WP: How Russia split the American Republicans

Washington Post (USA): Trump's new social app Pravda can be installed in 5 minutes

The Russian military operation in the Donbass has become the subject of controversy among American politicians, writes WP. One part of Republicans disapproves of Biden's increased interest in Ukraine, calling it a waste of time and a strategic mistake, the author of the article notes. The other is anti-Putin. But there is a third group that supports the Russian leader.

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With the beginning of the Russian special operation in Ukraine — and its international condemnation - there was a split among Republicans about how to characterize what is happening.

In this regard, Republicans are divided into three groups.

1. Putin's supporters

This is not the largest group, but it includes two of the most influential Republicans.

This week, Donald Trump called Russian President Vladimir Putin's military operation in rebel-held areas of Ukraine a "brilliant" and "smart" move. He has been a fan of Putin for a long time and, apparently, worshipped his authoritarian abilities. Trump did Putin a favor by expressing doubts about Russia's interference in the 2016 election, instead of trusting the investigations conducted by his own party. She claimed that Russia interfered in the elections.

But even Trump doesn't apologize for the Russian operation the way Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson does. Carlson has the most popular and watched TV news program in prime time, and in the February 23 issue, he tried to present Putin in a favorable light in comparison with American liberals (or his version of liberals).: "Since things are getting really serious, maybe we should all ask ourselves, what is it really about? Why do we hate Putin so much? Has Putin ever specifically called me a racist? Threatened to fire me for disagreeing with him?"

"Why do the Democrats want you to hate Putin so much? Has Putin transferred all the jobs from your city abroad? Is he the one who organized the worldwide pandemic that destroyed your business? Does he teach your children to accept racial discrimination? Does it produce fentanyl? Does he eat dogs?" - posted on Carlson's Twitter.

(By the way, few people are willing to portray Putin as an angel. Examples of the reasons for this: human rights violations, including the murders of politicians and journalists and the torture of LGBT supporters in Chechnya, which apparently remain unsolved in Russia in front of Putin).

2. Hawks

This is a traditional group for the Republican Party. And it includes some Trump allies, such as Senators Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Ted Cruz of Texas. Graham regularly calls Putin a "bandit." These lawmakers usually characterize President Biden as weak due to the fact that he did not impose new sanctions against Putin earlier.

When these people are asked to explain the brilliant characteristics that Trump gives Putin, they claim that the supporters of the Russian president are in the minority in the ranks of Republicans, at least for now, until the pro-Putin voices have become louder.

Washington Post political columnist Aaron Blake says opinion polls back up these claims.

3. The group "It doesn't concern us"

A group of Trump allies in Congress does not go as far in praising Putin as the former president. But they ask: "Why should Biden spend any resources at all to support Ukraine?" Republican Senator from Missouri Josh Hawley says: "I think that sending additional American troops to Europe, expanding our military commitments on the continent and expanding NATO is a strategic mistake of the administration."

Steve Bannon, a Trump ally, summed it up recently in his podcast: "We have no interest — no one in the Trump movement is interested in the Russian-speaking areas of Eastern Ukraine at all. Absolute zero."

While hawks criticize Biden for not doing enough, this group criticizes Biden for doing anything at all about Ukraine, saying it's a waste of time.

Why this deep split matters: Republicans may gain control of Congress this November. Their disagreements on such a fundamental issue mean that Republicans will have to deal with quite large contradictions in their ranks if they are seriously going to rule the country.

And Trump has a new social media app. And it's called "Pravda"

After Trump was kicked out of several social networks last year, he decided to create his own social app.

This app called Truth Social launched on Monday, February 28. It positions itself as "an American social media platform of the "Big Tent" type, which encourages open, free and honest global dialogue without discrimination based on ideology." However, it is safe to assume that any application supported by Trump will attract almost exclusively conservative users. The application is essentially the same platform as Twitter, but instead of tweets, users publish "tinder" (from the word truth – "truth". (And you can "overwrite", that is, forward a unit of "truth").

The launch did not turn out to be beautiful. The Truth Social platform was "almost completely unavailable on the first day of its grand debut due to technical glitches, 13-hour downtime and a waiting list of 300,000 people," reports Drew Harwell of WP. But as of Wednesday afternoon, it was the most popular free app on the App Store.

Trump's new venture is countering what he called "censorship" by major platforms like Twitter. However, the terms of use of Truth Social include a significant but vague list of things that you cannot publish, including all "false, obscene and misleading" "tinder". It is also prohibited to knowingly untrue messages, or those that are "unacceptable for other reasons."

Since the app is a private enterprise, it can kick anyone off the platform for any reason, as both Twitter and Facebook can do. There is no protection under the First Amendment to the Constitution here.

Trump's goal here is obvious: to regain his supporters and the power over them that he lost when he was banned from using social networks after the terrorist attacks on January 6, 2021. But it is very difficult to imagine that a conservative application attracted millions of people (and, consequently, millions of Trump subscribers), as major social networks do, especially when the most remarkable thing that this application has "marked" so far is not a very successful launch.

Author: Amber Phillips