A new AP poll says that 54% of Americans think President Biden has been “not tough enough” on Russia for its invasion of Ukraine. These kinds of public perceptions can be shaped by perceptions of a leader as much as they drive them. So you think Biden is weak as your starting point and therefore you think he’s not being tough enough on Russia rather than the other way around. Also notable, Americans’ hawkishness over Ukraine has dipped a bit from a month ago. But the first, second and third most important thing about this poll is that this is what you get when you’re not reminding Americans every day — and I mean every god-damned day — that the GOP has spent the last 7 years boosting, allying with and even conspiring with Russia.

As you can see here, pre-Jan 6th text from Oath Keepers paramilitaries show they were actually afraid a massive Antifa army of feral Portlanders descending on Washington, D.C. It’s a fascinating prism into the Trump/alt-right/fascist paramilitary world. But we should remember that this is par for the course with coups, fascist takeovers, genocidal violence. It’s how incitement works. You can seldom get large numbers of people to do really bad things without getting them to believe that those people are getting ready to do something similar to them.

Getting a lot of questions like this one from TPM Reader NL …

Help me out here. Why on earth are Democrats/Biden beating this drum? It seems like the right and politically convenient thing to do. We are in a fight to save our democracy and many others around the world. Why are people not calling this shit out and putting MBS and Jared in the spotlight?

A few days ago, investigative journalist Vicky Ward published an account which claimed to explain just why Jared Kushner was able secure that $2 billion investment from a Saudi Arabian sovereign wealth fund for his freshly hatched investment fund, Affinity Partners. Her explanation also claims to explain why Kushner was successfully prevented from receiving a top level security clearance while he was in government.

TPM Reader RS pointed something out to me which I think may answer some of the questions I had about the sinking of the Moskva (see this post from yesterday). As I mentioned, I was trying to understand what specific insights Ukraine might have had about the Moskva’s technology or operational practice that may have helped with its successful missile strike against the ship. Here is maybe part of that answer.

This is one of those posts where I am not reporting news but rather walking you through my own efforts — thus far incomplete — to do so. You’ve likely heard that Ukraine attacked and sank the Russian missile cruiser Moskva off Ukraine’s Black Sea coast. In the modern Russian Navy the Moskva was essentially a capital ship though I don’t know if it was technically considered one. So this was a big big deal. How was Ukraine able to pull it off? What now seems largely undisputed is that Ukraine fired two Neptune anti-ship missiles (produced by Ukraine itself) which struck the Moskva and (possibly along with detonation of the ship’s own armaments and ammunition) sank the ship.

From TPM Reader CB …

Here’s my thing: Republicans are doing a bunch of insane things and the media barely mentions them. Nothing new there. But with Abbot stopping trucks at the border–why isn’t Biden forcing a showdown? Constitutionally, Abbot just doesn’t have that right, does he? So why doesn’t Biden make a move?

From TPM Reader JB …

It seems like it is another time to discuss how the democrats get the coverage they ask for. Axios can leave out the republican damaging portion because democrats answer questions and republicans use the opportunity to frame news as bad for dems. Democrats are still waiting for that moderator in the sky to say that they are right and then feel ok. Life doesn’t work that way on the playground or battlefield or boardroom or bar. If you stand for something, you don’t wait for other people to validate you, you don’t look back for approval, you say out loud and proud that you are right. Let’s practice, “Anyone not voting to reduce insulin prices is killing patients and impoverishing their families. You can’t go to heaven if you are knowingly killing people.”