Johnson Slams Zelenskyy for “Political” Visit Just Months After GOP Event in Kyiv
Evangelicals pressed Zelenskyy to host event of anti-LGBTQ+, anti-choice theocratic group
Sept. 26: Johnson demands ambassador be fired … Zelenskyy meets with Biden, Harris … Adams indicted … EXCLUSIVE: Yet another Vance lie …
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) released an extraordinary broadside yesterday against literally emfuckingbattled Ukrainian Pres. Volodymyr Zelenskyy, accusing him of engaging in a political event with known Democrats.
The accusation comes less than three months after Johnson and many other U.S. Republicans participated in a Ukrainian event Zelenskyy was pressured into hosting for evangelicals.
In his letter yesterday, Johnson called for Zelenskyy to fire his ambassador to the U.S. for organizing Zelenskyy’s trip Sunday to a Pennsylvania munitions plant. It’s a truly wild letter and may also reflect pique with Zelenskyy’s recent interview with the New Yorker, in which he was unusually critical of former Pres. Donald Trump and Sen. JD Vance (R-OH).
Johnson complained yesterday that Zelenskyy had visited a battleground state and the tour of the plant was led by “a top political surrogate for [Vice President] Kamala Harris” whom Johnson does not name but was Gov. Josh Shapiro (D-PA).
Johnson called Zelenskyy’s visit “a partisan campaign event designed to help Democrats and is clearly election interference.”
The Republican definition of “election interference” has now been expanded to include a foreign leader visiting the wrong state and meeting the state’s governor. Johnson also pushes the extraordinary — and weirdly anti-free speech for the ostensible free-speech party — assertion that “all foreign nations should avoid opining on or interfering in American domestic politics.”
Anti-free-speech autocrat says what?
The idea that foreign leaders shouldn’t discuss America…the way American leaders discuss countries all the time…is, as wildly un-American, as I’m sure any foreign leader would tell you.
Johnson seems to have missed the defining aspect of election interference. It’s not the saying of things. It’s the saying of things without legally required disclosure of who the fuck you are if you are a foreign power or paid to act on behalf of said power. Or, in some cases, it’s the saying of things by an entire media outlet that you are secretly funding from the Kremlin.
Johnson also whines — like me in high school that kid in high school when they weren’t invited to parties — that “no Republicans were invited.” Which is true!
The officials there were all Democrats: Shapiro, Sen. Bob Casey (D-PA), and Rep. Matt Cartwright (D-PA). Why would Cartwright get an invite and not, say, Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA), who co-chairs the House Ukraine Caucus?
The munitions plant was in Cartwright’s district.
The Pentagon told the AP that it’s standard procedure for tours of weapons plants (by the many many foreign leaders who get those weapons) to invite the members of Congress who represent the plant’s district. Which in this case no Republicans do.
Y’know, like when Zelenskyy visited Utah in July and didn’t invite a single Democrat to his meeting with the state’s congressional delegation…who are all Republicans.
What the AP didn’t mention, but The Fucking News will — because this is why you subscribe to The Fucking News — is that Johnson himself participated in another summer event with Zelenskyy; one that was pushed on Zelenskyy by a Republican-dominated, evangelical U.S. organization that fucks around in other countries’ politics at every opportunity.
That event was openly partisan and political, as Jonathan Larsen’s Substack reported in July, featuring the first time Zelenskyy went to bat for “family” values and those who “cherish life.” It was his first Ukrainian National Prayer Breakfast, and Zelenskyy was pressured into it by evangelical leaders tied to U.S. evangelicals.
Who, again, use these events intentionally seeking to fuck with the politics of other countries in the name of Jesus and breakfast.
Hey, here’s Rep. Tim Walberg (R-MI) in another country, telling them what to do domestically, to support their president in the face of international pressure over their new law for executing gay people.
Johnson hasn’t said Jack shit, let alone Jesus shit, about those events. In fact, as the JL Substack first reported, it was Johnson who for the first time let the prayer breakfast organizers hold their international-election-interfering jamboree inside the U.S. Capitol this year.
MORE DEMS Today, Zelenskyy is scheduled to present his “victory plan” to the White House, without a single Republican president invited! Instead, Zelenskyy will be meeting with Pres. Joe Biden, a known Harris supporter.
