Seeing red

First things first: I was taken aback when I saw the first pictures of the damage and downed trees from the recent massive windstorm that hit the communities of New Rockford and Sheyenne. Then I saw more pictures and was more freaked out. And then I saw how many people stepped up to volunteer and organize and plan and work their tails off to get things as much back to normal as possible in a very, very short amount of time. It’s been nothing less than spectacular to witness, if only from afar, I’m sorry I wasn’t there to help, and I wish everyone continued success in getting things back up to speed.

If you were following the news about North Dakota’s elected officials over the Fourth of July holiday, you know someone else who was watching things from afar: Senator Hoeven. He put all the right feel-good things up on Twitter and Facebook—”Today, we celebrate our nation’s history and heritage and are reminded how our founders and ancestors strove to realize a more perfect and free nation,” etc. etc. He even posted an inspirational picture of the fireworks behind the dome of the United States Capitol in Washington, DC. The only problem: He posted all of these things from Russia, where he and seven other Republican Senators had traveled, at the invitation of the Russian government, for a multi-day tour of both Moscow and St. Petersburg.

Now, there’s nothing in itself wrong with going to Russia. It’s apparently a beautiful country, with much to see. But something about the timing of it—and the way in which the Senators’ constituents found out about the trip—was a little off. Let’s start with that last part. How did we find out about the trip? No American media was allowed to cover it. Instead, our news of the various meetings the Senators had—with Sergey Kislyak, for example, the man described by a former U.S.Director of National Intelligence as “overseeing a very aggressive intelligence operation in the United States”—came from Russian government-controlled media. (If Kislyak’s name sounds familiar, he’s the man, along with another longtime Russian intelligence operative, Sergei Lavrov, who the current President of the United States gave classified intelligence from Israel to during a secret meeting at the White House—a meeting kept secret from American media and not listed on any White House schedule which we found out about because of, yes, Russian government-controlled media.)

What’s the problem with letting Russian government-controlled media tell the story of the American Senators’ trip—over the pretty-much sacred American holiday of July 4, no less? Well, for one, you let the Russian government, and Russian spokespeople, frame that trip however they want. This is how the Senators’ trip was viewed on state-run television: Igor Korotchenko, a Russian military expert, said of Hoeven and his comrades, “We need to look down at them and say: You came because you needed to, not because we did.”

The trip does seem to have changed a few hearts and minds, though: Not long after returning, Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin suddenly declared that he didn’t think that the U.S. sanctions on Russia were working and needed to be rethought. Where did I read this? Why, at the website of TASS, the Russian news agency, under a banner headline reading “U.S. SANCTIONS AGAINST RUSSIA NOT WORKING—U.S. SENATOR JOHNSON.” It’s the kind of public-relations victory that money can’t buy (or can it?).

Senator Hoeven, of course, didn’t say anything quite so controversial. In fact, he hasn’t said much at all. After literally thousands of his constituents ridiculed his July 4 picture by posting comments asking why he spent July 4 in Moscow, he finally relented and issued a bland press release merely noting that he’d gone to Russia “to have frank discussions” about a number of issues.

I wonder: Did those issues include the two British citizens killed around the same time as Hoeven and his comrades’ trip by the same Russian nerve agent that killed a former Russian spy and his daughter in March?

 Did the issue of the Republican-led U.S. Senate Committee on Intelligence releasing a report stating definitively that Russia interfered in our last Presidential election specifically to aid Donald Trump come up on the trip? I called Senator Hoeven’s office to ask, but no one was around to answer.

Of course, by the time you’re reading this, we’ll likely be immersed in a whole new news cycle centering on Trump’s visit to Helsinki to receive his report card from Vladimir Putin—I’m sorry, to have his much-ballyhooed “summit.” At Trump’s insistence, though, no other American citizens will be allowed into the meeting with Putin, the longtime KGB operative. Then again, heck—Trump’s used to talking tough, isn’t he? I mean—he fired people on national TV!

I’m sure the meeting will go well—and that the American President will give us a frank assessment of it all. One problem, though: A recent non-partisan factual analysis of his claims during his recent Montana rally—which, substance-wise, was almost a carbon copy of his Fargo rally—proved that fully 76 percent of what he said was false, wrong, misleading, or an obvious lie.

Tell me again: Who won the Cold War?