‘Trumpists and Communists’ on Ukrainian NGO list fight back

A US government-affiliated Ukrainian NGO, texty.org.ua, published a list last week of all the Americans “impeding aid to Ukraine.” There are 388 individuals and seventy-six organizations on the list, including members of the conservative media Alex Jones, Tucker Carlson, members of Congress and a few Spectator writers. The piece is titled “Rollercoaster: From Trumpists to Communists. The forces in the US impeding aid to Ukraine and how they do it.”

“The title of this article oversells the product: it is a substantively thin piece, largely an excuse to smear a large group of Americans who have been skeptical of aid to Ukraine in one form or another,” Senator J.D. Vance and Representative Matt Gaetz wrote in a letter to secretary of state Antony Blinken on Tuesday. “But it is being broadcast as a part of a coordinated media strategy that has all the hallmarks of a US-targeting influence operation.” The letter calls for four items of information from Blinken by June 28, including grant agreements and awards given by the State Department to texty.org.ua.

“The accusations are laughable on their face,” journalist James Carden, who is included on the list, told The Spectator. “And they should be treated with absolute contempt, but it would be a mistake to take it seriously.”

The Spectator reached out to several people named on Ukraine’s NGO site. “Other than the fact that they butchered the spelling of several names… all I can say is that I am proud to be on the list,” Dr. Sumantra Maitra, senior fellow at the Center for Renewing America, said. “It’s clarifying to see the State Department-funded Ukrainian NGOs showing their true colors and creating blacklists, demonstrating how utterly Soviet they still are.”

Doug Bandow responded to the claims texty.org.ua made about the Cato Institute. “I am not an isolationist… Neither Cato nor I endorse Donald Trump’s foreign policy.” Bandow further commented on what is becoming a theme: “It is outrageous that the US government funds an organization that attacks Americans for their policy positions and public expressions.”

Texty, however, assures us at the bottom of their article that, “The project is funded exclusively by the readers of texty.org.ua.”

“This NGO is ideologically committed to mayhem and destruction, and it only speaks for itself,” journalist Jordan Schachtel told The Spectator. Christopher Bedford from the Blaze said: “It’s been like this from the beginning. Anyone who has even cast a shred of doubt on our latest necessary war is an enemy of the state. While it’s obviously concerning to see American media outlets and politicians on an enemies list by a State Department-funded NGO, it’s not surprising. State hasn’t had American interests at heart for a long, long time.”

“Sending weapons and cash to Ukraine without a goal is just another reason American foreign policy is a sad joke in the 2000s,” Harry J. Kazianis, senior director of National Security Affairs, said. “And it seems the American taxpayer always foots the bill — and gets nothing in return.”

The list has been circulating on X and turned into quite the joke. texty.org.ua entered some “supplemented data” on June 8 which reads: “This is a Statement of Facts. Neither ‘a List of Enemies’, nor ‘a Kill-List.’” They further clarify that the article is not an accusation but a “study of the political and media context that influences government decisions.”

And yet the project consistently implies that everyone on the list is a propagator of Russian propaganda — and Texty occasionally refutes this supposed propaganda with cute red drop-down fact-check items. Some of them read “Why Ukraine’s victory is essential for the democratic world,” “The Ukrainian government has not banned any churches” (except the Russian Orthodox Church, which they slyly admit they “severed ties with”) and “Why is it wrong to recognize the ‘DPR’ and ‘LPR’?”

“Having members of my family mowed down by Russian tanks in Budapest in 1956 I am most definitely not pro-Russian,” republican strategist Roger Stone said. “After the unification of East and West Germany, the United States agreed in both the Budapest Memorandum and the Minsk Accords not to push Ukraine into NATO, which is to say, not to mount offensive NATO missiles on the ground in Ukraine pointed at Russia. I believe the Biden administration’s efforts to force Ukraine into NATO is in violation of both of these agreements.” He concludes with, “While I am not pro-Russian, I am definitely anti-war.”

This supposed Russian propaganda that media heads are spreading is more accurately about being wary of sending $107 billion to prolong the war and reach elusive ends. “It’s fair to say Defense Priorities has been skeptical about aid to Ukraine without opposing it; we are especially concerned by its lack of connection to a realistic and clearly defined strategy,” Ben Friedman, policy director at Defense Priorities, wrote.

Republican representative Jim Banks of Indiana sent a letter to his colleagues on the House Appropriations Committee on Tuesday, asking them to end US support to Texty. The committee on Tuesday passed a resolution effectively defunding the NGO, according to Fox News.

In short, the State Department sends money to a Ukrainian NGO so that NGO can call out conservatives and “communists” for blocking aid to Ukraine and being “in the pocket of the Kremlin,” as Carden put it. And despite Texty’s assertion that “this is a statement of facts,” the whole debacle is a prime example of political duplicity.