Former long-shot presidential candidate and congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii is just the latest U.S. politician to seize on debunked, Kremlin-backed conspiracy theories about the supposed existence of U.S.-run bioweapon research labs in Ukraine.

But she’s the first high-profile Democrat to do so.

What started as an InfoWars talking point has been embraced by the Russian and Chinese state media and has morphed in recent days into a full blown right-wing effort to place the blame for President Putin’s deadly war on Ukraine squarely on the shoulders of the U.S. right’s usual cast of enemies, including President Biden and, of course, Anthony Fauci. Kate Riga digs into the madness here.

We know the former president has a lot of enemies — both political and inanimate.

It’s been a while since we’ve checked in on this character.

Convicted Russian spy Maria Butina just did a bizarre and rather concerning interview with the BBC in which she argued that Ukraine is “bombing” its own civilians and pushed Kremlin talking points that President Vlodymyr Zelensky, a Jewish descendant of Holocaust survivors, is a Nazi.

The interview honestly sounds like a confused hostage video. I’ll get into the details more below. But since serving 15 months in U.S. prisons after being convicted of working as an unregistered foreign agent — for attempting to infiltrate the National Rifle Association and after admitting to helping set up a Russian backchannel for conservative strategists ahead of the 2016 election — Butina returned to Russia in 2019. And she’s a politician now — apparently a fairly successful one. Butina became a member of the Russian parliament’s lower chamber in 2021 and has batted away accusations that President Putin helped hand her the position as a “reward” for her criminal endeavors in the U.S.

GOPer Robert “RJ” Regan won a special Republican primary election last week and will advance to the special general election for an open Michigan state House seat in May.

After winning the special election by just 81 votes, Regan participated in a panel discussion via Facebook livestream over the weekend with the conservative group “Michigan Rescue Coalition,” which believes that the 2020 election was stolen from President Trump. The beginning of the panel discussion focused on what, if any, actions could be taken to continue challenging the 2020 presidential election results in the state of Michigan. One panelist, a Republican strategist named Amber Harris, argued that it was “too late” to continue the Big Lie crusade in the state. She suggested Michigan Republicans should instead focus on ensuring future elections are legitimate.

That’s when newly-relevant Regan cut in with some horrific commentary.

As we’ve documented closely over the last 12 days of Russia’s ongoing war on Ukraine, Republicans are offering up a confusing mix of reactions and deflections in response to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion. Some have praised Putin, others have condemned him. But all are mostly mad at President Biden, for a slew of reasons mostly tied to a vague assertion that he’s been weak on foreign policy since taking office.

But Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) offered up a rather unique and entirely backwards hypothesis last week when he suggested that somehow those involved in impeaching President Trump the first time might be to blame for the current war in Europe. Of those attracting his ire: retired Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, who was himself born in Kyiv and also became an important whistleblower in the impeachment drama.

The tactic doesn’t always work, but this was a clever one.

“She was just annoyed at having to see her ex-lover’s face on billboards as she drove around Plano.”

According to the Dallas Morning News, that was Plano, Texas resident Tania Joya’s justification for spilling the beans about an affair she had with incumbent Rep. Van Taylor (R-TX) to one of his opponents ahead of Tuesday’s primary.

Look, we’ve all been there.

But there’s a lot of other stuff going on here — far more, in fact, than Joya’s very valid logic. Let’s unpack.

Over the years, Pat Robertson and other fringe evangelicals and non-serious Christian scholars have become known for exegesis-ing any and all current news events into some sort of Biblical End Time prophesy. For some, COVID vaccines are the “Mark of the Beast.” For others, President Obama was the anti-Christ. (Trump got that distinction, too). The legalization of gay marriage in the U.S. was believed to be a signal that some hybrid Sodom and Gomorrah/rapture-induction event was imminent.

Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis tweeted triumphantly this afternoon that he rejected the Biden administration’s request for states to send National Guard troops to Washington, D.C. ahead of Tuesday’s State of the Union speech.

As we’ve noted in our live coverage of Russia’s declaration of war and subsequent full-scale military attack on Ukraine in the last 24 hours, there is a schism growing in the Republican Party on whether Vladimir Putin is a mortal enemy, or a brilliant friend. The wildly divergent thinking within the GOP has been on display repeatedly in recent days and weeks.