Team, I’m getting pretty tired of Republicans playing political footsie with Vladimir Putin.
We’ve long known that Trump never misses an opportunity to bend the knee. But that behavior is spreading. Several dozen members of Congress have repeatedly voted against support for Ukraine, and recently, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis called Russia’s invasion a “territorial dispute” — a phrase that certainly went over well at the Kremlin.
You might be wondering why I’m writing to you about this. After all, Republicans these days say all kinds of bonkers stuff.
Here’s why this trend worries me deeply: Democracy is under attack not just by a few extreme American politicians trying to overturn free and fair elections — it’s being threatened directly by the Putins of the world. He’s spent his entire career trying to undermine and upend democracy. And now, leaders of a major American political party — including the top two GOP candidates for president — are openly cozying up to him.
In fact, the man leading in the presidential primary polls right now said this last week: “The greatest threat to western civilization today is not Russia. It’s probably, more than anything else, ourselves and some of the horrible, USA-hating people who represent us.”
Think about that for a moment.
It’s one thing to oppose war and fear escalation of conflict between nuclear powers. It’s another altogether to spout Russian talking points to try to win political fights on the home front. There was a time when Democrats and Republicans readily came together to condemn authoritarianism and murderous acts of war. There was a time that both sides wanted nothing to do with conspiracy theorists who got caught spreading lies about elections they lost.
We don’t live in that era right now. Where we are at and where we’re going is unprecedented.
You and I spent the last election fighting to make sure that election deniers who promised to help usher Trump back into power lost their races. I’m so proud that we won those fights — defeating every single secretary of state candidate we took on.
But some of those elections were dangerously close. And we know now the extreme MAGA crowd isn’t going away any time soon — in fact, they’re gaining power in the Republican Party. Just look at Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has risen from a fringe, attention addict from a deep-red district to a power broker in the Republican-controlled House of Representatives. (She too, by the way, was caught last week parroting Russian propaganda as it relates to Ukraine.)
The fight for democracy itself is far from over.
I’m committing to doing everything I can for Team Democracy — today, that means raising funds for Democratic Majority Action, an organization I started to stop Trump’s MAGA loyalists from getting back into power. We are doing a strategic assessment, determining where best to devote our efforts in the 2024 election. But, rest assured, like the successful SOS Project in 2022, this team will be in the fight again. Will you chip in toward our mission of saving democracy from wannabe authoritarians?
Every donation, no matter the size, is a reminder that I’m nowhere close to alone in this fight, and I can’t thank you enough for that.
More soon,
Amy