Zelenskyy reportedly will even meet today with Harris herself, even though Harris has made multiple public statements supportive of the Harris campaign, has been a proxy for the campaign in not-enough television appearances, is said to be weighing a formal endorsement of the Harris campaign, and reportedly is on the short list to serve in a Harris administration in the event of a Harris win in November.
PUTIN ON THE NUKES Well, check out this morning’s disconcertingly ambiguous story from the New York Times. Russian Pres. Vladimir Putin reportedly revised his country’s policies on using nuclear weapons — and not in a good “we won’t” kinda way.
According to the Times, Putin said yesterday that Russia is updating its policy to open the door for the use of nukes in the event of “aggression against Russia by any nonnuclear state [coughUkrainecough], but with the participation or support of a nuclear state [coughUSUKFrancecough].”
What kind of nukes? Tactical or wholesale? On the battlefield only? Or, uh, everywhere? Putin doesn’t say! It’s supposed to be a surprise!
The very frustratingly vague announcement comes as Ukraine has recently made successful incursions onto Russian soil, and is ramping up its request that the U.S. greenlight long-range strikes inside Russian territory on military sites such as airbases and missile launchers being used to attack Ukraine.
On the bright — but not nuclear-flash bright — side, Putin has rattled his nuclear sabres before at moments when he wanted to discourage western support for Ukraine, and yet, as of The Fucking News’s press time, we’re all still here!
R.I.P. UKRAINE Trump was also escalating his rhetoric yesterday. No longer content rhetorically erasing mere cities from existence, Trump graduated to declaring entire countries gone, specifically Ukraine.
Here’s some of what Trump had to say yesterday in his touching eulogy for an entire nation, as well as for the possibility of making a deal to end the war:
“Those cities are gone, they’re gone, and we continue to give billions of dollars to a man who refused to make a deal, Zelenskyy. There was no deal that he could have made that wouldn’t have been better than the situation you have right now. You have a country that has been obliterated, not possible to be rebuilt…
“What deal can we make? The, it’s, it’s demolished. The people are dead. The country is in rubble. And who are these people that allowed this to happen? Who are these people?”
In fairness, it’s understandable that Trump thinks Ukraine cannot be rebuilt, given his history in the private and public sectors as a failed builder.
Ex-Cop Indicted After Taking Over Entire City
New York City Mayor Eric Adams has been indicted on federal criminal charges, sources tell apparently every news outlet on the planet except The Fucking one.
Adams, a former police captain, is — somehow, impossibly — the only New York mayor ever to face criminal charges while in office. Which he still was, as of The Fucking News’s press time.
This is also the first just the second one of the few one of several yet another time that a former New York City police officer has ever been accused of committing a crime.
Details of the indictment remain unclear, mostly because there’s so many possibilities given the astronomical number of scandals metastasizing throughout the corrupt Adams administration. Just this month alone, the police commissioner and schools chancellor fled their positions.
Adams released a video last night assuring New Yorkers that he did not do the things he does not yet know he’s accused of. Not knowing the charges, Adams called them “false.”
Investigators took his phone last year as part of an investigation involving campaign contributions and, improbably, the nation of Turkey. In fact, so many city officials have had their phones seized that Twitter’s user count has plummeted. (Oh, no, wait, that’s just CEO Elon Musk being bad at CEOing.)
“I always knew that if I stood my ground for all of you, that I would be a target — and a target I became,” Adams said, apparently referring to militant foes of his cuts to library hours and budgets, a move that provoked the wrath of Big Library.
It’s worth noting the charges are not expected to include Adams’s official, made-up statements blaming student protests on professional outside agitators, a claim for which he has still not provided. Although, in his defense, apparently he’s pretty busy.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) was the most high-profile official to call for Adams to resign as of The Fucking News’s press time, which weirdly keeps coming up today.
Another Vance Springfield Lie Gets Eaten by Haitian Truth
EXCLUSIVE Speaking of the JL Substack, Clark County Health Commissioner Chris Cook dropped some inconvenient-truth bombs yesterday.
Back in July, right before he became former Pres. Donald Trump’s running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-OH) was already making false claims about Haitians in Springfield, OH.
The very first time he discussed Springfield, Vance mentioned the strain on hospital services. The following day claimed that a third of the county health budget went to free health shit for Haitians.
And here you wondered why hospitals there got threats!
