Republicans are very upset that Brittney Griner wasn’t left to rot in a Russian penal colony where guards might’ve publicly tortured kittens. Why did President Joe Biden free the Black lesbian basketball player instead of white male Marine Paul Whelan? It’s a complicated issue — Griner was held on BS drug charges and Whelan was convicted of espionage — but the former racist-in-chief Donald Trump just shouted BAD DEAL on his knock-off Twitter account.
Trump blathered:
What kind of a deal is it to swap Brittney Griner, a basketball player who openly hates our Country, for the man known as ‘The Merchant of Death,’ who is one of the biggest arms dealers anywhere in the World, and responsible for tens of thousands of deaths and horrific injuries,’ .
‘Why wasn’t former Marine Paul Whelan included in this totally one-sided transaction? He would have been let out for the asking. What a ‘stupid’ and unpatriotic embarrassment for the USA!!!’
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Griner, of course, doesn’t “hate” America. When she told the Arizona Republic in 2020 she didn’t believe the national anthem should be played before WNBA games, she specifically said, “I don’t mean that in any disrespect to our country. My dad was in Vietnam and a law officer for 30 years. I wanted to be a cop before basketball. I do have pride for my country.”
People with access to calendars have also noted that Whelan was imprisoned in 2018, when Trump was still squatting in the Oval Office. If Whelan could’ve been “freed for the asking,” Trump never bothered to ask his bestie Vladimir Putin. Whelan’s brother David called out Trump’s bullshit. He tweeted Friday, “Former President Trump appears to have mentioned my brother Paul Whelan’s wrongful detention more in the last 24 hours than he did in the 2 years of his presidency in which Paul was held hostage by Russia (zero). I don’t suggest he cares now any more than he did then (zero).”
Former national security advisor John Bolton complained that swapping Griner for Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout was nothing less than US “surrender” to Moscow. (“Surrender” was pretty much the Trump administration’s unofficial policy regarding Russia, but whatever.)
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Bolton told CBS, “Terrorists and rogue states all around the world will take note of [the Griner swap], and it endangers other Americans in the future who can be grabbed and used as bargaining chips by people who don’t have the same morals and scruples that we do.”
Republicans haven’t shown much “morals and scruples” when they insist Griner should’ve been left behind, presumably because of her politics. That’s a worse example of “cancel culture” than banning some Nazi trolls from Twitter.
Bolton claims the “possibility of a Bout-for-Whelan trade existed [when Trump was in office] and it wasn’t made, for very good reasons having to deal with Viktor Bout.” But the Trump administration later justified freeing 5,000 Taliban fighters in exchange for up to 1,000 Afghan government captives as part of a peace deal between the US and Islamist militants. Most Americans didn’t complain to the extent they even noticed, but Griner has become a convenient political cudgel.
Sunday, Trump claimed Russia never would’ve “taken” Griner when he was president, which is both absurd blather and also an admission that she was a political prisoner, not a daring drug smuggler.
The always self-aware Donald Trump Jr. insisted that Griner was “arrogant” and felt she “could be above the law” in Russia because of the immense privilege she enjoys as a Black queer woman.
Right-wingers also dismiss Griner as just a “celebrity” who plays women’s basketball, but they perhaps deliberately ignore that she’s won Olympic gold medals for the US.
Tomi Lahren, like many other right-wing fools, argued that Griner should return to America filled with an unquestioning, blind patriotism. However, it’s probably even harder to rise for the national anthem when you know half the country would’ve left you to die. In a better country, freeing Griner would’ve been a priority of any real president, regardless of party. However, if Trump had won re-election, Griner most likely would never have been released. That sort of sociopathic pettiness shouldn’t make anyone want to sing “God Bless America.”
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