Consider This from NPR - The Romance Between The American Right, Russia And Putin

Episode Date: February 15, 2024

For half a century, during the Cold War, every U-S president painted Russia as the dominant threat. America's ideological opposite, a hostile and nuclear-armed power. Ronald Reagan went so far as to call the Soviet Union an Evil Empire.So the events of recent days have been noteworthy. On top of a holdup of U-S aid for Ukraine, former President Trump said he might NOT come to the defense of a NATO ally who hadn't spent enough on defense.And Tucker Carlson, the erstwhile Fox news host, flew to Moscow to sit down with Vladimir Putin for more than two hours of mostly softball questions. Afterward, he pronounced Putin "impressive" on stage at the World Government Summit.So what gives? Why the romance between the American right and Russia?For sponsor-free episodes of Consider This, sign up for Consider This+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org. Email us at [e-mail]. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Democratic Senator Chris Murphy did not mince words when he told me about the importance of the foreign aid bill he just helped pass. The state of the world is at stake. The bill includes military aid to Taiwan and Israel and also tens of billions of dollars to Ukraine. to talk about the stakes being nothing less than potentially World War III, because if Vladimir Putin owns Ukraine, there is a real possibility he will move on to a NATO country that would drag the United States into a direct confrontation. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell agreed, and so did 21 of his Republican colleagues, who helped the measure pass by 70 votes to 29. It's never been about charity. Not about charity.

It's not about virtue signaling or abstract principles of international relations. This is about cold, hard American interests. But many Republicans are less enthusiastic about the bill, including the one who now controls its fate. Mike Johnson, the Speaker of the House, has in the past expressed almost the exact worry you just heard about the risk of allowing Vladimir Putin to prevail in Ukraine. But that was before former President Donald Trump attacked this foreign aid package on his social media platform and on the campaign trail. They want to give like almost a hundred billion dollars to a few countries, a hundred billion. And I said, I'm telling you, this is breaking news. We have breaking news. I said, why do we do this?

If you do, you give them not a hundred billion, you give it to them as a loan. As Speaker Johnson has the power to give the bill a vote, he has hinted he may not let it get to the floor. The whole episode has exposed a fracture in the Republican Party. On one side, Republicans who are increasingly skeptical of supporting Ukraine in its war with Russia. Some cite concerns about American interests. Others go as far as echoing Kremlin talking points, like Alabama Senator Tommy Tuberville did on the conservative Jeff Porcio this week. I feel sorry for Ukraine, but we forced this issue.

We kept forcing NATO all the way to Eastern Europe. And Putin just got tired of it. He said, listen, I do not want missiles on my border from the United States of America. On the other side of the divide are Republicans like Utah Senator Mitt Romney, who said this as he argued for the foreign aid package on the Senate floor. Now, I know that the shock jocks and online instigators have effectively riled up many in the far reaches of my party. But if your position is being cheered by Vladimir Putin, it's time to reconsider your position. Consider this. A slice of the American right has become openly admiring of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

And that admiration has consequences for American aid to Ukraine and for the future of democracy. From NPR, I'm Mary Louise Kelly. It's Thursday, from NPR. For half a century, during the Cold War, every U.S. president painted Russia as the dominant threat, America's ideological opposite, a hostile and nuclear-armed power. Ronald Reagan went so far as to call the Soviet Union an evil empire. Let us be aware that while they preach the supremacy of the state, declare its omnipotence over individual man, and predict its eventual domination of all peoples on the earth, they are the focus of evil in the modern world.

So the events of recent days have been newsworthy. On top of the Ukraine aid holdup, we heard Trump say he might not come to the defense of a NATO ally who hadn't spent enough on defense. One of the presidents of a big country stood up and said, well, sir, if we don't pay and we're attacked by Russia, will you protect us? I said, you didn't pay? You're delinquent? He said, yes. Let's say that happened. No, I would not protect you. In fact,

I would encourage them to do whatever the hell they want. You got to pay. You got to pay your bills. And Tucker Carlson, the erstwhile Fox News host, flew to Moscow to sit down with Vladimir Putin for more than two hours of mostly softball questions. Afterward, he pronounced Putin impressive on stage at the World Government Summit. It's the largest landmass in the world. And it's wildly diverse, linguistically, culturally, religiously. It's hard to run a country like that for 24 years,

whether you like it or not. So an incapable person couldn't do that. He is very capable. So what gives? Why the romance between the American right and Russia? Well, I put that question to Anne Applebaum. She wrote about it in a piece for The Atlantic headlined The False Romance of Russia. I want to begin by noting that this piece you wrote, it's coming up on five years old. It's from 2019. Have you as a longtime Russia watcher tracked any diminishment in the intervening years in American conservative admiration for Russia? No, on the contrary, I think the conservative party's romance with Russia has grown quite a bit deeper. This is now a party that is profoundly critical of the United States.

