What a tangled web
Even as the situation between Russia and Ukraine escalates, with Russia’s terrifying buildup of troops and materiel along the border, many at Fox News and MAGAland are unsure how to behave. After all, wasn’t Vladimir Putin Donald Trump’s little buddy? Whatever must they do?
To hear it from Fox News in general and Tucker Carlson in particular, the current military escalation in Eastern Europe has no heroes and no villains. If that has an eerily familiar ring to it, you might be thinking about Neville Chamberlain’s disastrous characterisation of the Sudetenland after it had been threatened by Hitler’s troops as a “quarrel in a far away country, between people of whom we know nothing.”
Then there’s Fiona Hill, and if that name also rings a bell, you’ll recall she was one of the parade of experts who testified during Donald Trump’s first impeachment trial. Dr. Hill agrees that President Biden is behaving in a decidedly non-Trumpian way by putting the interests of democracy and America first, by marshalling (instead of alienating and bullying) NATO’s peacekeepers, something that she says Donald Trump never could have done. “There’s no Team America for Trump,” Hill recalled. “Not once did I see him do anything to put America first. Not once. Not for a single second.”
Trump’s notorious praise for authoritarian leadership is now coming home to roost, and has become a palpable source of confusion for his acolytes such as Tucker Carlson and the MAGA crowd. Suddenly they don’t know who to cheer for, so they behave as if it’s a conflict between equals. The problem with this point of view is that Ukraine is a democracy trying to join NATO and Russia is an oppressive dictatorship trying to destroy NATO. But hey, let’s not quibble over the little stuff in the perennial battle to discredit the current President at all costs.
Meanwhile Fiona Hill and the other adults in the room, who actually know what they’re talking about and who actually care about this struggle between good and evil, are taking the situation seriously. Unlike Tucker Carlson, who is a partisan hack, Dr. Hill was a White House national security aide with profound experience in international relations and a first class Harvard education. “You couldn’t get a sharper contrast [between Trump and Biden],” Hill observed in a recent interview. Joe Biden’s demonstration of resolve has at minimum made Putin stop and think. Biden has warned for weeks that Russia could launch a new invasion of Ukraine at any time. It hasn’t — yet.
Oh what a tangled web! If war should come and Joe Biden should prove his mettle as a calm, rational and effective wartime President — as he undoubtedly will — Fox News and the MAGA ilk will find themselves in the embarrassing position of having to openly side against America’s best interests in a time of armed conflict. But what other choice do they have? They’ve made their beds and, at the risk of straining the metaphor’s play on words, they are now going to have to lie in it. And, as ever, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, comrades and friends, stay safe.
Robert Harrington is an American expat living in Britain. He is a portrait painter.