In 2018 a bunch of Republican members of congress thought that the best way to celebrate America’s Independence Day was by traveling to Moscow to hang out with the autocrat who had meddled in our most recent presidential election. It was a curious move for the party that pretends to be all about freedom & democracy.

In 2020 Trump’s MAGA Committee released a fundraising ad to support “our” troops using an image of Russian fighter planes & his campaign used stock footage from Russia in a re-election campaign ad. This year the GOP announced it’s “Committment To America” slogan with an ad featuring stock footage of Russia & Ukraine as “America,” which in the context of that July 4th field trip to the Kremlin, is starting to make sense. That ad also invents an Abraham Lincoln quote. The election-denying Republican campaigning to become the next Governer of Arizona ran an ad featuring footage of marching Russian Troops which, based on context, should have shown members of the Arizona National Guard. Earlier week a Republican Navy vet running for congress sent out a “Save America!” mailer featuring…wait for it…a Russian warship sunk during the invasion of Ukraine, destroyed with the help of U.S. intelligence. Dude is still using “Turn The Ship Around” as his slogan.

Looking back to 2016, the Trump campaign weakened the GOP stance promoting pro-Western forces in Ukraine in deference to Putin’s wishes.

So…how is it that only Republicans keep misusing images & footage of Russia in place of images & footage of their own country? And why is the propaganda arm of the GOP talking daily about how great Russia (autocrat), Turkey (autocrat), & Hungary (autocrat) are & asking why the U.S. is helping Ukraine fend off the Russian invasion?
I’d love to hear your thoughts because other than the conspiracy theory that the Russians collected tons of kompromat on Republicans from their strolls through RNC servers…I got nothing.

One thing that really surprised me this week was former football player & current Republican candidate for Senate in Georgia Herschel Walker being outed by his own son as anything but the “family man” he plays on TV himself to be, & the revelation that he paid for a girlfriend to get an abortion, a woman who also gave birth to one of his newly acknowledged out-of-wedlock-while-wedded children. Instead of condemning this moronic (just listen to any clip you can find of him speaking) lying hypocrite, the “family values” party has rallied around their wife-beating, child-threatening, pregnancy-aborting liar who repeatedly cheated on his wife & family. The party is so untethered from what it claims to be that former NRA spokesperson, former Breitbart writer, & current hate-radio host Dana Loesch said the quiet part out loud: “I don’t care if Herschel Walker paid to abort endangered baby eagles. I want control of the Senate.”

As touched on last week, the GOP is supporting a myriad of election-denying power-mad anti-democratic crackpots for governorships, secretary of state positions, congress, & more. It is imperative to get the word out to anyone & everyone who cares about Representative democracy so that they don’t vote for a MAGA Republican this November. I hate myself for saying this, it feels like a deal with the devil, but sometimes “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” is the best one can do: his but there is some merit to the idea that in solidly red states/districts it would behoove Dems to find non-fascist Rs to support. In the short term.

Today during our marathon live-hosted 480 Minutes program which runs from 9am-5pm Eastern U.S. time we will debut new music by Alvvays (Toronto, Ontario, Canada, @AlvvaysBand), Disq (Madison, WI, @NewPhoneWhoDisq), Dungen (Stockholm, Sweden, @DungenMusik), Mike Adams at His Honest Weight (Bloomington, Indiana, @micdadam), MILLY (Los Angeles, CA, @MillyLeBand), Titus Andronicus (Glen Rock, NJ, @TitusAndronicus), & Yeah Yeah Yeahs (Brooklyn, NY, @YeahYeahYeahs).

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Videos

480 Minutes / 2022 Episode 37/Overall Episode 804