Why Conservatives Hate Ukraine feat. Rudy Giuliani

in American politics and in American kind of political culture. Obviously, I am recording this within a few hours of another attempted assassination on former President Trump, this one by a guy who, among a confusing milange of other things, claimed to be a major advocate of Ukrainian sovereignty and that that was a major reason why he was angry at the Republicans and angry at former President Trump, and kind of that at least failed assassination attempt is sort of

in line with a lot of derangement around Ukraine. And you can find this on the left and the right in the center. I've come to think that if you're trying to evaluate sort of how credible someone is as a geopolitical expert today, one of the best things you can do is kind of look back to early February twenty twenty two and see what sort of claims they were making about what was going to happen, whether or not Russia was actually going to go into Ukraine and

expand their invasion. And that's obviously, you know, a bigger topic than I think we're going to get into today. One of the things that I find really interesting when I kind of analyze how particularly conservatives have turned on the Ukrainian cause is how kind of incomprehensible that seems, just based on the way in which I was raised by the conservatives in my life to think about Russia

and to think about like Russian military aggression. You know, I grew up largely in the post Cold War era, but my parents were both like raised by Cold warriors. They mostly grew up on military bases, and I still grew up with an awful lot of the kind of Cold War shrapnel and my sort of ideological training. You know, the movie Read Dawn was a big part of my childhood. You know, some of those early James Bond movies where the Soviet Unions are still the bad guy. You know,

this was all major stuff for me. So it's been particularly disorienting kind of watching Philo Russian attitudes infiltrate the right and US move from this idea of like these people are one way or the other kind of a geopolitical opponent of the United States, towards these people are almost existing in an idealized version of the society we bring around. It's been a cause of some whiplash for me and for I think a lot of people who were raised in that environment and then kind of came

out of those ideological beliefs. And when we look at the kind of turnaround on the right about this stuff, one of the people who's been on the bleeding edge of this has been Vice presidential candidate JD.

was swiftly followed by others. Quote then Congressman Madison Cawthorn parrooted Russian propaganda by saying, the Ukrainian government is incredibly corrupt and is incredibly evil and has been pushing woke ideologies, and his colleague Marjorie Taylor Green called the Ukrainians neo Nazis. Fox News's Tucker Carlson was a constant font of bitter hostility towards USAID for Ukraine. Now Cawthorne was and remains

now a stooge. But I think it really is kind of drilling into the precise wording of his claim here, the fact that he's so focused on wokeness within the context of a conflict. But it seems much more serious than kind of the standard American culture war bullshit. A lot of why we're seeing this has to do with the fallout over the Russiagate culture war that consumed the

Democrats during the first half of the Trump administration. This led to the enemy of the enemy as my friends sort of thinking among the right, and this was stoked consciously by Russian propaganda efforts. After Trump left office, these efforts were redoubled, especially after the war in Ukraine became an existential issue for Putin's regime. A good example of the more obvious sort of messaging is this Moscow Times article from May of twenty twenty three, with the title

Russia to build migrant village for conservative American expats. Quote Timor Beslangarov, a migration lawyer at Moscow's Vista Foreign Business Support, claimed that around two hundred families wish to immigrate to Russia for ideological reasons. The reason is propaganda of radical values. Today they have seventy genders and who knows what will next.

Ria Novosti quoted Bessangorov as saying, echoing President Vladimir Putin's frequently deployed grievances against Western countries, comparative gender freedom, and here we see it again, the focus on hatred of

woke as a justification for solidarity with Russia. A sizable plurality of Americans still support the US sending aid to Ukraine, and the reality of Russia's invasion is hideous enough that the bulk of modern Russian propaganda in this country today seems to focus on the woke issue more than anything

directly relevant to the war. As I write this, one of the top stories in the country is how a Tennessee based media network, Tenet Media, hired a bunch of American influencers like Tim Poole and Dave Rubin and paid them north of one hundred grand of video to make Russian propaganda. Now, Pool and Ruben and their fellows claim to be shocked, shocked that a foreign government was involved in all and deny acting as unregistered foreign agents or breaking the law in any way. We'll see how those

claims look in few months. For now, I think it's illustrative to turn towards a wired analysis of the content of dozens of Tenant Media videos written by Tim Marshman and Drove Merota. It shows us the kind of propaganda that Russia found fruitful, inceeding to an American audience quote. This analysis does not show that in these videos the influencers were particularly fixated on the Ukraine War. The word Ukraine appears in the transcript sixty seven times, about as

often as misinformation, Christianity, and Clinton. It does show the influencers stressing highly divisive culture war topics in the videos, which carried titles like trans widows are a thing, and it's getting all caps out of hand and race is biological but gender isn't question mark question mark question mark. The word trans appears one hundred and fifty two times and transgender ninety eight, So sixty seven times we see Ukraine appear in these transcripts, as opposed to well over

