Spadea Squaks: Despite Parroting Putin, He Wants You to Know He Is the Victim
/by Joshua Sotomayor - Einstein
After receiving pushback for parroting the propaganda of Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, NJ talking-head and attempted big man of the grassroots GOP, Bill Spadea, wants readers to know he is upset. His recent self-flagellation begins by accusing those who disagree with him of virtue signaling, paints him as the victim for alleged ‘truth-telling,’ repeats debunked pro-Putin propaganda, and ends with the Orwellian lie that he is standing up for those who are being ‘bullied’ when in fact he made the uncoerced choice to join the side doing the bullying.
No one in GOP or rational circles is advocating US, NATO, EU, or any other Western troops enter the Ukraine war and fight against Putin’s unprovoked aggression against a sovereign, free, and democratic Ukraine. In fact, Biden’s feckless administration keeps flipflopping over a potential deal to send MIG fighters to Ukraine, the air equivalent of the ground based missiles (and other small arms) the US and Western nations are currently sending the Ukrainian freedom movement. Spadea is fighting an army of strawmen he faces zero risk from and wants to be heralded as brave for it.
In his most recent word-soup, Spadea counterfactually states that “in a recent article written after the Russian troops started rolling, I pointed out the misinformation being reported by numerous news outlets and the facts that were being ignored as to the corruption in the Kyiv government.” In reality, he claimed (sans evidence that) the elected President of Ukraine is just as corrupt as the Russian dictator, closed down TV stations while failing to mention that they were controlled by Putin, and jailed political opponents (when it was actually the pre-2014 pro-Putin Ukrainian regime that jailed opposition leaders, at least one of whom was freed by the Euromaidan movement, ran in the 2019 Ukrainian presidential election, and has stayed in Ukraine to stand against Putin’s invasion).
Spadea doubles down on his previous falsehoods such as pretending the hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians (including Jews, Tartars, and even ethnic Russians), who in 2014 peacefully protested against the corruption of the Putin puppet oligarchs in high office were mere non-player characters manipulated by Obama. Spadea states “the Ukrainian regime was installed after the so-called “Orange Revolution” with the help of the Obama/Biden administration.” Spadea would have readers believe that the same Obama who scrapped (Bush Jr. era) plans to place missile interceptors in Eastern Europe to appease Putin and who said “the 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back” in response to 2012 GOP Presidential candidate Mitt Romney pointing out that Putin is an enemy, was behind the 2014 peaceful Ukrainian revolution that Putin is currently attempting to undo. Even more morally repugnant is the cowardly way in which Spadea attempts to delegitimize Ukraine – by implying the largest former Soviet nation to have repeated elections, changes of government, multi-party rule, and peaceful transitions of power, is not a democracy by calling it a “regime”.
Next, Putin’s NJ point man repeats his past lie that “14,000 died over the past few years as the Ukrainian government battled with an established pro-Russian government ruling the disputed Donbas.” By stating “past few years” Spadea is attempting to minimize the illegal Russian occupation of Donetsk, Luhansk, and Crimea since 2014. Spadea would have people believe that the responsibility for those 14,000 dead is not on the invader that began hostilities (Putin) but the victim which was attacked - Ukraine. Moreover, Spadea once again pushes the narrative that the regions illegally occupied by Putin’s forces since 2014 are “pro-Russian” when there is no way to know as they have been occupied by the armed forces of a totalitarian dictatorship which regularly imprisons and murders opposition.
Spadea, never one to miss an opportunity to pat his own back, states that “for pointing out these facts and the fact that we should have recognized the reality of the disputed region, where most people speak Russian and hold Russian passports, I was attacked as being pro-Putin.” Again, engaging in naked propaganda, Spadea pushes the notion that Putin’s war of choice is over territory that he (Spadea) claims is “disputed” but from 1991 to 2014 was recognized by Russia as belonging to Ukraine. Spadea doubles down on shilling for Putin’s narrative by implying that victims of Putin’s occupation of the 3 Ukrainian regions occupied since 2014 desire to be under his dictatorship because they have Russian passports while failing to mention that doing so is compulsory and that Ukrainian passports in these regions were banned and confiscated.
Spadea’s shtick is that he is the “super-spreader of truth,” but he has repeatedly proven his untrustworthiness as he deliberately parrots the propaganda of an absolute dictator that GOP Presidents and Presidential nominees as different as Bush Jr, Romney, and Trump all knew was not our friend. While Presidents Trump’s threat to Putin that he would bomb Moscow if Russia invaded Ukraine may have been a bridge to far, as no one in the GOP is advocating a shooting war between the US and Putin, the idea that America should stand up to dictatorships when they try to strangle fellow democracies is a bedrock Republican position.
After repeatedly attempting to justify Putin’s invasion, NJ’s resident Putinista is more a shockingly bad joke than a shock jock. Like the left wing politician he posted a clip of to support his argument in his first Pravda style piece, Spadea takes another move from the left’s play book and pretends he is the victim. Spadea claims he is speaking truth to power, but by arguing pro-Putin talking points and pushing propaganda against a democracy, he is pushing power over truth and willingly joining the side of the bully. Spadea squawks that he is allegedly being bullied but once again provides no examples. The reality is that he cannot deal with the popular pushback he has received from regular Republicans and others that it is unacceptable to repeatedly parrot the war mongering lies an absolute dictator has used as pretext for attacking a free, democratic, and independent nation.
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