Donald Trump’s Putin-backed war against the Republican Party is coming, and it’s coming soon
The Republican Congress fired the first shot, and now Donald Trump has fired back today, making it official. We’re now in the early stages of an intramural war between Trump and his own Republican Party. And we’re about to see what depths they’re each willing to sink to, in the name of trying to survive by taking it out on the other.
It began when the Republican-majority Senate passed a bill taking away Donald Trump’s ability to ease U.S. sanctions on Russia. Now the Republican-majority House has finally decided to hold its own vote on the bill, and it should easily pass with enough votes to override any Trump veto. The GOP knows as well as anyone that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s primary motivation for installing Trump in the White House was to get those sanctions lifted in personally profitable fashion. And so the Republican Party is hanging its own President out to dry when it comes to his Russian master. Not shockingly, Trump has begun taking out his frustrations on the Republicans.
Trump tweeted out this afternoon that “It’s very sad that Republicans, even some that were carried over the line on my back, do very little to protect their President” (link). Most of the public’s focus has been on the fact that he used the word “protect” instead of “defend,” as it’s usually only guilty people who are looking for political protection from their scandals. But the larger underlying meaning is the shift in posture that it represents.
Putin has clearly been pressuring Trump behind the scenes to defeat this sanctions bill. Trump can’t get the Republicans to go along with it, so he’s publicly attacking them. Once the bill passes, and Trump realizes he can’t keep Putin happy, he’ll declare full-scale war on the GOP. At that point, look for Putin to start burning whichever Republicans he’s holding dirt on, in an effort to punish the party for the sanctions bill. And this is where things will get really interesting.
Why does Republican Congressman Dana Rohrabacher act like he’s a Kremlin puppet? Why did Republican Speaker Paul Ryan hold up the sanctions vote as long as he did? Why did Republican Senate Leader Mitch McConnell work so hard to keep word of Russian interference becoming public during the election? What has Putin been holding over them? And what will leak out once he decides to begin punishing them? How many scandals and resignations might we end up seeing once it all hits the fan?
The Republican Party is rather clearly afraid of allowing Donald Trump to drop Russian sanctions, for fear they’ll be seen by the American people as complicit in Trump’s Russia scandal. After all, they have to worry about getting wiped out in the midterm races. But in a true no-win scenario, their decision to keep sanctions in place is leading Trump to declare war on them from within – and for now at least, Putin will take Trump’s side against the Republicans. But make no mistake: no one involved with this war will win.