two hundred times for trans and transgender together. Now, if you want a snapshot of just how absurd and divorced from reality the culture wars have gotten, the Russian government funding a clandestine influence operation considered stoking fears about trans people to have a higher rate of return than actually

propagandizing directly about the war in Ukraine. As absurd as this sounds, these tactics have borne fruit, and I think the reason why it is simple, by building a sense of solidarity between bigoted American conservatives and what they see as a similarly conservative Russia. Now, obviously, the reality of the situation is that Russia is not exactly the country these

people think it is. While it is true that the number of Russian adults who consider themselves at least somewhat religious skyrocketed after the fall of the uss Are from eleven percent or so to over fifty percent today, much of that is likely just explained by the change away from an expressly atheistic government. Even today, Pew Research notes quote, for most Russians, the return to religion did not correspond

with a return to church. Across all three waves of ISSP data, no more than about one in ten Russians said they attend religious services at least once a month. The share of regular attenders monthly or more often was two percent in nineteen ninety one, nine percent in nineteen ninety eight, and seven percent in two thousand and eight. For reference, about thirty two percent of Americans currently attend church, synagogue, mosque,

et cetera on a weekly basis. Now, this is down significantly from forty nine percent in nineteen fifty eight and does represent a low for church attendance in US history. But you can see we still beat the Russians in at least active religiosity by a factor of like five. Now, one of the modern bugbears of the right wing in the US is no fault divorce, which often gets wrapped up in conversations about wokeness.

in Russia ended in official separation. Now, there is precisely one issue where Russian culture is in reality more in line with the kind of culture American conservatives claim to desire, and that is in its treatment of LGBT people and ethnic minorities. The last years in Putin's Russia have seen a surge in hate crimes against queer Russians, as LGBT advocacy organizations have been declared illegal and punished by the government.

This is the Russia our American right wing finds solidarity with, and we shouldn't forget that right when we're looking at to what extent do these people see Russia as kind of embodying the values they would like to bring to the United States. It has a lot less to do with actual religiosity, with good old fashioned family values, and a lot more to do with hate for specific groups of people. Going to talk about what that means within the context of US politics, in a little bit. But

first here's some ads. So earlier this year, I headed to the Republican National Convention, and I had a lot on my mind there. But one of the things I was kind of interested in is hearing the way in which Conservatives talked about Ukraine when they felt like they were among friends. It was not uncommon to hear Ukraine referenced in conversations as a geopolitical enemy of the United States. And this is something I encountered a number of times, and I wanted to make sure it wasn't just a

fluke of my own experiences there. And I assure you it was not. Michael Waitely, who Donald Trump picked to chair the RNC, appeared on Fox News in April and lumped Ukraine in with China and Iran as aggressive adversaries of the United States. Now, you know, we can quibble on that list for a number of reasons, but Ukraine, a country we are currently arming and training to fight in our stead, is just kind of absurd to describe

as an aggressive adversary of the United States. Now, that very month, Congress voted on a foreign aid package, which caused a massive split in the Republican Party. The anti Ukraine side was led by voices like Marjorie Taylor Green, who told Steve Bannon, the Ukrainian government is attacking Christians. The Ukrainian government is executing priests. Russia is not doing that. They're not attacking Christianity. Now, like most things, Green says,

this is not quite accurate. The Guardian noted at the time quote. In fact, according to figures from the Institute for Religious Freedom a Ukrainian group, at least six hundred and thirty religious sites had been damaged or looted in Russia's invasion by December last year. Green received a speaking slot at the RNC, as did tech investor David Sachs, who spent some of his time on stage arguing that o'biden somehow provoked the Russians to invade Ukraine by talking

about NATO expansion. Now, this is a claim you'll hear on some segments of the left too, and it tends to ignore that Russia invaded back in twenty fourteen after a revolution against a Kremlin backed president Yenikovich, threw their own plans in the region into disarray. Ukraine, to this day, despite the expanded invasion, is not a part of NATO, and Biden's administration has been leery not only of pushing for this, but of supplying Ukraine with long range weapons

to strike inside Russian territory. The fact that Ukrainians and others did start discussing Ukrainian membership in NATO after almost a decade of war is certainly not among the things that we can blame the Biden administration for starting. As I trolled the RNC talking to attendees about their feelings on the war, I got a variety of responses. The most positive believe that Ukraine had been wronged, but that the war was unwinnable, so the US had to negotiate

some kind of peace. Moore argued that the Ukrainians were somehow stealing usaid, which they imagined would be put to better use helping Americans. I found this an illogical position personally, given that our aid Ukraine has primarily taken the form of old weapons systems no longer in use by US troops unless you want to house homeless veterans in Bradley fighting vehicles. I don't really see how what we've sent Zelensky is much used to the kind of Americans who

are actually suffering today. The most enlightening conversation that I had while I was at the Republican convention about their sentiments on Ukraine came when Garrison and I stumbled upon Rudy Giuliani, seated at the booth for some streaming network or another, exiled from the main stage of the event. I introduced myself to Rudy and we started off just talking about how surreal the mood was given the recent attempted assassination of the former president.

