Obviously, Steve cannot mention four of the last five years, here (for fear of provoking Tangerine’s endless, scorched Earth- and forever-unbridled rage!).

No, he must pay a largely-grudging knee bent token of “respect” to the Mitt Romney of 2012. He does so, so he can poke some fun at BHO 44’s remark diminishing (also from 2012), the global importance of… Putin. No matter that, in 2012, with the US economy here bangin’, our role in the world as a moral leader being re-established, and Russia running solely on vapors, it was looking like Putin might end up being suicided by his own KGB alums. [No mention of Trump at Helsinki — a far more proximate causa belli. Shocking that silence, from Steve. Not really.]

No, Heyward (knows he must) conveniently forgets all the “building” Tangerine did — FOR PUTIN — while at 1600 Penn. Here’s the brilliant EmptyWheel, just this morning, in fact — laying the Trump near-treason bare:

“…Republican members of Congress genuinely came to believe — because they had to! — that criticism of Trump’s refusal to spend the money in support of Ukraine they had appropriated was just another Democratic attack on Trump and not an attempt to save the integrity of American democracy. All this culminated in Stop the Steal… a literal attack on American democracy; Republican fealty to Trump forced them — more reluctantly at first and driven in large part by real terror — to defend an assault on Congress.

By February 13, 2021, the date the Senate voted to acquit Donald Trump of inciting an attack on Congress, Republicans had put loyalty to Donald Trump over defense of the country and the Capitol in which they worked.

Sure, Putin didn’t get Trump to carve up Ukraine as President. But he got so much more from Trump’s presidency.

Putin did get Trump to do real damage to NATO. He got Trump to largely abandon Syria. Trump made a humiliating deal with the Taliban that would result in the US withdrawing its military from Russia’s back door. After years of Russia having to work hard to highlight American hypocrisy on human rights, Trump did things like pardon war criminals, forever tainting America’s claim to be exceptional.

And through it all, Trump created his own authoritarian-supporting militias, heavily armed troops inspired by resentment who have the ability to make the United States ungovernable. Trumpist Republicans are making localized efforts to dismantle democracy….”

She is — as ever — spot on here. This Ukraine atrocity, should it so unfold… belongs to Tangerine’s cowardly enabling, all to keep his hotels’ loans afloat. And Steve Heyward is right there, in favor of it all — because Baby T says he… must obey.

Disgusting.