmax and giving the Trump-sucking hosts purple nurples with his big mustache — it's a very acrobatic mustache move! — when they try to say Donald Trump was tough on Russia, and we guess we'll just have to be OK with that.
And yeah, it's kinda funny. This Bolton guy woulda been great performing for Congress!
John Bolton pushes back on Newsmax host: "[Trump] barely knew where Ukraine was...It's just not accurate to say that Trump's behavior somehow deterred the Russians"pic.twitter.com/ICRmmeJ8C3— Jason Campbell (@Jason Campbell) 1646145305
The chirping dipshit (whose name is Rob Schmitt, apparently) chirped that "there is something to be said, though, about the simple fact that there was not aggression" from Russia during the Trump administration. Then he tried to make a list of ways Trump was "tough on Russia," as if we weren't all there to watch Trump start drooling whenever he got to be around Vladimir Putin, or literally look at a camera and ask Putin to help him steal the 2016 election. As if we didn't see all the myriad ways Trump bent over backward to satisfy Putin's every whim.
The chirping dipshit even included in his list that Trump "[sold] anti-tank weapons to Ukraine," which is the thing Trump used to extort Ukraine to help him steal the 2020 election. What immense stupidity.
So John Bolton helped him out. When Schmitt said, "He took a very tough stance against Russia," Bolton had had enough.
"No he didn't," said Bolton. "He did not. He didn't sanction Nord Stream 2. We didn't sanction Nord Stream 2. We should have. We should have brought the project to the end. We did impose sanctions on Russian oligarchs," but Bolton explained that "in almost every case, the sanctions were imposed with Trump complaining about it, saying we were being too hard."
BOLTON: The fact is, he barely knew where Ukraine was. He once asked John Kelly, his second chief of staff, if Finland were part of Russia. It's just not accurate to say that Trump's behavior somehow deterred the Russians.
Oh god, the Finland thing. That's even scarier right now, because Putin is on an invasion spree and Finland, which is on Russia's border, is not a NATO nation. (That might change fast in the coming months.)
As the dipshit host keeps chirping, Bolton expresses that he thinks Putin may have waited to invade because his military wasn't ready. That's possible. It's also possible Tom Nichols nailed it right here last week while being mean to Hugh Hewitt:
"Why didn't Putin complicate the life of a president who was already his lap dog," asks the guy who's now making a career out of pretending not to understand thingshttps://twitter.com/hughhewitt/status/1494836050639818754\u00a0\u2026— Tom Nichols (@Tom Nichols) 1645487340
Yeah.
Fun seeing John Bolton's big face hair on Newsmax, though, let's do this again sometime!
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Ron Johnson Knows Who's Responsible For Ukraine Invasion, And It Is Democrats
It's your Sunday shows rundown!!
Conservatives are having a weird time responding to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
In the last five days, many GOP/rightwing media types have gone from praising Vladimir Putin and trying to justify the invasion to now suddenly trying to Ctrl-Alt-Del all their earlier talking points, in order to try to be on the right side of history, allegedly. Let's see how it's going!
Fox News's 'Sunday Morning Futures'
Wisconsin GOP Senator and Moscow 4th Of July vacationer Ron Johnson was on with Maria Bartiromo this weekend. Considering Johnson's history of laundering so much Russian misinformation that the FBI tried in vain to get him to stop, it was kind of surprising when Johnson released this statement that called out Putin without blaming anyone else:
There is only one group of people responsible for the tragedies unfolding \u2013 Putin and his cronies. Europe must act with strength and resolve to prevent risking a wider conflict, and the U.S. must support our NATO allies and freedom loving people in this moment of extreme peril.pic.twitter.com/LWevHQf7v1— Senator Ron Johnson (@Senator Ron Johnson) 1645717313
That, however, did not last long.
Johnson blamed some new people on the Maria Bartiromo show.
Ron Johnson blames Vindman, Pelosi, and Adam Schiff for weakening Ukraine with Trump\u2019s impeachmentpic.twitter.com/61KmZlFy7W— Acyn (@Acyn) 1645976687
Alexander Vindman, Adam Schiff, and Nancy Pelosi all "weakened" Ukraine by whistleblowing and impeaching Donald Trump for extorting Ukraine for political favors, in exchange for the military aid we can all now see how desperately Ukraine needs?
