In a piece I wrote earlier about the variation of Republican viewpoints on Russian aggression against Ukraine, I missed this sage bit of geopolitical and economic analysis from Alabama senator Tommy Tuberville, which he offered to a gathering in Montgomery, per 1819 News:
Tuberville discussed the escalating tensions between Russia and Ukraine. He claims that a large part of Vladimir Putin’s desire for further annexation of Ukrainian land is due to the amount of farmland in Ukraine.
“He can’t feed his people,” Tuberville said. “It’s a communist country, so he can’t feed his people, so they need more farmland.”
No, sirree, old Joe Stalin can’t pull the wool over the eyes of Tommy Tuberville! Them collective farms don’t work worth a damn!
In all seriousness, I guess Tubs was pretty busy coaching football when the Soviet Union collapsed at the end of 1991 and the Communist Party lost its grip on Russia. But now that he is a U.S. senator, you’d think his staff would update him a bit about recent developments in that part of the world. Then again, a lot of MAGA Republicans like Tuberville are in the habit of calling Joe Biden and his Democrats “communists” too. So maybe it’s become an all-purpose term of abuse for the Alabamian even if it does conjure up images of Comrade President Vladimir Putin ordering his Red Army to seize the means of production in Ukraine.
It’s also possible that the very wealthy Tuberville just enjoys playing the yokel to the home folks, condescending as it may seem. Here’s another slack-jawed comment from the same appearance in Montgomery:
Tuberville supported the strengthening of the U.S military, and by dispensing with the “woke” prerogatives of the U.S. Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin.
“I’m tired of hearing about ‘we need to change our military to where they’re woke,’” Tuberville said. “To where they need to listen to the federal government, and we need to educate them on things that have nothing to do with the military.
“Secretary Austin, we need a killing machine, not that we want to kill anybody, but people know that we will kill them if they come here and if they mess with us.”
Lord-a-mercy.
The Latest on ukraine
- House Passes Ukraine, Israel Aid: How It Happened
- Trump’s Plan for Every Foreign-Policy Problem Is Himself
- Putin Is Winning — and He’s Flaunting It
