Dana Defends Russia; Reagan Spins in His Grave

No one will ever accuse Dana Rohrabacher of being an intellectual giant.  The Costa Mesa Congressman likes to play dress up with the Mujahideen (forefathers of the Taliban), cross dress for a prison visit, arm wrestles Vladimir Putin (losing badlt; sad!), and untidy when it comes to housekeeping.  But OC’s dumbest Congressman recently defended Russia at a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing on Russian disinformation and “weaponization of information” and proceeded to provide a history lesson to the former president of Estonia.

Rohrabacher was a former speechwriter for Sainted GOP President Ronald Reagan, who is now providing renewable energy by spinning in his grave over his former employee’s defense of Russia.

From Mother Jones:

Toomas Hendrik Ilves, the president of Estonia from 2006 to 2016, had a crisis on his hands in September 2014. Russian security service agents crossed the border and kidnapped and detained Eston Kohver, an agent with Estonia’s equivalent of the FBI. The Russian government accused Kohver of being a spy and sentenced him to 15 years in prison.

Ilves referred to the episode Thursday during his testimony at a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing on Russian disinformation and “weaponization of information.” Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.), a staunch defender of President Donald Trump, opened his statement by diminishing the importance of connections between the Trump campaign and Russian officials and said that controversy over the matter “has reached the absurd level of attacks.”

“In order to get Russia,” he said, “we are now…destabilizing our own democratic system here with that kind of nonsense.”

When Rohrabacher asked Ilves to provide examples of Russian military aggression, the former president referred to the border incident. Rohrabacher was unimpressed: “So you had a situation of corruption at the border, one of your border guards disappeared. I mean military aggression? Has there been any cross-border, at all, military action on the part of the Russians in Estonia?”

“Well, we have constant violations of our border by military jets. That’s one thing, and that’s consistent,” Ilves said, adding these incidents have “massively increased in the last four years.”

Rohrabacher explained that he had visited the Baltic states after hearing stories of Russian military aggression and found “not one report of actual military aggression.” He added that the United States has sent “our tanks up there, having B-52 mock raids on Russia, over Estonia, toward the Soviet capital, in the name of stopping Soviet military aggression that never existed. This has got to stop or we’re going to end up in war.”

Rohrabacher then adopted President Trump’s comments to Bill O’Reilly in a Super Bowl Sunday interview about the US “not being so innocent” citing assassination programs in Vietnam and South America to defend Putin and Russia.  He even equated Putin with former Chicago Mayor Richard Daley.

Rohrabacher also compared Putin to Richard Daley, the late mayor of Chicago, saying that Russia is “being run by tough guys—sort of like Mayor Daley, in Chicago, is transported over to Russia.” Daley “beat demonstrators up and did not represent anything what America was all about, but he was not some vicious dictator. He had been elected by his people and we would try to unelect him as well.” He added, “What’s happening in Russia, of course, is you have a country watching out for its national interest.”

After Rohrbacher’s history lesson, Rep. Gerry Connolly, (D-Va.)* asked Ilves to expand on his answer about Russian aggression. 

“I didn’t get to finish,” the former president said, referring to the kidnapping of the Estonian official. “That was a military action. Troops came over and kidnapped this guy.” He then noted massive military exercises the Russians perform at borders in the region, and not just between Russia and Estonia. “I mean, they do mock bombing raids on Sweden,” he said. “So it’s not just us.”

Connolly then addressed Rohbacher’s comparison of Putin with Daley. “I went to school in Chicago during his mayorality,” Connolly said. “I didn’t know him, but I assure you, Vladimir Putin is no Richard Daley. Richard Daley did not have his political opponents assassinated. He didn’t send them into exile. He didn’t put them in prison. He didn’t silence the press. He didn’t assassinate members of the press. He didn’t exile members of the press. He sparred with them, and sometimes he was bested…There is no comparison, and I think we do ourselves a disservice by not recognizing on a bipartisan basis the gravity of the situation we face.”

For OC Republicans, it’s bad enough they have to defend Trump in the White House.  They have to defend a Congressman that makes Bozo the Clown look like an intellectual genius.