So that was embarrassing.
'Fox News Sunday'
Staying on Fox News, former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice appeared on the Chris Wallace-less Sunday show.
Rice, while trying to make a point about Russia's invasion, said this thing that was true, and was also true when the US invaded Iraq in 2003.
FAULKNER: Well, I've argued that when you invade a sovereign nation, that is a war crime. I mean...I think we are at just a real basic...basic point there.
RICE: Well...I'd...I'd...it is certainly against every principle of international law and international order.
Maybe a Bush administration official who was there during the "shock and awe" invasion of Iraq under false pretenses might want to rethink calling out war crimes. Not because they weren't war crimes, because they were, but because it seems a bit like throwing stones in a glass house.
So that was embarrassing.
ABC's 'This Week'
Not everybody has the courage to condemn Donald Trump's adoring comments about Vladimir Putin.
Here's Arkansas GOP senator and second-place winner in an Ichabod Crane Lookalike Contest Tom Cotton.
Sen. Tom Cotton refuses to condemn former Pres. Trump\u2019s praise of Russian leader Vladimir Putin when repeatedly pressed by @GStephanopoulos.\n\n\u201cI don't speak on behalf of other politicians, they can all speak for themselves," Cotton says. https://abcn.ws/3hktLK0\u00a0pic.twitter.com/H8rvN7JBcp— This Week (@This Week) 1645984019
So that was embarrassing.
CBS's 'Face The Nation'
Wyoming GOP Rep. Liz Cheney reminded people that there is no good Republican. In light of the current events, Margaret Brennan asked if Cheney regretted her vote not to impeach Trump when he extorted Ukraine in his first impeachment (it can't be said enough that Trump was impeached twice).
Cheney says she does not regret voting against impeaching Trump after he tried to extort the Ukrainian governmentpic.twitter.com/wCGrWyHZDi— Aaron Rupar (@Aaron Rupar) 1645977706
CHENEY: I don't regret my vote, I think any impeachment vote has got to be one that is based very clearly on- on the evidence.
So that was embarrassing.
CNN's "State Of The Union"
We conclude with Utah GOP Senator Mitt Romney, who to his credit had something correct to say about GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and other Republicans attending the white nationalist pep rally and expressing their love for Putin:
"Look, there is no place in either political party for this White nationalism or racism. It's simply wrong ... it's evil as well," Romney told CNN's Dana Bash on "State of the Union." "(Rep.) Marjorie Taylor Greene and (Rep.) Paul Gosar, I don't know them, but I'm reminded of that old line from the 'Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid' movie where - where one character says, 'Morons, I've got morons on my team.' And I have to think anybody that would sit down with White nationalists and speak at their conference was certainly missing a few IQ points."
Couldn't say it better myself.
Have a week.
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Person. Woman. Man. Camera. Trump Hannity Interview.
Wow.
Former president Donald Trump called in to Sean Hannity's Fox News Lie Jamboree Hour last night, and we suppose the real news is that we managed to watch most of it without even puking once. Yay for us. Lucky you, it's not on YouTube so we will not be embedding the video.
The Great Man was purportedly there to talk about Joe Biden's news conference Wednesday, but honestly, it was just another chance for Trump to repeat the same old lies he always does, with Hannity from time to time jumping in to try to keep Trump on some sort of train of thought. The thing about trains, though — Joe Biden loves trains, I never much cared for them because you have to go where the tracks are and the environmentalists think trains are great, I never understood what they're getting at because in Japan you have those really fast trains, but Amtrak is a mess because the government never does anything right.
Scary how after four years we can all do that.
Trump said he really truly hoped Biden would do well, because America needs to do well, but instead everything is terrible, and also Trump was glad the US is finally out of Afghanistan, although if it had been up to him, we'd have left Afghanistan better and we should have kept Bagram Air Base. Which, if you want to get technical about it, would have meant the US would still be in Afghanistan.
Hannity tried to steer back to what a gracious fellow Trump is, complimenting him on how nice it is that Trump so sincerely wants Biden to do well. But the thing is, Hannity said, Biden is just no good at accepting criticism and acting on it, and that's very frustrating. In fact, he said, Biden seems
locked into every one of these failed policies. So, you know, you know, you keep banging your head against the wall. Why would you expect a different result?
