“The Middle East entering uncharted territory (short of full-blown war) is the best that can happen to Putin now,” Hanna Notte, a senior associate with the Europe, Russia, and Eurasia Program at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, wrote on X, formerly Twitter in a Radio Free Europe report.
Russia has had a longstanding and well-documented relationship with Hamas.
“Throughout the Cold War, the Soviet Union approached the Middle East through a rigid ideological lens. The KGB-the Soviet security agency—funded, trained, advised and equipped anti-Western terrorists and militant groups in the region, including groups that saw the destruction of Israel as their primary goal.
Reportedly, Russian propaganda has “infected a good chunk” of the Republican Party base. And that base carries over into state houses and state senates across the nation.
The threat of withholding aide to Ukraine came to a head last month after a large portion of the Republican Party’s base lined up against funding Ukraine and in favor of the puzzlingly support of Russia. In Arizona, some Republican state legislators were against funding for Ukraine.
Some in the more moderate GOP are pushing back.
House Intelligence Committee chair Mike Turner said in a CNN interview last month that Russian propaganda has “absolutely” seeped its way to Congress, saying some of his Republican colleagues have repeated false claims on the chamber’s floor.
“It is absolutely true we see, directly coming from Russia, attempts to mask communications that are anti-Ukraine and pro-Russia messages, some of which we even hear being uttered on the House floor,” the Ohio Republican told CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union.”
And Michael McCaul, the Texas Republican who chairs the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told Puck News last month that Russian propaganda is responsible for the “infection of a good chunk” of the Republican’s party base and the threat to Ukraine aid along with the divisive vote to oust Speaker Johnson after he along with every Democrat supported aid to Ukraine.
Asked about that propaganda comment by Tapper earlier this month, Rep. Mike Turner of Ohio, who chairs the House Intelligence Committee also agreed.
“Oh, it is absolutely true,” he said.
Former Rep. Liz Cheney, the Republican from Wyoming, known for her opposition to former President Donald Trump has referred to the “Putin wing” of the GOP as a threat to the US.
The divide between Republicans is stark.
Many are ready to elect Trump at all costs, others are worried about the Republican Party they once knew and are trying to hold on to the former GOP tenets they believe in.
Thomas Massie of Kentucky praised Tucker Carlson for the softball interview the former Fox
News host conducted with Russian President Vladimir Putin earlier this year.
An interview CNN’s media team described as a “propaganda victory” for Putin.
Arizona’s own record of antisemitism among Trump’s MAGA leaders
What would Donald Trump’s foreign policy look like if he were elected?
Americans may not want to there.
Shortly after the assault on Israel by Hezbollah, a designated terrorist organization, Trump complimented the intelligence of the attackers.
“You know, Hezbollah is very smart,” Trump said. “They’re all very smart.”
Trump’s long-time buddy, Vladimir Putin doesn’t hide his allegiance to Hamas and offers no apologies for backing Hamas—in fact, the game of using state sponsored media through major social media platforms in order to support and elevate Hamas is coming straight from Russia, Iran, China and others that have allied themselves with Hamas including Lebanon, Syria and Iraq and the extremist groups al-Qaida and the Islamic State.
“Iran, Russia and, to a lesser degree, China have all used state media and the world’s major social networking platforms to support Hamas and undercut Israel, while denigrating Israel’s principal ally—the United States.”
Putin must be salivating at a possible Trump win.
Putin himself met with Hamas leaders after the war began, described the wars in Ukraine and Israel as part of the same broad struggle against American global dominance. He also claimed, without evidence, that “Western intelligence services” were behind a riot Sunday that targeted Jews at the airport in Dagestan, a predominantly Muslim region in southern Russia.
According to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, “Where advantageous to its interests, the Kremlin has happily ignored or even worked with organizations labeled as terrorist, such as in Afghanistan, where the Taliban now shares a cordial rapport with Moscow.
In the case of Hamas, Moscow has long cozied up to the group, declining to designate it as a terrorist organization as many other countries have done, even after the October 7 attacks, and making clear that it is loath to sever contact with Hamas.
A year later, according to the Endowment for International Peace, Putin hosted Hamas’s then leader, Khaled Mashal, in Moscow, receiving praise from Mashal for his “courage and manliness.” Putin was thanked again by Hamas after the October 7 attacks, this time for his “position regarding the ongoing Zionist aggression against our people.”
And then there’s our own Arizona home-grown candidates who have backed antisemitic politicians and other candidates and have used antisemitic language in speeches at rallies during the mid-term elections.
Lake, Finchem, Masters, Hamadeh, are all on the record with antisemitic rhetoric, but at the helm is 66-year old Sen. Wendy Rogers, the woman who is anxiously waiting to “build the gallows” for what she describes as America’s “Christian” enemies.
In an Arizona Republic column, Laurie Roberts writes that Maricopa County Supervisors Chairman Bill Gates and Vice Chairman Clink Hickman lambasted Rogers and called on business, community and political leaders to speak out against Rogers.
“Rogers baselessly declares that everyone who doesn’t support her conspiracy theories and beliefs is a Soros puppet, a traitor or a communist,” they said, in a joint statement.
She has made clear what her beliefs are: She asserts that we should ‘hang’ our political opponents and those we disagree with. She embraces anti-Semitic, racist and homophobic rhetoric. She apologizes for Putin and condemns our allies … .”
Rogers was censured in 2022 by some Arizona Republicans, not for her antisemitism and repeated antisemitic bigoted rhetoric, but rather her advocacy of violence against Americans.
She applauded Nick Fuentes, “a known Holocaust denier who notes that people are comparing Russian President Vladimir Putin to Adolph Hitler, “as if that isn’t a good thing.” Fuentes has been labeled a white supremacist by both the Department of Justice and the Anti-Defamation League.”
“When we do take back our god-given rights we will bring these criminals to justice. I’ve said we need to build more gallows,” Rogers told the America First Political Action Committee in a video quoted by VICE.
“If we try some of these high-level criminals, convict them and use a newly built set of gallows, it’ll make an example of these traitors who have betrayed our country.
Jewish organizations have blasted Rogers for a series of social media posts in which she repeatedly attacks “anti-Christian” bankers and names both Soros and the Rothschild family—both seen as targets of anti-Semites.
Reportedly, Rogers not only peddles the fiction that the 2020 election was stolen from President Trump, but suggests those who fail to believe that lie and other delusions should be hanged.
Trump may have gone too far with his rhetoric after the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel.
His remarks, so debase, that the Anti-Defamation League, a Jewish advocacy group, “saw echoes of Nazi rhetoric.”
“Nobody has any idea where these people are coming from, and we know they come from prisons, we know they come from mental institutions, insane asylums, we know they’re terrorists,” Trump told the conservative news site, The National Pulse. “Nobody has ever seen anything like we’re witnessing right now. It is a very sad thing for our country. It’s poisoning the blood of our country.”
The “poisoning the blood of our country” that Trump told the news site is eerily reminiscent of Hitler’s infamous words and actions that Jews were “causing a blood poisoning of Germany.”
But Arizonans are accustomed to the Trump MAGA white nationalists and their antisemitic language and code words used for white supremacy that echoed across the state during the midterms and accompanied by some frightening allegiances.
During the campaigns Arizonans witnessed Trump MAGA candidates unapologetically use antisemitic rhetoric and code references of antisemitism over and over again in their event and rally speeches.
“There is a tidal wave of Republican antisemitism growing in this state and it’s alarming,” said longtime Valley business owner and member of the Jewish community who spoke on the condition of anonymity over fear of personal threats and safety.
