Not surprisingly, the hot takes from The Usual Suspects in response to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s speech to Congress Wednesday night were fast and flowing, with the consensus seeming to be that anyone who wasn’t giddy with excitement to the point they were tripping all over themselves to virtue signal their support for Zelensky was nothing short of a “useful idiot” for Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Such claims have been a common theme in Democrat/media circles ever since Russia invaded Ukraine every time questions have been raised about the level of U.S. involvement. But as my RS colleague Nick Arama astutely observed, one can still “believe in keeping Russian ambitions in check” while also believing that the U.S. “should not be [an endlessly flowing] money spigot” into foreign entanglements, with what’s best for America ultimately needing to take priority.
With all of that in mind, we turn to MSNBC’s favorite “historian” Michael Beschloss who, among other things, once warned that if the Republican red wave took place that “our children will be arrested and conceivably killed.” In another example – this one from 2020, Beschloss declared that “Abraham Lincoln never told an esteemed reporter, ‘Don’t talk to me that way! . . .I’m the President of the United States. Don’t ever talk to the President that way!'” before being reminded about Lincoln’s actual history where he shut down some 300 newspapers and issued an executive order for the “arrest and imprisonment of irresponsible newspaper reporters and editors.”
And on Wednesday after Zelensky addressed Congress, Beschloss was at it again, demanding to know why certain members – like Reps. Matt Gaetz and Lauren Boebert – did not stand nor applaud Zelensky at certain points during the speech (though they did stand and clap towards the end):
Later, Beschloss upped the ante, wanting to know why some members of Congress – like GOP Rep. Thomas Massie – didn’t attend the speech at all.
“How many Members of Congress refused to attend tonight's speech because they do not support Zelenskyy’s Ukraine? Important to know this and why,” Beschloss tweeted.
Independent journalist Glenn Greenwald explained in his own way why such calls to show unquestioned loyalty to a foreign leader were so dangerous:
Now, one can debate, as my colleague streiff did, the wisdom of not showing some level of respect for a world leader who is standing up for his country after it was attacked, but to suggest that robotic-like fealty be shown is quite frankly unAmerican. We’re allowed to disagree here, and in this particular instance not agreeing with certain aspects (or all of) the U.S. policy towards Ukraine does not equate to support for Russia anymore than not supporting the war in Iraq after 9/11 was tantamount to supporting Saddam Hussein.
I mean I remember back when it was viewed as “patriotic” by so-called historians and the press when over two dozen Democratic members of Congress refused to attend Donald Trump’s inauguration in 2017. And there have been many other instances over the decades where Presidents who have given their SOTUs were not applauded by the opposing party.
So no, we don’t need any lectures from pseudo-historical “experts” about the “appropriate” level of support that should be shown for anyone speaking before Congress, whether its our own president or someone else’s.