U.S. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), who has advocated against providing additional foreign aid to Ukraine as it fights against a Russian invasion, said the U.S. is “funding a war that most people do not support, in a country that no one can find on a map, hardly.”
Former Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele responded to Greene’s comment with a map of Ukraine and the surrounding countries (Russia, Belarus, Poland, Hungary, Romania and Moldovia). Steele mocked what he characterizes as the Georgia lawmaker’s isolationist views, which don’t connect the U.S.’s role in supporting global stability with its security at home.
.@RepMTG Let me help because you apparently need it. Don't travel to the red parts and be careful in the yellow parts (they may have tried to brief you in your day job). By the way, the star doesn't mean it's like Texas. And please don't get upset because it touches the Black Sea https://t.co/3OW41XXQb4 pic.twitter.com/hj60mhlzmI
— Michael Steele (@MichaelSteele) March 29, 2024
Steele wrote: “Let me help because you apparently need it. Don’t travel to the red parts and be careful in the yellow parts (they may have tried to brief you in your day job). By the way, the star doesn’t mean it’s like Texas. And please don’t get upset because it touches the Black Sea.”
Note: The red parts are Russian-occupied regions in Ukraine including Crimea; the star marks the capital of Ukraine, Kyiv.
The activist group Republicans Against Trump — which might also be described as Republicans Against Putin — also replied to Greene’s assertion by saying “Speak for yourself, Marge.” The group calls itself “Pro-democracy conservatives Republicans fighting Trump & Trumpism.”
The political commentator Roy Edroso recently described the shift from traditional Republicanism to MAGA adherence as a hard-to-fathom move from “Russophobia to Putinphilia,” a transformation that a New York Times editorial asserted would cause Ronald Reagan not just to roll over in his grave, but to “lurch from it in a fit of incredulous rage.”
As with every GOP move in 2024, the presumptive presidential nominee Donald Trump has major influence on congressional action affecting Ukraine — and the views of Greene and other devoted MAGA lawmakers always align exactly with Trump’s.
Calling their ostensible Putin appeasement “foreign policy realism,” as Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) does, they work to differentiate their isolationism from the traditional Reagan GOP’s conservatism, which valued America’s global leadership and its international role in supporting for democratic values against usurpers.
The new GOP leadership is a different breed, as PBS recently reported: “Trump has long praised Putin, calling his invasion of Ukraine ‘smart’ and ‘savvy,’ and recalling this month that he had told NATO members who didn’t spend enough on defense that he would ‘encourage” Russia to ‘do whatever the hell they want‘ to them. He reiterated that threat days later.”
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