David Shafer, who serves as Chairman of the Georgia Republican Party is in very hot water with others members of the GOP for tweets he sent out that have been deemed “Russian propaganda.”
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports that Shafer quoted a tweet from the Kremlin which was critical of a UN resolution that had been introduced by Russia:
Shafer’s tweet Sunday questioned why the U.S. and Ukraine voted against the resolution, which was critical of Nazism. He mused that Biden and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky “fell into a somewhat obvious trap” by opposing it.
If Shafer had bothered to do 30 seconds of research on the internet, he would have discovered that the Trump administration also voted against the Russian UN resolution:
The U.S. has voted against the Russia-backed U.N. resolution each time it has come up since 2005 – including during former President Donald Trump’s administration in 2019 and 2020.
U.S. officials say the resolutions are “thinly veiled attempts to legitimize Russian disinformation campaigns denigrating neighboring nations.”
GOP committee member Jason Shepherd said he is calling for a formal censure of Shafer as a result of the tweets:
“He is supposed to speak for all Republicans. Obviously he is speaking for a very fringe part of the Republican party that supports Vladimir Putin. Both Republican and Democratic administrations have voted against this resolution. He should have apologized and deleted the tweet. As of now he still hasn’t done that.”
State Senate Majority Leader Republican Mike Dugan echoed Shepherd’s remarks:
“(Anyone) that defends the actions of Putin and the Russian Government and the Ukraine is, to me as lost that what Russia is doing in the Ukraine is reprehensible…There’s no way you can justify it and things going on.”
Shafer was also pilloried on social media for being so eager to push Russian propaganda merely to make political points:
Shafer should resign in disgrace. But as we’ve learned on countless occasions, Republicans have absolutely no shame, even when they take the side of murdering thugs who bomb children and want to destroy the United States.