The Kremlin can't decide who to bat on in the US elections
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On January 26, two interesting media events took place. First, the British newspaper The Financial Times reported to its Ukrainian readers that Trump and Mike Johnson, the spokesman for the US House of Representatives, called on the Republican Party to cancel the agreement reached with the Democratic Party on changing immigration laws.
In 2021, Moscow was looking forward to these changes. After Biden's inauguration, Moscow's media dilettantes began to predict that the Democratic Party would remain in power for many years if it granted citizenship to all immigrants living in the United States, including illegal immigrants. Naturally, the new citizens would vote for the Democratic Party, which already had a reputation as the party of newcomers, in gratitude.
This joy of Moscow seemed strange if we believe that the unelected 2020 Trump was its agent. But everything becomes clear if we remember that Moscow has always wanted a Democrat, not a Republican, to be president of the U.S. The exception was in 2016 when the Democrats nominated Hillary Clinton, who would not forgive the Chekists for Monica Lewinsky's dress, which had not been washed in 20 years. Therefore, the Chekists had to cheer for Trump, just to avoid Hillary. The lesser of two evils must be chosen. In the end, Zhirinovsky said, "Uh, I got away with it" and drank champagne on the day Trump was elected. It was a lesser evil, but still an evil, and Moscow had to sit still for four years and not annoy Trump. When Biden became president in January 2021. Biden became president in January 2021 and called Putin a murderer, Moscow brought 100,000 troops to the border with Ukraine in April. After that, Biden met with Putin in Geneva and said that he had given him six months to make amends. In December 2021, Moscow issued an ultimatum. Moscow rolled out ultimatums to the United States and NATO, unsuccessfully tried to occupy Kazakhstan in January 2022, and openly attacked Ukraine in February.
Now the Chekists are in a situation where they cannot decide who is the lesser evil for them - Biden, Trump, or Nikki Haley. Biden is a known evil for them, and they don't know what kind of trouble to expect from Trump or Haley. That's why they are clinging to Biden and Peskov, and it's no coincidence that on the evening of January 25, Bloomberg said that Putin wants to settle everything with Ukraine diplomatically. He said this a few hours before the UN Security Council regarding the downing of a Russian military plane in the Belgorod region. It meant, don't take what we say at the Security Council seriously. To demonstrate loyalty to Biden, instead of the odious Nebenzi, Polianskyi was sent to the Security Council, and Professor Solovei said that day that in February, instead of Mishustin, Viktor Khmarin, the son of Putin's classmate at the Leningrad Law School, might become prime minister. Solovyi's use of the word "possibly" means that the Kremlin is waiting for the White House to reciprocate the dismissal of Mishustin as the beginning of the transition of power in Russia.
The situation for Moscow is complicated by the fact that political life in the United States has its trends, both visible and behind the scenes, and some are beyond the understanding of the Chekists.
The Democratic Party knew, without the prompting of Moscow's media dilettantes, that a massive handout of citizenship would expand its electoral base. However such a distribution does not have unequivocal support in US public opinion, and there is opposition to it from Republicans.
The specifics of the United States are that the president is a popularly elected prime minister and head of government, and the function of the president, who controls him, is performed by a two-chamber Congress, which can veto any of his decisions. Therefore, the Democratic Party cannot change the laws on migrants with the move of a pen, as Moscow's dilettantes advised it to do in 2021. Moreover, Biden was not elected president for his promise to grant citizenship to anyone who crossed the border in any way and did not come to the attention of the police during his year in the United States.
As a result, the Democratic Party has been pushing these changes slowly and cautiously, but since the fall of the 2023 election year, it logically had to accelerate, as it would be indecent to hand out several million US passports before the 2024 election. The Republicans are not against increasing the number of new citizens by a couple of million and very selectively, but not by 10-20 million and indiscriminately. This creates the ground for a compromise between the two parties, but in this case, the Democrats do not get the desired effect.
Therefore, the Democrats began to look for different ways to put pressure on the Republicans to get them to agree to hand out more passports, or as it formally sounds, to change the migration law.
The mainstream of pressure was the budget vote and Trump's accusations that he is a sexual predator and an agent of the Kremlin and that Republicans are against providing aid to Ukraine. As a result, they tried to tie aid to Ukraine to the process of allocating money to eliminate the consequences of the fires in Hawaii. In the fall, Congress began discussing the 2024 budget and went full steam ahead. Not only Ukraine and Israel but also the US budget itself was held hostage. The shutdown began. The Democrats quickly realized that the shutdown was hurting them more than the opposition Republicans, and began to pass the budget in portions. The budget was never finally approved, and Biden pushed its approval to March 10, after the primaries in most states, when voter preferences would become more or less clear. Biden's initiative was also the decision to sign aid to Israel and Ukraine in only one package, along with barbed wire on the border with Mexico. The Democrats also tried to split the already united ranks of the Republicans and, together with 20 particularly staunch Trump supporters, arranged the resignation of Kevin McCarthy in October and the speaker's brawl that brought the budget process to a standstill for a month.
Republicans did not stay in debt. They searched Joseph Biden's home, unsuccessfully tried to impeach him, and in response to the judicial attacks on Trump, revived old cases against Hunter Biden. In January, they published their "Ukraine Victory Plan" to stop attacks from the Democratic Party. They are also playing with the shutdown to get money for the border with Mexico, whose government is waging a US-backed war on drug cartels, similar to the one in Colombia with Pablo Escobar. But the Republicans' strategic objective is to prevent a large-scale passport distribution by Democrats before the election, and the question of their presidential candidate is subordinate to this.
But Republicans are not sure whether to run Trump or Haley against Biden. Until January 22, Trump's rating was only 3-4% higher than Biden's. This did not guarantee his victory, as it meant that only a third of voters were ready to vote for each of them, and about 40% were undecided or wanted to vote for some third candidate. In December, Biden proposed the option of mutual "zeroing out" and promised not to run if Trump did the same. Haley is attractive to Republicans because she can attract a lot of wavering voters to her side and enter the electoral niche of the Democratic Party. It is not yet known who is more dangerous for the Democratic Party - Trump or her.
Democrats and Republicans were making budgetary and other compromises, but on January 22, the situation was rocked by the Supreme Court, which demanded that the state of Texas remove barbed wire from the bank of the Rio Grande border river for environmental and design reasons. After that, something happened that no one expected. In the border states, a public movement to return the fences to their original location began. Republican Texas Governor Greg Abbott correctly captured the mood of his voters, sent the National Guard to repair the wire, and accused Biden of violating the Constitution and granting mass amnesty to migrants for criminal offenses. By January 26, Abbott's actions were already supported by authorities in 11 southern states.
Many Republicans correctly realized that the wind was blowing sharply and unexpectedly in their sails and it would be foolish not to take advantage of it. Trump, as the informal leader of the party, threw out the cry "No compromise" that day, and Mike Johnson said more diplomatically that until a compromise is found in the Senate, he would not put anything to a vote in the House of Representatives. The Democrats realized that they had given up on the barbed wire, and CNN, a TV channel close to them, reported on January 27 that negotiations between the parties had begun.
Other surprises may occur before the US elections, which confuses not only many people in Ukraine but also the Chekists. For once, the Chekists do not know who to bet on in the US elections. "The Chekists are worse off than the Ukrainians because they want to participate in the US election.