James Kirchick writing for Brookings asks How the GOP became the Party of Putin.
In his Op-Ed, Kirchick points out that 32-percent of Republicans have a favorable view of Putin, who was a career KGB officer that still hates America.
Kirchick says, “Russia has been targeting the American right since at least 2013, the year Putin enacted a law targeting pro-gay rights organizing and delivered a state-of-the-nation address extolling Russia’s ‘traditional values’ and assailing the West’s “genderless and infertile” liberalism. That same year, a Kremlin-connected think tank released a report entitled, ‘Putin: World Conservativism’s New Leader.’”
That 32-percent represents #FakePresident Trump’s rabid fan base. These are the Americans who would stick with him even if he appeared in San Francisco, or New York, or Los Angeles, or Seattle with an AK-47 and roughed up and/or slaughtered dozens. #FakePresident Trump would just say the people he shot deserved to die because they were immigrants, liberals, or gay.
The 32-percent (identified as Republicans) is also where #FakePresident Trump and the Alt-Right Republican Party will recruit their brutal police-state army. Then it will be open season on anyone the Trumpists don’t like or who dares to speak out against them.
Now, how about actual numbers, not a ratio or percentage. How many people are in that 32-percent that not only love #FakePresident Donald Trump but also approve of Putin, who hates the United States.
About 139 million Americans, or 60.2 percent of the voting-eligible population, cast a ballot in November’s (2016) elections, according to data compiled by the U.S. Elections Project.
“Overall, 48% of all registered voters identify as Democrats or lean Democratic compared with 44% who identify as Republican or lean toward the GOP.”
- 48-percent of 139-million Americans that voted in 2016 = 66.72 million
- 44-percent = 61.16 million
- 32-percent of 61.16 million = 19.57 million.
Those almost 19.6 million Americans are #FakePresident Trump and Putin’s fan base.
According to the U.S. Census Population Clock, there are about 325.5 million people living in the United States. That means #FakePresident Trump and Putin’s supportive, rabid fans, the ones #FakePresident Trump and Putin pander to, represents 6-percent of the total population or about 7.8 percent of the adult population.
These are the Americans that will support an autocratic, totalitarian, racist, fascist, police state, and who are willing trash the U.S. Constitution so the rest of us lose our Constitutional protections and rights.
The 19.57-million people seduced by Putin are the Americans that will build the death camps and prisons for the rest of us. They are the extreme Alt-Right that will bow down to conservatism’s world leader, Putin, and his puppet, #FakePresident Trump.
This will only happen if we don’t stop them before it is too late.
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Lloyd Lofthouse is a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam combat veteran with a BA in journalism and an MFA in writing, who taught in the public schools for thirty years (1975 – 2005).
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Lloyd Lofthouse 
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