Like A Delegation From A Vassal State, GOP Leaders Get Marching Orders From Kremlin

It was remarkable, to say the least, to see a large delegation of Republican Senators meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Moscow on the very day that that the Senate Intelligence Committee released an interim report confirming that the Russians interfered in our election for the benefit of Donald Trump. What's even more remarkable is that the delegation was far less interested in defending our democracy and far more interested in telling the Russians there was no reason for us to be adversaries.

Richard Shelby (AL) was the nominal head of the GOP delegation that included Ron Johnson (WI), Jerry Moran (KS), Steve Daines (MT), John Kennedy (LA), John Thune (SD), John Hoeven (ND) and Rep. Kay Granger (TX). Beyond the extraordinarily unusual composition of the delegation that specifically excluded Democrats was the fact that the majority of the delegation were members of the Senate Appropriations Committee that primarily deals with US budgetary matters, not foreign policy. Besides Ron Johnson, there were no members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee or the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Moreover, the delegation came to Russia acting like members of a vassal state seeking the indulgences of their masters. The delegation had basically begged to meet with Putin but was informed that he would be unavailable when they finally arrived in Moscow. Shelby declared that, despite the Russian attack on the US, the countries "don’t necessarily need to be adversaries". Before the trip, Shelby basically justified the Russian attack by saying "We have to be realistic nations are going to do what is in their next [sic] interest; we’ve done a lot of things too." The Russians, for obvious reasons, reacted positively to the GOP delegation's message of letting bygones be bygones with one Duma member declaring that this was "one of the easiest” meetings he's ever had with Americans.

(I can't find a video of the meeting with Lavrov, but it really was a spectacle of supplication by these GOP Senators. Democrats need to use this video to show just how weak these guys actually looked, acted, and sounded. I can assure you that the GOP propaganda machine would be running those images night and day if these had been Democratic Senators.)

If it wasn't enough to have Republicans acting like representatives from a vassal state, Donald Trump has now demanded that one of his meetings with Putin at the upcoming summit in Helsinki exclude any US note-takers, staff, or note-takers, making it impossible for there to be any accurate record of the meeting. Putin, of course, is only too happy to oblige our narcissistic President in this request. Whether that's because Trump owes his job to Putin or because Putin saw how easily Trump got played by Kim Jong-un is actually irrelevant to actual American interests.

Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell stand idly by as their members actively sabotage an investigation into the Russian attack on our democracy. The administration has barely made a minimal effort to ensure that the attack will not be repeated in 2018 or 2020. Trump openly takes positions and actions that primarily benefit the Russians, from undermining the EU to threatening to abandon NATO. And now GOP Senators are declaring there is no need for an adversarial relationship with Russia, perhaps because Russia has already proven they are on the Republicans' side. It really makes you wonder how much the Republican party, and not just Trump, benefited from the Russian intrusion into our election.