Speaker Kevin McCarthy Sold His Soul … and the Check Bounced … Twice
George Santos and Trump made him Speaker of the House, and guess who else was pleased?
A tale of two men. Kevin and George. Donald and Vlad. It is the worst of times, not the best of times, for America. Let us connect some dots, shall we? And follow the cash, of course.
George made Kevin Speaker of the House
Shortly after January 6, 2021, Rep. Kevin McCarthy — still in possession of a small remnant of a soul — visited Trump in Florida. Kevin sold his soul. The check bounced, as the guy he sold it to went bankrupt as far as political capital goes. Still, Trump had enough influence in Marjorie World, I guess, to help Kevin a little.
So we come to Kevin’s fight to become Speaker of the House. Do you realize who actually made him Speaker? The cameras all focused on Rep. Gaetz and Rep. Boebert. They voted “present” on the 14th ballot, and Kevin lost. They also voted “present” on the 15th ballot when Kevin finally got his dream job. All the news media obsessed over what sort of deal was struck with those members, all the cameras stayed focused on Rep. Gaetz and Rep. Boebert, but they didn’t change their vote! They were “present” on the 14th and “present” on the 15th!
Kevin won the Speaker’s gavel by one vote. Just one vote put him over the finish line. If there was not a George Santos to cast a vote for Kevin, we might be on the 115th ballot right now, still waiting for a Speaker. One vote made him Speaker. A man whom you know, I know, and Kevin knows is a lying liar who lies about everything was a vote Kevin needed.
Thus, you could say Kevin sold his soul to George, and boy oh boy, you know that check is going to bounce.
So, is Kevin a venal, ambitious, and astute Machiavellian? Or is he what the Russians call a “useful idiot?”
I bring up Russians as more than a source of the idiom. Under Kevin’s leadership, and of course, with the help of George, the House will likely eventually vote to cut aid to Ukraine. Yes, indeed, a gentleman in Moscow is very happy with George. Probably fairly happy with Kevin, too, and you know Vlad has long had a bromance with Donald. After all, Donald was the president who tried to blackmail Ukraine (you know, that thing he was impeached for) so why wouldn’t Vlad adore him?
This isn’t a game, this isn’t funny, and we are not paying enough attention to what may really be going on here. We are too distracted by weapons of mass distraction.
Who is George Santos? Maybe he already told us if we had paid attention
When covering the compulsive liar Rep. George Santos, I have watched news personalities struggle to keep from snickering. The eyes twinkle. The corner of the mouth twitches. They are trying so hard to keep from bursting out laughing.
Yeah, it is really funny, isn’t it?
No, actually, it is not.
Sure, it is fun to talk about how George had a double-knee replacement (snicker) after being a star volleyball player (chuckle) on a volleyball scholarship (guffaw) to a college you never heard of, and that he is “Jew-ish” (ROFLAO). Yeah, so funny, right?
So funny how New York Republican voters got completely snookered. Hilarious!
With all this chortling, though, the real headline had a bit of trouble getting through all the noise, all the weapons of mass distraction being detonated.
The real headline about George Santos is found by following the money … maybe all the way to Moscow?
This George Santos situation — and the fact Kevin McCarthy has chosen to keep him around (!) and even seat him on committees (!!) — is quite possibly the most serious stuff to hit this country since Nazis infiltrated Congress and worked to spread Nazi propaganda across America to try and stop us from fighting Hitler. If you are not familiar with that truth-stranger-than-fiction episode in our history, do check out the podcast “Rachel Maddow Presents Ultra.” All sorts of eye-popping bits of history are in there that we never learned in our school-board-approved history classes. Things like, for example, “The speech written for Sen. Ernest Lundeen by a paid Nazi agent.”
Hey, I wonder what speeches George had tucked in his pocket written by somebody else? Interesting how on the campaign trail, George parroted Putin’s talking points:
“It’s not like Ukraine is a great democracy. It’s a totalitarian regime. They’re not a great bastion of freedom,” said Santos. He has insisted that Ukraine “welcomed the Russians into their provinces.” — an apparent reference to President Vladimir Putin’s 2014 invasion to prop up rogue separatist parties — and that Ukrainians in the east “feel more Russian than Ukrainian.”
