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How ‘America First’ MAGA turned the Republican Party into an ‘arm of the Kremlin’
President Trump’s recent attack on Volodymyr Zelensky sees GOP accused of parroting Vladimir Putin’s talking points, Joe Sommerlad reports
www.independent.co.uk
Donald Trump’s Oval Office attack on Ukraine’s president last month appeared to mark a very public realignment of America’s sympathies - away from Europe and towards Russia in a manner that few could have imagined during the Cold War years.
The Republican Party, now dominated by Trump’s “America First” MAGA movement, once considered the former Soviet Union “the evil empire” under Ronald Reagan and relished its collapse.
Today, the GOP stands accused of parroting Vladimir Putin’s rhetoric and some even refuse to admit the plain fact that Moscow began the war by invading its neighbor.
The White House itself has even been branded “an arm of the Kremlin” by Democratic Senator Chris Murphy, a dramatic about-turn just weeks into the luxury real estate mogul’s second presidency.
“Every single day, you hear from the national security adviser, from the president of the United States, from his entire national security team, Kremlin talking points,” Murphy told CNN’s State of the Union in the wake of the Zelensky episode.
Perhaps even more damning was the assessment of Putin’s own spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, who said with a grin on state television: “The new administration is rapidly changing all foreign policy configurations. This largely aligns with our vision.”
With hindsight, the break with Zelensky – which was swiftly followed by the White House cutting off all American aid to Ukraine and demanding a public apology in exchange for peace negotiations on Trump’s terms – was a culmination, not a sudden new development.
This president has consistently celebrated authoritarians like Putin, Xi Jinping of China, Viktor Orban of Hungary and North Korea’s Kim Jong-un as “tough” and “smart”, recognising their shared taste for power and similarly transactional approach to international relations. But it is the Russian leader who has cast the longest shadow over Trump’s political project.