The very smart former president of the US apparently is unfamiliar with simple English idioms, so he thought Hannity had to be talking about an actual WALL, like Donald Trump's greatest achievement.
That, or he just heard the word "wall" and it triggered a Pavlovian response. We're especially fond of the long silence before Trump answers.
lmaopic.twitter.com/xf9sSjtqGa— Aaron Rupar (@Aaron Rupar) 1642732609
TRUMP: So we would have had the wall completed in three weeks. It was largely completed. We did almost 500 miles of wall and the southern border. It was really working, it really had an impact.
He just couldn't stop talking about what a wonderful job he'd done with WALL and immigration, before Biden ruined everything, and now the US is full of immigrants and nobody respects America anymore, and did he mention Afghanistan?
OK we really need you to to strap in if you're going to stick with us here. Are you in your comfortable chair? Are you ready to follow the bouncing Trump literally wherever it goes? Because we're going to follow it. We're doing this.
OK.
Continuing with his sharp expertise on foreign policy, Trump said if he were still in office, you wouldn't have any problems in Ukraine, not that Trump ever had any misadventures involving Ukraine or anything. Also, he predicted, as soon as the Winter Olympics are over, China might just invade Taiwan, and also something something Kim Jong-un and Iran, and we could have had a deal with Iran in just one week if Trump were still president.
It's really impressive how he was "president" for four years but never got around to that stuff that would have only taken a week or three.
Hannity suggested that if Trump were boss, he'd bankrupt Russia by drilling all the oil and sending it to Europe, and he'd stop China by banning all imports of Chinese goods. That'd learn 'em. Trump explained that the real beauty of his term was that he made China pay us "hundreds of billions" in tariffs (which were actually paid by US buyers, not a cent from China). and he wouldn't let Russia ever do anything bad in Ukraine, and we would by God go to war over Ukraine maybe, and why are gas prices so high now, huh?
We pity anyone who might actually try to transcribe any of that nonsense.
Trump explained that gasoline now costs over five dollars a gallon, and in California it's over seven, which is completely true if you add two or three dollars to the actual price. You might as well, because inflation is so bad that by the time I finish typing this, gas will be three hundred dollars a gallon probably. Also, WALL.
Hannity went on to explain how Biden's economy is terrible, and Trump agreed that nobody respects us, all our allies hate us instead of respecting us, and also Afghanistan a third or fourth time, and no Americans died in Afghanistan in 18 months when he was president, and then at the airport, the bombing, and we lost 13 soldiers and "many many wounded, horribly wounded, with legs and arms horribly wounded, the way they got out, and the list, the people, that the plane left ..."
Hannity, continuing that laserlike focus on Biden's economy, then praised Trump for threatening the Taliban with being "wiped out" if they misbehaved. And then Trump said that he would have taken every single American truck and tank and gun out of Afghanistan so the Taliban wouldn't have them.
This would presumably include the military equipment the Afghan military abandoned when it surrendered to the Taliban. I guess the idea is that they never could have surrendered it if the US had seized it first. Can't see any problems with that plan. Also, he wouldn't have abandoned the American "hostages" in Afghanistan, by which we suppose he must mean the US citizens who stayed behind because they couldn't get visas for their Afghan family members to come to the US. We all know how eager Trump was to keep Americans and their noncitizen families together.
In any case, Trump eventually caught up with the question about the economy, and noted that the US economy was in great shape before Biden took office, at least as long as you ignore the final year of Trump's term, which Trump certainly did. America was pretty much a paradise when Trump was president.
"It was a joyous time because our country did so well," even with all the hoaxes Hillary perpetrated to ruin him. But then the "China virus" arrived and Trump solved that too by personally formulating the vaccines, but no mandates, because "the mandates are killing this country." And also all the judges Trump appointed, it was a beautiful time.
That made Hannity want to talk about energy, which for some reason made Trump want to talk about the crisis at the border again, and Afghanistan a fourth or fifth time.
Are you all still OK out there? Anybody need to stop and get a snack?
Somewhere in there Trump also explained that the windmills are actually ruining the atmosphere and killing the birds and they're so ugly, just big rusty noisy hulks everywhere and killing the birds, and did you know wind is the "most expensive form of energy" also? Do we need to point out that's a lie, too? Wind is in fact the least expensive source of energy today. Or so the fake wind energy media say.
