BREAKING: Romania Bans Far-Right Candidate

And who's not happy? MAGA and Putinland. There's a reason for that: They want to break up the EU.

In a fascinating twist of post-communist history, Romania has become the latest battleground in the titanic struggle between liberal democracy – the system of government that we thought won the Cold War – and the Russia-led forces that want to turn back the clock. What’s new is that the United States government is squarely on the side of the enemies of democracy.

Most of the attention, of course, has been on President Trump’s abandonment of Ukraine: after the Feb. 28 ambush of Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky at the White House, he moved swiftly to cut off military aid and then intelligence-sharing, and Elon Musk, who manifests as Trump’s main lieutenant, suggested on X that he might cut off critical satellite comms via his Starlink.

The immediate goal appears to be forcing Zelensky into ending the war on Vladimir Putin’s terms, so upcoming US-Ukraine talks in Saudi Arabia are set to be unpleasant. But the real prize seems to be the weakening of the entire European project which the US helped prop up, which has spread democracy and wealth, and which has largely kept the peace on the continent since World Way II.

The development that makes this (even more) clear involves Romania’s abortive presidential election, whose first round in November Putin is believed to have corrupted in ways eerily similar to Moscow’s past interferences in Brexit and the 2016 US election.

Romanian intelligence accuses Russia of staging an illegal massive social media bot campaign which propelled the far-right pro-Putin candidate Calin Georgescu from nowhere to first place. On the campaign trail, Georgescu had hinted broadly that Romania should be aligned with Moscow – even through Romania was enslaved and ruined by Russian-imposed communism until 1989.

Romania swiftly annulled the first round and delayed the second, which had been scheduled for December. A court this weekend banned Georgescu from running. The reason given was “incitement to actions against the constitutional order” — which includes Romania’s Western orientation — as well as supporting fascist groups and false declarations of electoral campaign funding and asset disclosures.

This amounts to the only decisive pushback anywhere against the Putin machine’s abuse of social media to twist political outcomes in Russia’s favor worldwide. Georgescu’s challenge to the Constitutional Court was rejected Tuesday — and that would appear to be the end of his candidacy.

Russia was not amused. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov immediately denounced the court decision and said the new elections slated for May 4 were “illegitimate.” Wanna guess who else was very cross indeed?