Rachel Maddow explained how Mitch McConnell has allowed Russia to gain an economic foothold in the US so that they can influence US politics from within.
Maddow said:
The short story here about Mitch McConnell is that he, more than anybody else in Washington, has blocked U.S. efforts to constrain or respond to Russia’s recent attacks. That’s why they’re calling him Moscow Mitch now. But in this particular instance, his state, an economically disadvantaged part of his state, got a $200 million investment from a kremlin-connected oligarch immediately after McConnell personally stepped in to make sure sanctions on that oligarch were dropped, despite his role in what happened to our election in 2016 and despite bipartisan support even from his own party for those sanctions. But don’t just look back at this. Look forward. Right? I mean, the FBI says Russia’s going to do to our election in
2020 what they did to it in 2016. No reason to expect 2020 is going to be any different. If Oleg Deripaska is one of the two or three oligarchs Putin looks to get his work done around the world, given what we know he did in 2016, should we expect Deripaska is going to be involved in Russia’s 2020 operations as well? You have to say the odds of that are better now than they were before Mitch Mcconnell sold off this corner of his state in his I mean, after all, before Mcconnell did what he did, Oleg Deripaska might have felt worried about participating in any Russian attack on us in 2020, right? He might have worried about those crippling sanctions that the U.S. Government put on him at least for a while after 2016. I mean, Mcconnell made sure those were gone, but maybe he’d worry if he did more in 2020, he would get those sanctions back or he’d be further sanctioned in his business activities. He might have had to worry about that before Mitch Mcconnell did what he did. But now, Oleg Deripaska’s business activities, the health of his business empire, that’s part and parcel of the hard-scrabble economy in one of Kentucky’s neediest economies.
This is a plant that’s over a billion dollars. 40% owned by the company of this kremlin-connect bed oligarch. You’re not going to be able to sanction him no matter what he does to our 2020 election or whatever else he does at all. It would strangle Kentucky in the process. There would be hundreds, if not thousands of American jobs riding on anything you did to that Russian guy’s company or, frankly, anything you did to bother him. He now holds all of those American jobs in his hand. The U.S. Government does anything to bother him, he can take them away at will. You can’t do anything to his company, not without him exerting that leverage over Kentucky in response. And that damage has already been done.
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McConnell did this to cement the relationship between Russia and the Republican Party. Republicans can now claim that Russian business interests, like the one in Kentucky, can’t be sanctioned, because if they are, it will hurt American jobs.
If a future Democratic Congress and president would sanction a Russian oligarch with a business interest in the US, Republicans can use that to claim that Democrats are killing jobs. Moscow Mitch has gone beyond leaving the backdoor unlocked for Russia to interfere in US elections. He has rolled out the red carpet and given Putin a seat at the political table by inviting Russia in through the front door of the US economy.
McConnell’s actions are nothing less than economic treason.
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