U K RA I N E

Putin’s Useful Idiots: Right Wingers Lose It Over

Zelensky Visit
The anti-Ukraine right can’t stand America standing as the arsenal of democracy.

by C AT H Y YO U N G · D E C E M B E R 2 2 , 2 0 2 2

U
krainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s surprise arrival in Washington on Wednesday for
a meeting with President Joe Biden and a speech before Congress has unhinged the
always-seething anti-Ukraine Trumpian right, triggering a deluge of snark and grievance.
For instance, after the Washington Examiner’s Byron York tut-tutted that Zelensky was about to tell
Congress that U.S. aid to Ukraine so far was not enough, the former First Son weighed in with this:
 Donald Trump Jr.
@DonaldJTrumpJr · Follow
Zelensky is basically an ungrateful international welfare
queen.
Byron York @ByronYork
Zelensky is apparently prepared to tell Congress that whatever the
US has given Ukraine -- $45 billion in new aid now under
consideration -- it is not enough. From @AP:
apnews.com/article/russia…

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6:52 AM · Dec 21, 2022

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“National conservative” pundit and Newsweek opinion editor Josh Hammer, who played the “obviously
Putin is a thug and Ukraine is the victim here, but . . .” game in the early days of the war, went full Putin
this time around.
 Josh Hammer
@josh_hammer · Follow
Raise your hand if you are personally DONE with the Ukraine gravy train.

12:19 PM · Dec 21, 2022

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To top it off, Hammer, who shares Zelensky’s Jewish heritage, also accused the Ukrainian president of
being a bad Jew—unseemly under any circumstances, but all the more so considering that only a few
days earlier, Hammer had been spotted at a New York Young Republicans’ Club Gala in the company of
various alt-right types with, shall we say, a complicated relationship to anti-Semitism. (Among them:
Rep. Marjorie “Jewish Space Lasers” Taylor Greene, the founders of the white-nationalist website
VDARE, and erstwhile Jew-baiting troll Jack Posobiec.)

Hammer’s deputy op-ed editor, progressive-turned-populist Batya Ungar-Sargon (for whom, I must
mention, I used to write during her stint as an editor at the Forward), at least made an effort to stay
classy while making a de facto pitch for throwing Ukraine under the bus:
 Batya Ungar-Sargon
@bungarsargon · Follow
It is possible to admire President Zelensky and the Ukrainian people's
bravery, resilience, and fortitude in the face of a malevolent, godless foe
while also recognizing that his interests are not our interests, his fight is
not our fight, and his requests should not be granted.
5:40 PM · Dec 21, 2022
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That’s more than can be said for the vast majority of the “no money for Ukraine” crowd, from the Daily
Wire’s Matt Walsh (“Get this grifting leech out of our country please”) to Tucker Carlson, who referred
to Zelensky as a “Ukrainian strip club manager”—apparently because he was dressed in a olive-drab
sweatshirt—and asserted that “it may be impossible to imagine a more humiliating scenario for the
greatest country on Earth.” He also insisted that Zelensky is seeking not just to “push the Russian army
back to pre-invasion borders,” which even Carlson conceded “sounds reasonable,” but to topple
Vladimir Putin and bring about “regime change” in Russia. After Zelensky’s speech to Congress,
Carlson brought on former Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, the “maverick” Democrat from Hawaii, to
sing along with his assertions that Zelensky was actually an autocrat muzzling critical media outlets,
jailing opposition politicians, and now trying to shut down an entire church because he finds it
insufficiently loyal.

(In reality, the situation involving the Moscow-affiliated branch of the Orthodox Church—one of the
two Orthodox denominations in Ukraine—is massively complicated; in wartime, there are legitimate
security concerns about its clergy’s reported activities in support of the invaders. However, a quote
Carlson attributes to Zelensky, threatening “economic and restrictive sanctions [on] any Christian
caught worshiping in unapproved ways,” does not seem to have any source other than Carlson
himself.)

Then there was this from Red State commentator Brandon Morse, asserting that Zelensky has done
much more damage to the United States than the January 6th rioters:
 Brandon Morse
@TheBrandonMorse · Follow
Which one caused the most destruction and cost to the United States
again?

