Wow. To say that this is a can of worms is putting it mildly. News just broke late this afternoon that Mike Johnson has removed Rep. Mike Turner as chair of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, according to Politico. This is alarming for a number of reasons. Punchbowl News first reported the move, which CNN’s Annie Grayer is calling a “big shakeup.” Punchbowl’s Andrew Desiderio adds that “Turner is one of the biggest Ukraine supporters among Republicans on the Hill and is also very involved with NATO. Much more hawkish than Trump-aligned R’s would like.”
CBS News’s Margaret Brennan reports Turner told her that Speaker Johnson “cited ‘concerns from Mar a Lago’ as justification for the removal.” Concerns from Mar-a-Lago? What, you mean like concerns that backing Ukraine and staying in NATO are the right things to do, but Trump fully intends to do what Vladimir Putin wants to do? Those kinds of concerns?
This is not some small deal. Turner is one of the old school Republicans who could be counted on to keep proselytizing old school Republican ways. He’s not a crazy MAGA. Which is probably why he’s not on the Intel Committee anymore.
Axios noted that Turner “has at times broken with party leadership in a way that angered his GOP colleagues, ” according to The New Civil Rights Movement.
“Most notably, he put out a jarring but cryptic statement last February warning of a ‘serious national security threat’ that turned out to be about Russian nuclear anti-satellite weapons.”
That may not have won him friends among MAGA but here’s what won him enemies.
Last year, then-Chairman Turner agreed that Russian propaganda was a problem in the GOP, and that some Republican members of Congress had even spread it on the House floor.
“There are members of Congress today, who still incorrectly say that this conflict between Russia and Ukraine is over NATO, which of course it is not,” Turner told CNN’s Jake Tapper.
Can’t have somebody around who sees the plain truth of things and who knows who and what Russia is. And forget about Trump ending the Ukraine war on Day One, as promised. That hit the ashcan today as well.
The promise to end the war in Ukraine quickly was part of Trump’s sales pitch that his presence in the White House would be enough to return the entire world back to what it was before Joe Biden took office. When put that way, Trump’s promise sounds as silly and unrealistic as it was.
NOTUS asked Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) about Trump’s promise to end the Ukraine war on day one:
When NOTUS asked if she thought Trump settling the war on Day One was still possible, she claimed that wasn’t actually Trump’s promise.
“I think you need to understand language,” Greene said. “And everyone else in America understands that language.”
“I don’t think the media pressing Day One is specifically ‘Day One,’” she said. “But he’s talking about that as one of his first roles as president, and there are many. He’s going to be writing hundreds of executive orders. But yes, ending that war is important.”
So once again, we are in Orwell’s “1984” — “you have to understand language.” Yes, the words don’t mean what they mean. Day One means six months from Inauguration Day or maybe never.
If the few Republicans who will speak out against Russian propaganda are being disposed of, then you know that the rest of them are quaking in their boots right now. This was a warning shot to the rest of them. It has been seen as such.
Marjie doesn’t understand language. “Day one” means “on the first day.” Trump.cannot speak.cohetently,and Marjie has the reading comprehension of an 8 year old. I read better than her in second grade.