James Comer and Tucker Carlson aren't fooled by Russian lies — they're complicit

Last week, the "whistleblower" that House Republicans were counting on to justify a long-planned impeachment of Joe Biden was arrested for lying to the FBI. In a twist that should surprise exactly no one, it appears almost certain that Alexander Smirnov's claim to have evidence implicating the president and his son, Hunter, in criminal activity was fabricated. Worse yet, it also seems plausible that the "source" of the lies was Russian intelligence services. House Oversight Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., had built the effort to impeach Biden around Smirnov's invented testimony, and has now tacitly admitted that this arrest may derail the Biden impeachment, which has been in the works since long before Republicans had even decided what "crime" they would pretend to believe Biden committed. 

In the wake of Smirnov's arrest, a narrative has surfaced among the punditry holding that Comer and other Republicans who championed Smirnov's fictions must be a bunch of morons. Joe Scarborough of MNBC, the bellwether of centrist Beltway thinking, unleashed on Wednesday morning about "Republicans being played once again by Vladimir Putin," adding that "Republicans are so stupid in the House, they can feed Russian disinformation straight into the veins of the United States Congress." Other outlets have been less aggressive with the name-calling, while still running with the assumption that Comer must be embarrassed to be exposed as a laundromat for Kremlin propaganda. Even legal blogger Marcy Wheeler, who tends to be bullish on Russian connections to Trump-friendly politicians, ran with the "dupes" narrative. 

There's a puzzling unwillingness among much of the press to consider the most obvious reason why MAGA Republicans keep taking Putin's side, whether it's over aid to Ukraine or Donald Trump's hostility to NATO: They prefer Putin's antidemocratic vision to the tattered-but-still-surviving democracy of the U.S. There's simply no evidence to suggest that Comer feels the slightest shame over using taxpayer money to be a cutout for Russian intelligence, or even that he is surprised by these revelations. 

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On CNN on Tuesday, House Oversight Committee member Rep. Dan Goldman, D-N.Y., suggested there might be more than stupidity motivating Comer and his fellow impeachment fanatics. "Wittingly or unwittingly, House Republicans have been acting as an agent or an asset of Russian intelligence for Vladimir Putin," he explained, with that word "wittingly" right there for the taking. He pointed out that Trump's first impeachment — which he worked on as a House Democratic lawyer — exposed how much Russia had worked to spread disinformation about the Biden family. There's no reason to reach for ignorance as an explanation, Goldman concluded: "Republicans are willing to be used as assets of Russian intelligence."

A strong case that Republicans are acting out of malice rather than ignorance can be made from the behavior of former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, the self-appointed vanguard of right-wing depravity. Earlier this month, Carlson ventured to Moscow to host a tongue-bath "interview" with Putin in which the Russian leader told outrageous lies while Carlson, as Salon's Andrew O'Hehir wrote, played the role of "dim but obsequious schoolboy." One lie that should be obvious, even to Americans: Putin blamed the onset of World War II on Poland, which he claimed had forced the Nazis to invade in 1939.

Carlson then did a travel infomercial for Moscow, marveling at the fancy grocery stores for oligarchs and the sparkling subway stations, arguing that Americans have been misled about life in Russia. The apparent implication was that it's worth the mass murder of Ukrainians and political dissidents to get clean subway cars. Paul Krugman of the New York Times retorted that while "parts of Moscow offer a small elite an opulent lifestyle, Russia as a whole is more than a bit ramshackle," noting that "a fifth of homes don’t even have indoor toilets" and that Russian life expectancy "is substantially lower than in the United States." 

Carlson was called a "useful idiot" by many observers, a phrasing that suggests he might have been sincerely confused about whether an expensive neighborhood in Moscow was representative of the entire nation. A far more likely explanation is that Carlson is just lying. We know from Dominion's successful lawsuit against Fox News that Carlson knowingly lies to his audience and, frankly, thinks it's funny to do so. But perhaps the biggest giveaway came in Carlson's digressions aimed at New Yorkers, telling them, "You can’t use your subway" because, supposedly, "it's too dangerous." (In fact, roughly 3.5 million people rode the New York subway on an average day in 2023.)

Carlson used to live in New York, so he knows full well that people in the city do not, in fact, think the subway is too dangerous to ride. (Violent crime is down in the city overall, and very rarely happens on subway trains.) People who believe otherwise are likely to be Fox News addicts who don't live in New York and rarely visit. I'll never forget the time a Republican-voting relative came to stay with me in Brooklyn. We were making a trip to the Upper East Side and her husband freaked out when I insisted we take the subway, correctly pointing out that a taxi ride of that length would be both miserable and expensive. Her husband, for some reason, forbade her to wear a skirt, but as soon as we got on the train she marveled at how chill and clean everything was. That's the audience Carlson is talking to, and he knows it. 

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It's much the same story with Comer, who has winkingly acknowledged on occasion that his relentless accusations against Biden are inventions. Last year, for instance, he all but confessed to the New York Times by noting that many of his "leads" had in fact come from QAnon message boards. Rather than toss obvious nonsense in the trash, he happily "investigates" the tips fed to him by conspiracy theorists. 

"You know, the customer’s always right," Comer told the Times, referring to what the reporters called the "vengeful, hard-right voters" who "propelled him to stardom."

For people like Comer and Carlson, a guiding principle is that the truth simply does not matter. The only value information can possess is to serve their political purposes, no matter how blatantly false it is or how evil the people peddling it may be. Nor should we expect them to feel any embarrassment when they're exposed as liars. On the contrary, that only serves the GOP's goal of breeding widespread cynicism in the public. Rather than trying to untangle all the conflicting accusations about malfeasance and Russian involvement, many people — especially low-information swing voters — will just shrug and say, "All politicians are liars."

The end goal here is to normalize Trump's nearly infinite record of lying and criminal behavior. By adopting his reckless disregard for the truth and his loyalty to Russia over America, Republicans like Comer are inching toward their perverse goal of making Trump's extreme corruption seem commonplace.