Well, Cook says Vance’s claims are bullshit (Cook did not literally say that, but TFN is saying that what Cook did say = saying that Vance’s claims are bullshit). As the JL Substack already reported, there is no county health budget, because the primary county health agencies are actually state offices and counties also have their own spending. For those of you keeping track at home, that’s two budgets involved in country health.
And now Cook says he’s crunched the numbers on his budget and, nope, no one-third here! He says the total budget is about $10 million, and monthly spending that he estimates wouldn’t be there without the Haitian influx runs about $56,000 a month. Using my calculator’s times-12 button, that tells me Cook’s office is actually spending less than seven percent serving its new Haitian residents.
SOME GOOD NEWS FOR SPRINGFIELD The Springfield News-Sun reported yesterday on Tuesday night’s City Commission meeting. Mayor Rob Rue said he and his family have been threatened, presumably for sticking up for the city’s Haitians against the lies of Trump and Vance.
And, yes, folks showed up to blame the Haitians. (The city is investigating whether local businesses brought them in as workers without giving city officials a heads-up so they could prepare for the influx.)
But check out the story’s heartwarming final paragraph if you’re looking for reasons to be hopeful about our collective future:
“Despite that, the meeting room was not as packed as some previous sessions have been, and while the public discussion included angry expressions about Haitian immigration and city response, there were more calls for unity than at previous commission meetings.”
Four Quickies
Y’KNOW THOSE JOKES THAT STOP BEING FUNNY WHEN YOU KEEP REPEATING THEM BUT THEN START BEING FUNNY AGAIN BECAUSE YOU KEEP REPEATING THEM? The U.S. yesterday called for an immediate cease-fire in the conflict between Israel and Hamas Hezbollah in Gaza Lebanon. The office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu responded this morning, saying that he had not responded. And adding, “The Prime Minister instructed the IDF [Israeli Defense Forces] to continue the fighting with full force.”
SPECIAL COUNSEL FILING Special counsel Jack Smith today is submitting to the court the full prosecution dossier on their case against former Pres. Donald Trump. We won’t get to see it, at least not right away, but it’ll inventory the best (remaining) evidence (after the Supreme Court ruled that the law doesn’t apply equally to everyone). Smith alleges that Trump broke the law with his sustained efforts to get fake Electoral College votes before Congress and/or get Congress to certify his victory despite his loss. It’s worth noting that the Justice Department policy against prosecuting sitting presidents has now survived four Democratic presidents.
FREEDOM FROM RELIGION Those Establishment-Clause zealots over at the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) report that the Army’s Inspector General Agency has opened a formal investigation of Lt. Gen. Brian Eifler. That’s because the MRFF revealed that Eifler gave a presentation last month, in uniform, to the New Apostolic Reformation’s (NAR) Reformation Prayer Network event in Washington last month. If you’re not familiar with NAR, it’s dedicated to more than apostolic reformation and wants to reform the nation as a theocracy. Which is un-American, as you’d think a lieutenant general ought to know.
HARRIS INTERVIEW ROCKS NATION … to sleep. Vice Pres. Kamala Harris gave another interview late last night, speaking with MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle. Objective journalists have clamored for Harris to give more interviews, the way they don’t clamor for affordable prescription drugs because that wouldn’t be objective. In keeping with their history of being wrong about things, last night’s interview got little coverage, as evidenced by it being the last item in today’s TFN, as of The Fucking News’s press time.
TCB
VANCE / WALZ DEBATE! Join TFN for The Fucking News live-chat of Tuesday night’s debate between Sen. JD Vance (R-OH) and Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN). We’ll be starting a new thread at the TFN chat right here, just ahead of the 9pm eastern event, so we can debate the debate and share thoughts, feelings, and hey maybe even a fucking fact or two!
And if that goes well, we’re gonna try a LIVE VIDEO! It’s a new Substack feature that only certain humble-bragging outlets are getting to use. If that sounds like history in the making, that’s because it is, or because I’m making it sound like it is.
ACTUAL JOURNALISM You can find my original reporting at Jonathan Larsen’s Substack, and you can support my original snarking at TFN with a donation or by upgrading to a paid TFN subscription.
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Go get ‘em, kids!
I am sorely disappointed President Zelenskyy didn't punch Moses Johnson right on the nose when he had the opportunity.
A lot of rebuilding will be needed in Ukraine and yet the failed former president sees no opportunity at all for a Trump Tower in Downtown Kyiv? He must be slipping further into dementia.