Two incumbent Republican senators, both up for reelection in November, pose a clear and present danger to our democracy. One, Florida’s Marco Rubio, is the leading Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee and is refusing to say that the former president stealing highly classified documents and shoving them in a closet in his Florida resort is a bad thing. The other, Wisconsin’s Ron Johnson, has admitted that he was involved in the plot to overturn American democracy on Jan. 6, and is now calling on voters to “Join us in unifying and healing and saving this nation.”
Rubio wants us to know via Politico (of course) that he is “joining forces with a top Democrat to demand a formal assessment of any damages to national security related to Trump’s handling of the documents.”
“The people who hate Donald Trump are happy about the raid. The people who support him were not,” Rubio said in an interview. That indicates immediately that he is on Trump’s side, calling it a raid. Rubio insists that he’s in a third category with “A lot of other people are wondering about the wisdom of undertaking such an effort, an unprecedented effort, before having exhausted every other opportunity or every other potential option they would have.”
No. If you are a senior member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, there isn’t a “maybe a little big of espionage by a former president shouldn’t be investigated too strenuously” option. There is just not. He took an oath to protect and defend the constitution, and they didn’t put in any outs for being scared of the former president’s mob.
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Rubio really pushed the “we’re all bipartisan and it’s great” bit with Politico, which his chair, Democrat Mark Warner, said was certainly the goal of any potential inquiry, but also had no patience for one of Rubio’s wishy-washy arguments. Rubio has said that maybe all those classified documents seized in the search weren’t really classified because intelligence officials had failed to notify Congress that they were missing. Which doesn’t sound plausible.
And, turns out, it’s not! “The idea that some of the Trump advocates are not even acknowledging that these are classified is kind of beyond the pale,” Warner told Politico, though he used “some people” instead of saying “that dipwad Marco Rubio.” He added, “Until the size or the extent of the reach becomes clear, I don’t know how you pre-warn [Congress].”
Niceties aside, the ranking Republican on the Intelligence Committee is finding excuses for the theft of some of the mostly highly sensitive documents the intelligence community produces. And is somehow getting away with not being called a traitor by association.
Then there’s the guy who really has no association with intelligence at all—personal or professional—and who straight-up tried to help the attempted coup. Johnson went on Hugh Hewitt’s radio show, which HuffPo reporter Jen Bendery listened to.
“If you love this nation and are concerned about its future, join us,” Johnson said on the show, pitching himself to voters. “Join us in unifying and healing and saving this nation. That’s what we need to do.”
He actually said that! He said he wants to heal the nation when he tried to overthrow the election! He has admitted he was involved in the coup attempt! He tried to get a slate of fake electors to then-Vice President Mike Pence to challenge the legitimate election of President Joe Biden.
His version of unifying the nation is aligning with white nationalist groups and promoting an anti-vaxxer who was suspended from Twitter last year for comparing vaccinations to the Holocaust.
This is a guy who was warned by the FBI that he was being used by Russia to disrupt the 2020 election, and he blew it off. He called the FBI’s “defensive briefing” that he was pushing Russian propaganda “completely useless and unnecessary.”
And he wants anyone to believe he’ll be a uniter?!
Both of these men are a threat to democracy. Neither should be returned to the Senate, and they sure as hell have to be kept out of a majority.
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