I think simple incompetence more or less explains everything that happened that day pretty well. This morphed in fairly short order into him ranting about how all of this was Biden's fault and how no one ever gets fired for incompetence in the Biden administration. He brought up Afghanistan and that is what led us finally to Ukraine.

the expanded Russian invasion occurred. Rather than loosening the purse strings as Russian aggression continued, President Trump withheld three hundred and ninety one million dollars in aid to try and get a political favor from Zelenski. We're going to continue with Rudy Giuliani and my conversation, but first here's a little bit more ads and we're back. So after Giuliani made his claim that the United States didn't send any weapons over to Ukraine until Trump was president, he said this.

are issues with the Defense Department. In fact, it came out in January of twenty twenty four that the United States failed to audit about a billion dollars worth of military aid to Ukraine. Now, first off, this is not cash, as Juliani repeatedly insinuates. It's all weapons, and there's no evidence that any of these weapons were ever sold to

another country or used outside of Ukraine. They simply weren't audited the way that they ought to have been because the Pentagon fired all of the people who should have been auditing this aid. Right, this is a pretty common issue with the Pentagon. You can look back to Iraq and the sheer amount of aid that was sent to Iraq and then kind of disappeared in the ether because

they just didn't have anyone paying attention to it. Obviously, because that happened under Republican administration, Juliani isn't concerned at all about it. But he is deeply concerned about this kind of fantastical two hundred billion dollars that he believes has been shotgunned out to Ukrainian mobsters. And here's Rudy again. As our conversation continued.

to fold in a manner of days. And they're now back to about seventeen percent of the country under Russian occupation, which isn't a massive escalation over where it was previously because they pushed well, because they pushed the Russians out of Kiev.

somewhat left leaning liberals is war without end. When you go into a war, you've got to be willing to commit yourself and you've got to be willing to win it quick, otherwise you're gonna lose it. And you know when we started, when we started losing wars, that's the policy we fall.

need to actually win this? One of the things they repeatedly say is the ability to strike Russian assets inside Russia.

like we're not talking about. Have you have you found it in the American industry that there has been American in the American industry.

real diversion, particularly outside the country of weapons. That article continues. Pro Russian media has aired similar claims of a mass diversion of arms meant for the front line, some citing a retracted CBS report that included a source claiming only thirty percent of weapons sent to Ukraine made it to

the battlefield. One conspiracy inclined website, purportedly citing anonymous Ukrainians, claimed the weapons are stolen to such a degree that Ukraine as of August had already lost the war because

of the black market diversion. Now, in the months since that claim was made that Ukraine had lost the war because they had given up all of their weapons, they took a bunch of those weapons and invaded Russia, punching a hole through their lines and taking a considerable amount of territory in the Kursk region, which they occupy to an extent today. As it's always the case with guys

like Julian, reality doesn't matter here. It's about repeating the same talking points until you get a journalist ignorant enough

to take them as true. And it's the kind of thing where if you're not up on all of the different claims being made on the right and all of the claims about corruption and money being siphoned off and taken by mobsters, then you're not going to be able to properly argue with them, right, Like, if you don't really know what you're talking about, you might seed the point to Juliani that there have been at least three

cases of the Ukrainians caught selling American weapons overseas. Now, when you look into what you see that this is primarily a claim that spreads on right wing Facebook pages and there's not really any evidence of a sizeable diversion. But that doesn't really matter. What matters is in the moment being able to kind of spread a point out

to the extent that nobody really questions you want. And I don't know, it's the kind of thing that happens a lot in politics, and it's the kind of thing that is probably pointless to really address, right Like me arguing with Rudy Giuliani got him hot and flustered and kind of pissed off, and certainly got me frustrated. But

I don't think it accomplished much. And I really I think kind of the thing that you have to accept when you're looking at sort of right wing lies about what's happening in Ukraine or the lies being told right now about you know, Springfield, Ohio and the Haitian migrant population over there. There's really very little point in actually confronting these people directly about the disinformation that they put out, because it's not really a case where they care about

the truth one way or the other. It's a matter of you've kind of lost the fight if you care at all about trying to prove reality to them, you know. And that's kind of a bummer note to end this on. But I guess I don't really have anything optimistic to say. I just thought you'd be interested in my little conversation with Rudy Giuliani and some of the talking points that

are continuing to spread up along their ride. So you know, at the very least, maybe the next time you wind up in an argument this Thanksgiving with your uncle about Ukraine, you'll be kind of wary for some of the arguments he's going to bring out, you know, to the extent that that does anybody any good until next time. I'm

Robert Evans, and this is it could Happen here. If you want to see these sources for this episode and do some reading yourself, they're in the show notes, so just check them out there and we will be back tomorrow.