Republicans Are Now ‘Putin’s Propagandists’ And Must Be Removed, Conservative Columnist Jennifer Rubin Writes

A conservative Washington Post columnist on Sunday wrote that Donald Trump “has been disloyal to the United States” by repeating Russia’s propaganda line that Ukraine, not Russia, hacked the 2016 presidential election. According to columnist Jennifer Rubin, “Republicans are just as guilty” as Trump and must be removed from office.

Three major United States investigations have confirmed that the Russian government was behind the attack on the 2016 election and that Russian President Vladimir Putin himself ordered the hacking operation. As early as January 6, 2017, two weeks before his inauguration, U.S. intelligence officials informed Trump that Putin ordered the election attack.

But according to a bombshell New York Times report published on Friday — and cited by Rubin in her Sunday WaPo column — Putin himself appears to have communicated with Trump about the claim that Ukraine, not Russia, attacked the election, and Trump chooses to take Putin’s word over the findings of the U.S. investigations.

Those investigations were carried out by the U.S. intelligence community, special counsel Robert Mueller, and the bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee. All reached the same conclusion: Russia attacked the 2016 election with the purpose of helping to install Trump in the White House.

The Friday Times report also revealed that intelligence agencies have found that the “Ukraine” hacking claim is, in fact, propaganda created and promoted by Russia. Republican Senators have been briefed on the findings, The Times reported.

But many Republican Senators have nonetheless refused to accept the finding that Russia interfered with the election and that the “theory” blaming Ukraine and exonerating Russia is simply Kremlin propaganda.

As recently as Sunday morning, Republican Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana said in an interview that no one could be certain that Russia was behind the attacks, according to an NBC News report.

“I don’t know, nor do you, nor do any of us,” Kennedy said in the Fox News interview.

In her Sunday column, Rubin wrote that if Republicans are in possession of evidence to support their claim that Ukraine rather than Russia was behind the 2016 election attack, they should offer that evidence to the public.

“Otherwise, they need to be called out for deliberately assisting a hostile foreign power,” Rubin wrote, calling on “every Democrat on the ballot in 2020” as well as the media to challenge Republicans who engage in what she called the “un-American activity” of deliberately spreading Russian propaganda.

But while Rubin believes that Republicans in Congress “have not lost their powers of reason,” and therefore must be voted out, Trump “is intellectually incapable of recognizing reality.”

Because of what she calls his inability to perform the duties of commander-in-chief, Rubin writes, Trump must be removed by impeachment.