Trump claims "windmills" are ruining "the atmosphere"pic.twitter.com/nFq6caAMC2— Aaron Rupar (@Aaron Rupar) 1642733549
Other highlights of the interview included Trump lying about January 6 again (very loving people, and Nancy Pelosi didn't protect the Capitol), and some additional bragging about how he did so great on his cognitive test, no way can Joe Biden point to "camel" as well as Donald Trump did, person woman man camera TV!
Weirdly, Trump and Hannity never once got around to those text messages in which Hannity warned that Trump should never say "stolen election" again, or the others where he said Trump had to tell his supporters to get the hell out of the Capitol. That might have gotten in the way of all the pressing discussion of Afghanistan and WALL.
In conclusion we are willing to trade some of the nonstop joy we felt during the Trump years for a president who is not completely out of his fucking gourd.
[Fox News / New York / Daily Beast / Aaron Rupar on Twitter]
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Wyoming GOP Votes To Oust Liz Cheney For Crimes Against Trump
Who needs congressional representation anyway, right?
Remember those days when the GOP mocked Democrats as the cult of Obama? And now a big part of their base is a literal cult which doses itself with horse paste and rejects modern science? Good times!
Rep. Liz Cheney is the latest casualty in Republicans' descent ever deeper into madness, with her own state party voting to expel her from its ranks for crimes against Trump most foul. The Casper Star-Tribune reports that the Wyoming GOP Central Committee voted Saturday 31-29 to cease recognizing the party membership of the state's only Representative in the US House.
In February, the party voted to censure Cheney for her impeachment vote. Then in August the Republican parties of Park and Carbon counties voted unanimously to boot Cheney for her role in the January 6 investigation, passing a resolution which falsely blamed Antifa and Black Lives Matter for provoking rioters to overrun the Capitol.
"Representative Elizabeth Lynne Cheney, will officially no longer be personally recognized by the Carbon County Republican Party as a 'REPUBLICAN' Representative," they wrote, in the non-binding document.
"In short, and in the immortal words of the 45th President of the United States of America, Donald J. Trump...'You're Fired!'" they concluded, and no we're not "joking," they literally did that. Because these are very serious people.
And indeed that seriousness was on display this weekend in Buffalo, Wyoming, as the Central Committee convened to grunt and shout and show that little lady who's boss.
"Previously mentioned in the resolution of censure, Representative Liz Cheney 'cast her vote in favor of impeachment without any quantifiable evidence of High Crimes or Misdemeanors,'" they wrote. "As to date, no quantifiable and or undisputed evidence has been offered Representative Liz Cheney to defend her questionable decision."
No quantifiable or undisputed evidence of BLM or Antifa's involvement was offered either, but the Committee nonetheless included them in its resolution.
"To further her own personal political agenda, Representative Liz Cheney has not only caused massive disruption, distraction and division within the House Republican Conference, but has also willingly, happily, and energetically joined forced with and proudly pledged allegiance to democrat Speaker of the House Pelosi, as a means of serving her own personal interests while ignoring the interests, needs and expectations of Wyoming Republicans," they huffed, refusing to even capitalize "democrat," because OOOH, SICK BURN!
The resolution concluded by calling on Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy to ensure that their tiny state lose any vestige of power in the lower house of Congress: "House Republican Conference Leadership immediately remove Representative Liz Cheney from all committee assignments and the House Republican conference itself, to assist and expedite her seamless exodus from the Republican Party."
As for Cheney, who knows she'll have a tough fight on her hands next November, she wasn't backing down.
"It's laughable to suggest Liz is anything but a committed conservative Republican," her spokesman Jeremy Adler told the Star-Tribune. "She is bound by her oath to the Constitution. Sadly, a portion of the Wyoming GOP leadership has abandoned that fundamental principle, and instead allowed themselves to be held hostage to the lies of a dangerous and irrational man."
But hostages are generally held against their will. And the Wyoming GOP — indeed the entire Republican Party writ large — appears to be willing participants in this nutbaggery, eagerly prostrating itself to a spray-tanned charlatan who parades himself as an avatar of masculinity while embodying every sin and weakness they claim to despise.
Let's call it what it is. It's a cult, and they're shunning an apostate. But if the GOP wants to stick a shiv in one of their most effective leaders, who are we to stop 'em.
[Casper Star-Tribune / Casper Star-Tribune]
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