Kansas City newspaper slams ‘disingenuous’ Josh Hawley for his blatant hypocrisy on Ukraine

President Joe Biden has been quite aggressive in his response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, joining forces with the United States’ European NATO allies in imposing tough economic sanctions that are already hurting the Russian economy but may become even tougher in the weeks ahead. Regardless, some Republicans are claiming that Biden is to blame for the Ukraine crisis, including Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri. And the Kansas City Star’s editorial board calls out Hawley and other MAGA Republicans for their “disingenuous” claims in a blistering editorial published on February 25.

Russian President Vladimir Putin clearly regards Biden as a major thorn in his side, which is why he was hoping that former President Donald Trump would be reelected. Trump has recently been praising Putin despite his aggression against Ukraine.

“Predictably, the same Republicans — let’s start with you, Josh Hawley — who have spent years emboldening mad Vlad Putin are now claiming that it’s President Joe Biden whose weakness vis-a-vis Russia made the invasion of Ukraine inevitable,” the Star’s editorial board writes. “Without any acknowledgment of their own complicity, or even that today’s talking points sound nothing like the appeasing tune they’ve been belting for the last five years, everyone from our disingenuous junior senator to disgraced former Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens abruptly went back to sounding like the kind of pre-Trump Republicans who’d always known that what Ronald Reagan said about ‘the aggressive impulses of an evil empire’ has not subsided under the KGB thug who wants his empire back.”

Hawley and other Trump devotees in MAGA World, according to the Star’s editorial board, “need to call a wartime ceasefire on BS.” One recent example of such “BS,” the Star notes, is U.S. Senate candidate Eric Greitens claiming that “Biden’s policy of weakness and chaos leads to aggression like we’re seeing in Ukraine.”

“Wait, was it Biden who praised the illegal 2014 invasion of Crimea, or denied solid U.S. intelligence about Russian interference in our election, or eased sanctions on Russian oligarchs, or thanked Putin for expelling our diplomats, or broke the law by freezing aid to Ukraine?” the Star’s editorial board stresses. “Or wanted to readmit Russia to the G-7? Or weirdly, out of nowhere, six years ago, inserted into his party’s platform that should Russia ever invade Ukraine, we would offer Ukraine no help?”

The Star’s editorial board continues, “No, that was the guy who no current national Republican other than Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, who have only metaphorically been sent to Siberia, is willing to question in any way. But now, here we are, with Candace Owens tweeting that the United States is to blame for what’s happening in Ukraine, while authoritarian-loving Fox News host Tucker Carlson repeats outright Russian propaganda.”

At the recent the 2022 Conservative Political Action Conference event in Orlando, Florida, Hawley told attendees, “Is it any wonder that (Putin) feels emboldened.… when we have a president who doesn’t believe in America?”

The Star’s editorial board, in response, writes, “But was it Joe Biden who not only refused to call Putin a killer, but tried to say that the U.S. was in no way morally superior to a country where dissenters are assassinated, or if they’re lucky, merely imprisoned? Was it Biden who asked Bill O’Reilly, ‘You think our country’s so innocent?’ Was it Biden whose unpaid campaign manager secretly owed millions to a Russian oligarch? Or whose national security adviser pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his contacts with the Russian ambassador? It is our current president who constantly attacks NATO? Or who abandoned Syria, to Russia’s great delight? Again and again, no.”