Ron Johnson the ultimate wingnut and Russian tool

Ron Johnson, the ultimate wingnut and Russian tool

Ron Johnson has emerged as the most vocal supporter of both Russian propaganda efforts in the Hunter Biden Ukraine misdeeds claims in the Senate and even an apologist for the violent rioters on the January 6 attack on the Capitol. He has raised himself from an obscure Tea Partiertype and ultra-conservative which has gotten him from Wisconsin to DC.to a headliner of positions of some of the most controversial issues. How did that happen?

For some time since Russian active measures in interfering in both 2020 and 2016 elections, I have wondered what they were trying to do. The usual explanation is that they wanted to weaken democracies like ours. That may be true since that is what happened, culminating on Jan. 6. However, their method is to understand what makes our country tick so well, they can use messages and propaganda to exploit the vulnerability of US politicians and their political followers to grab onto any lie or distortion or a conspiracy theory to validate their thoughts and goals and to further their ambitions. In short, they took Americans to be fools and selfish and craven ones at least. Russia Studied How to Get Americans to Make Mistakes - The Atlantic 

Their methods were exposed in the DNI report recently released.  Key findings #2 in the report was that Russia used proxies to spread the Hunter Biden alleged misdeeds in Ukraine to weaken Joe Biden.  The Russian operatives were named, but in this public version, exact US politician mouthpieces were not fingered.  The release of this report was the same time Ron Johnson made news on his support of the January 6 rioters as not threatening him. The DNI key finding got lost in the press reports how of protest that his comments were racist.  The timing of his inflammatory remarks was interesting and the Johnson-Ukraine-Hunter Biden connection got lost in the flap of racism..Nonetheless, the Johnson-Russia story is hardly a secret.and remains a public record. ICA-declass-16MAR21.pdf (dni.gov)

Per Applebaum: " The Russian security services have now studied us and worked out (it probably wasn’t very hard) that large numbers of Americans—not only Fox News pundits and OANN broadcasters but also members of Congress—are very happy to accept sensational information, however, tainted, from any source that happens to provide it. As long as it suits their partisan frames, and as long as it can be used against their opponents, they don’t care who invented it or for what purpose."  The example she uses is the Hunter Biden flap about alleged wrongdoing in Ukraine to weaken Biden's efforts.  This failed because over one-half of the US population did not take the bait.

 https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a34042751/ron-johnson-ukraine-joe-biden-investigation-russia/  "On July 4, 2018, Johnson and several other Republican senators were entertained in Moscow by, among other people, Sergei Kislyak, a central figure among the Volga Bagmen and good friend of Michael Flynn, then the Russophilic White House national security adviser. Johnson, who previously had been a harsh critic of the regime of Vladimir Putin, returned from Russia on this trip with kasha failing to melt in his mouth." He carried Russia's water on the Hunter Biden alleged misdeeds in Ukraine as it became the focus of anti-Biden advocates in the media and in the Senate.

After the election of Joe Biden, Johnson jumped on the bandwagon as an apologist for the violent rioters of January 6 claiming he did not feel threatened by them.I note that he did not voice his opinions the rioters were Antifa in some sort of disguise as some of his fellow travelers opined,  but when it suited him he contradicted that claim, inferring the rioters were his compadres and not Antifa or BLM.. His critics called that evidence of his racism.  https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a35828777/republican-wisconsin-ron-johnson-joe-pags-show-capitol-riots-blm-antifa-racist-comment/Ron Johnson says he didn't feel threatened Jan. 6. If BLM or Antifa stormed Capitol, he 'might have.' - POLITICO