Failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in a Friday Atlantic op-ed blamed Russia’s assault on Ukraine on former President Donald Trump, tying Vladimir Putin’s ongoing invasion to the January 6 Capitol riot.
In an opinion piece that used the word “democracy” 47 times, Clinton claimed Putin, the “implacable enemy of democracy,” attacked Ukraine in part because “Republican leaders are abandoning core tenets of American democracy even as the stakes in the global contest between democracy and autocracy are clearer and higher than at any time since the end of the Cold War.”
It should be noted that Ukraine has struggled to enter NATO. According to Biden, Ukraine needs to reduce nationwide corruption to enter NATO. “The fact is they still have to clean up corruption,” Biden said in 2021.
“Trump has always had a personal attachment to Putin,” Clinton continued, “which we don’t need to belabor here, and a long-standing admiration for dictators and disdain for democracy—going all the way back to his admiration for the brutal Chinese crackdown in Tiananmen Square decades ago.”
Clinton highlighted Putin as a threat to “the promise of democracy — freedom, rule of law, human rights, self-determination” and proceeded to praise Democrat-allied Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) and Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) for “braving the ire of their party,” which she deemed was “determined to discredit or co-opt the idea of democracy.”
“Representatives Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois are braving the ire of their party to serve on the House committee investigating January 6,” she wrote about the non-partisan committee that was designed by Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) to indiscriminately investigate Republicans who are outside the scope of the January 6 incident.
Clinton did not specify what, if any, direct impact the January 6 Capitol riot had on the eight-year-old war in Ukraine.
“We need a strong democracy in the United States to win the global argument with autocracy,” Clinton continued. “A strong democracy is also a precondition to mobilizing the resources necessary to deter aggression and compete economically and militarily.”
Clinton continued to praise Cheney and Kinzinger for not “going along with the Trump-led attack on American democratic institutions and legitimacy at precisely the time when we need to set an example for the world.”
“Sometimes it seems as if Liz Cheney is the only prominent Republican able to connect the dots between these domestic challenges and our international standing,” Clinton concluded.
Clinton’s op-ed comes as many in the establishment media are encouraging her to run in 2024. Two recent op-eds in the Wall Street Journal and CNN have suggested Clinton may be the best candidate to defeat the Republican nominee. At the same time, Clinton has been fundraising and ginning up interest at the New York State Democratic Convention.
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