During an interview on this Sunday's Face the Nation, Republican Rep. Adam Kinzinger placed the blame for the Republicans' recent love affair with Vladimir Puting squarely in Fox propagandist Tucker Carlson's lap:

Kinzinger was asked about the Biden administration's response to Russia's recent military exercises and treats to Ukraine, and while Kinzinger said there are some things he may have done differently, he was generally supportive of the administration's handling of the aggression, telling Brennan he's on "Team America" and "Team Ukraine."

Brennan then asked Kinzinger about the recent "trend within the conservative movement" with the pro-Trump Republicans telling Biden to keep Ukraine out of NATO and what he thought was happening and why a "significant a portion of the Republican Party is moving in this direction."

REP. KINZINGER: Well, I don't think it's a huge portion, but it's way too big and it's growing and it's a huge concern. I mean, what was this five years ago? It might be like somebody like Rand Paul that would say something or Dana Rohrabacher.

Now there's a significant number of folks doing it with Tucker Carlson talking about, you know, how great Vladimir Putin is and how Ukraine is really actually part of Russia. I think it's a couple of things. Number one, it could be some naivete on foreign policy, not in Tucker's case. I think it's an affection for authoritarianism. And I think Vladimir Putin has done a decent job of engaging in culture battles and culture war, and he is seen as the person defending, in essence, the culture of the past. And so it's very frightening.

And by the way, you know, Ukraine is not sure. Already, one third of the country of Georgia is occupied by Russia. Nobody's going to stop them from going into the rest of that. Then you have the Baltics, you have the Balkans that they're interfering in.

This is a frightening moment, and any Republican that has affection for Vladimir Putin has no understanding of what our party stands for or what our country stands for.

Sadly for Kinzinger, and the rest of the country for that matter, it is a "huge portion" of his party and all of the right-wing media in the U.S., and people willing to speak out such as himself and Liz Cheney are the ones that are few and far between. They love authoritarians now that they love Trump, and no one expects that to change anytime soon.