It doesn't like the diverse society that we've become. It doesn't like immigration. It doesn't like the kind of national conversation we have. And ironically, like the left of a previous generation, they've imagined that a better ideal version of our society exists in Russia, a kind of white Christian nation, you know, unified beneath a single leader without all this messy, ugly democracy and all these different kinds of people. And that's, I think, one of the roots of their admiration. So if I'm hearing you right, you're saying the answer to what is Russia's appeal to the American right is that Russia more closely resembles the country that some conservatives here in the U.S. wish we were living in, wish the United States were? Yes, I think that's right. The irony being, of course, that Russia isn't like that at

all. Russia is, if anything, more diverse than the U.S. Russia has a very large Muslim population. It's also a country that persecutes Protestant religions. Any religion other than two or three that are recognized, Judaism, Orthodoxy, and Catholicism, count as sects and cults and people can be arrested. So the irony is that the nation that they imagine it to be is, of course, quite a long way from what it is. How improbable a position is this? How big of a pivot is this for the party of Ronald Reagan? It's a pretty big pivot for the party of Ronald Reagan. Of course, the current Republican Party hasn't really been the party of Ronald Reagan for a long time. And its leadership and its ground movement, its base, now resemble much more isolationist parties of the much more distant past, the sort of pre-World War II era America. I mean, I should say that there is a precedent for this kind of imagining that Russia

is some kind of utopia, which is, you know, we had a version of that in the 1920s and 30s when a part of the American left imagined that the Soviet Union had solved all the problems and had found solutions to the problems that the left then saw in America. So this is not an entirely new problem. How much of this is personality driven? Like how much is about Vladimir Putin? Some of it's about Putin. I mean, I think more of it is really about Donald Trump. In a way, he made it okay to admire Russia because he admires Russia.

He said flattering things about Putin. Incidentally, he has said very flattering things about other autocrats. He admires Xi Jinping. He admires the leader of North Korea. As he uses that language, he was using it when he was president. You know, that I think has had a pretty transformative impact on the party. So a party that thought of itself as, you know, a leading voice for the promotion of democracy around the world now is very much in the thrall of autocracy. And I think that's Trump. Let me push you on this a little bit and ask, is some of the resistance, for example, to sending more military aid to Ukraine,

is some of this practical? I'm thinking of a comment that Senator J.D. Vance of Ohio, something he said, which is basically why keep throwing money at a war in Ukraine that Vladimir Putin appears committed to fighting for years. It is shameful to conduct foreign policy through blank check writing to never ending war. And it is extra shameful to do it while ignoring the problems of your own country. The answer to that is that you have to look at what happens if we don't do that. If Putin wins, if he takes over all of Ukraine, which is still his goal and which he's stated very recently in his conversation with Tucker Carlson is still his goal, then the military problem and the challenge to American allies and ultimately America itself becomes worse. So what we're paying now is a fraction

of what we will pay and the price that we will be forced to pay if Putin wins. You know, I should also say, I'm not sure Americans realize the degree to which the role of America as the security provider in Europe, in Asia, and elsewhere opens up other kinds of economic opportunities. And why do people buy American products? Why do they buy American energy equipment? Some of that big American investment, some of that is because it's felt in particularly smaller countries that, you know, we need to make some gesture in the direction of the United States. I mean, all that is, sounds a little fuzzy, but there's a very real economic advantage that we have from playing the role that we do. and how those are being projected in this conversation, the belief among conservative circles, some conservative circles, that America is too woke,

that progressives have lost their mind, and that Vladimir Putin, whatever you make of his policy in Ukraine or anywhere else, he doesn't abide that stuff in Russia. He wins elections. He doesn't tolerate dissent. He's photographed, you know, bare-chested riding great steeds through the fields, all of that. So he actually goes even a bit farther than that. So Putin intervenes very directly in American culture wars. So he talks about America having all these many different genders and America being degenerate. He talks about, you know, how homosexuality and trans people are making, you know, bringing down Europe and the United States. That's a big theme on Russian television. Sometimes Putin talks about it in public. He's talked about the U.S. as a satanic culture, you know, an anti-religious

culture. And some of that is, he may believe, and some of that is absolutely designed to appeal to the American right, the European right, and indeed traditionalist, you know, people and cultures around the world. I mean, as I say, a lot of it's a fiction. I mean, there's no evidence that Russia is particularly strong on family values when you look closely at statistics and how people live. But it does have an appeal in a world where, you know, social norms are changing very fast, where there's demographic change, there's economic change. And Putin uses this traditionalist language as a way of creating the impression that he's the leader of some kind of alternate civilization where things are more stable. And that's been very successful.

Anne Applebaum is a staff writer for The Atlantic. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And if you want more evidence that Putin is happy to stir the pot in American politics, here's some news that dropped after our interview. Putin was asked by Russian state TV whether a Biden win or Trump win in November would be better for Russia. Biden, he said, the more predictable old-school politician, in Putin's words. At about that Tucker Carlson interview, Putin said he had expected sharper questions. Quote, honestly speaking, I did not fully enjoy that interview. This episode was produced by Karen Zamora, Connor Donovan, and Mark Rivers. It was edited by Sarah Handel and

Courtney Dornan. Our executive producer is Sammy Yenigan. Connor Donovan, and Mark Rivers. It was edited by Sarah Handel and Courtney Dorning. Our executive producer is Sammy Yenigan. It's Consider This. From NPR, I'm Mary Louise Kelly.