5:16 PM · Dec 21, 2022

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A few other right-wing pundits, including career plagiarist-turned-conspiracy-theory-peddler Benny

Johnson and Turning Point USA grifting leech Charlie Kirk, homed in on the really important stuff:
Zelensky’s outfit.
 Benny Johnson
@bennyjohnson · Follow
This ungrateful piece of sh*t does not have the decency to wear a suit
to the White House -- no respect the country that is funding his
survival.
Track suit wearing eastern european con-man mafia.
Our leaders fell for it. They have disgraced us all. What an incredible
insult.
Watch on Twitter

Charlie Kirk
@charliekirk11 · Follow
Remember, Zelenskyy is an actor. Instead of a suit and tie for his White
House visit, he's wearing an army fatigue colored sweater and cargo
pants. The costume just hits better when you're in the middle of a multi-
billion-dollar shakedown of American taxpayers.
11:44 AM · Dec 21, 2022
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Of course Zelensky’s clothes were meant to visually convey the fact that he’s in the middle of a brutal
war. When you’re just back from a visit to the front lines in an area that looks like a ghost warscape
from World War I come back to life, you’ve earned the right to make that particular fashion statement
—even on a visit to Washington, D.C.

But wait, is it a military outfit or a mafia one? The American Spectator’s Melissa Mackenzie has got the
goods:
 Melissa Mackenzie
@MelissaTweets · Follow
Zelensky can disgrace Biden because he has crap on every single
establishment politician. He knows what they've done and what they
want to hide.
Why dress other than a mafioso? He's extorting these people.
Benny Johnson @bennyjohnson
This ungrateful piece of sh*t does not have the decency to wear a
suit to the White House -- no respect the country that is funding his
survival.
Track suit wearing eastern european con-man mafia.
Our leaders fell for it. They have disgraced us all. What an incredible
insult.

11:34 AM · Dec 21, 2022

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I could go on and on. But perhaps this parade of indecency should come back full circle to a literal
obscenity from Don Jr.: a photoshopped image that put a naked Hunter Biden next to Zelensky on the
podium addressing Congress. (Warning: this tweet may be hazardous to your eyes.) It’s vile, of course.
It’s also the sort of thing you post when you have no substantive way to attack someone.

***

T he extent and purpose of U.S. military aid to Ukraine is certainly a legitimate subject for
debate. Right now, there is a powerful consensus in the United States and Europe that
Ukraine, for all the flaws and imperfections of its still-young democracy, is fighting for
freedom against an authoritarian Goliath and that its fight is also a fight for the free world and its
values.

The question of why the Trumpian populist right is so consumed with hatred for Ukraine—a hatred
that clearly goes beyond concerns about U.S. spending, a very small portion of our military budget, or
about the nonexistent involvement of American troops—doesn’t have a simple answer. Partly, it’s
simply partisanship: If the libs are for it, we’re against it, and the more offensively the better. (And if
the pre-Trump Republican establishment is also for it, then we’re even more against it.) Partly, it’s the
belief that Ukrainian democracy is a Biden/Obama/Hillary Clinton/”Deep State” project, all the more
suspect because it’s related to Trump’s first impeachment. Partly, it’s the “national conservative”
distaste for liberalism—not only in its American progressive iteration, but in the more fundamental
sense that includes conservatives like Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher: the outlook based on
individual freedom and personal autonomy, equality before the law, limited government, and an
international order rooted in those values. Many NatCons are far more sympathetic to Russia’s crusade
against secular liberalism than to Ukraine’s desire for integration into liberal, secular Europe.

Whatever the reason, the anti-Ukraine animus on the right is quite real and widespread. (When
journalist Bari Weiss, who has a largely “anti-woke” following, retweeted a Hanukkah greeting from
Zelensky, the responses from her followers in the thread were mostly hostile.) But right now, it also
smells of desperation. Ukraine’s cause is still massively popular in the United States, with two-thirds of
Americans supportive of sending money and arms. Disingenuous laments about the poor Ukrainians
exploited by American and European globalists ring hollow and false when the vast majority of
Ukrainians are so clearly determined to resist the invasion. And Zelensky, as the smarter among the aid
opponents, like Ungar-Sargon, can see, is a genuine hero: patriotic, incredibly courageous and
charismatic, and a speaker so compelling that even congressional right-wingers who initially refused to
join in the standing ovations (including Matt Gaetz, Lauren Boebert, and Andrew Clyde) finally rose
up during the last portions of his speech.

There’s a nineteenth-century Russian fable called “The Elephant and the Pug” in which a pug yaps
furiously at an elephant to get attention and show off how tough it is, while the elephant simply
ignores it. Zelensky would obviously be the elephant in this scenario; but that would make the
Zelensky haters the pugs—and that’s frankly a hideous insult to pugs.
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Cathy Young

Cathy Young is a writer at The Bulwark, a columnist for Newsday, and a contributing editor to Reason.
Twitter: @CathyYoung63.

C O P Y R I G H T 2 0 2 2 , B U L WA R K M E D I A . A L L R I G H T S R E S E R V E D . P R I VA C Y P O L I C Y