Who exactly is George Santos? What even is his real name? Who exactly is he working for and who funded him? You don’t instantly go from a $50,000 income to three-quarters of a million in your pocket without owing something big time to somebody.
Maybe he owes something to a speechwriter who says Ukraine is a “totalitarian regime.”
What do we know — factually speaking — about George Santos?
Or as James Carville put it, and trust James to get to the meat of an issue, has anyone looked at his passport?
The boy from Brazil
Well, one factual thing we do know is that he is a boy from Brazil, apparently. I wince because if you are old enough and/or a movie buff like me, that phrase might well dredge up in your mind a weird movie circa 1978 called The Boys from Brazil. I don’t know which is more disturbing, having that movie title pop up in my mind or seeing on a Google search result list the question “Is the movie Boys from Brazil a true story?” Uh, no, it is not. Although if George grows a tiny little rectangular mustache, I’m gonna seriously freak out. I digress. Sorry.
As I was saying, George is from Brazil. Brazil, the home of Trump buddy and failed autocrat-wanna-be Jair Bolsonaro, who just happened to be in Florida (just a coincidence, right? He probably just wanted to see Disney World, right?) when his followers in Brazil staged a January 6 reenactment, storming and trashing the seat of the Brazilian government because their election was “rigged” and “stolen.”
This is all shaping up into an interesting best-buddy club, isn’t it? Trump, Bolsonaro, Orban, Putin, and of course Tucker Carlson and Steve Bannon the propaganda ministers for all of them. Marjorie is tagging along for the ride, though as a mere female, she will only ever be a second-tier sidekick to the Strongmen’s Club, and only a sidekick to Kevin, too, for that matter.
So, now we have Santos, a petty crook from Brazil who moves to America and becomes a Trumpster, and gets financed into a successful campaign to land in the House of Representatives of the United States of America. Is it just silly conspiracy thinking to see all of this and all of these people tied together? That is the thing about conspiracy theories; they are a boy-who-cried-wolf thing. Sometimes there really is a wolf. A Russian wolf, to be exact.
The Russian oligarch-backed candidate
Let us cut to the chase, shall we? George lies, but money doesn’t lie. Follow the money and you see what is going on.
George Santos received campaign donations from Andrew Intrater, the cousin of sanctioned Russian billionaire Viktor Vekselberg, who has close ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
That is just a scratch of the surface. It is one of those news tidbits where one might say, “Well, hey, just a cousin. That doesn’t necessarily mean anything.”
Yeah, right. What do you expect? Do you really think we are going to get signed receipts and love letters exchanged between George, Viktor, and Vlad? When you are talking about the corrupt creatures and vermin known as “Russian oligarchs,” a mere hint of a possible slight connection is the best you are going to get as far as evidence goes. It is also more than enough in my mind.
The fact that on the very instant that piece of investigative journalism broke, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy did not promptly get the wheels turning to expel George from Congress also tells us something. The jury is still out as to which it is, however. The question remains that I began with: is Kevin a venal, ambitious, and astute Machiavellian? Or is he a “useful idiot?”
One thing is not in question, though. Kevin did sell his soul, and the check did bounce, twice.
When Kevin takes us to the brink of the United States defaulting on its debt and thus sending markets and the world economy into chaos, you and I are going to be dealing, literally, with checks that bounce, too.
And somebody in Moscow is going to be smiling very gleefully.
Slava Ukraini, and let’s put George into the handcuffs he belongs in and be done with him, before he gets his hands on classified documents … if he hasn’t gotten his hands on some already.
C’mon Kevin. Stop drooling over your gavel, and do your job! You are the Speaker, and that is not just a shiny plaque hanging over an office door. It is a responsibility. It is your job, as second in line to the presidency, to represent all Americans and serve the best interests of this country, not just the interests of some Republicans and certainly not the interests of Russian oligarchs!
