| With Russian forces entering Ukraine — to international condemnation — there's a huge split among Republicans on how to characterize what's happening. They generally fall into three categories. 1. The Putin sympathizers This isn't the largest group, but two of the most powerful Republicans are in it. This week, Donald Trump described Russian President Vladimir Putin's invasion of rebel-held areas of Ukraine as "genius," "savvy" and "smart." He's long been an admirer of Putin, seemingly in awe of his authoritarian capabilities. Trump gave Putin the benefit of the doubt over Russia's election interference in 2016, rather than trusting investigations led by his own party that said Russia did it. But even Trump isn't apologizing for Russian aggression the way Fox News host Tucker Carlson is. Carlson has the most watched prime-time TV news show, and on last night's program he tried to frame Putin in a favorable light, compared with American liberals (or his version of liberals): "It may be worth asking yourself, since it is getting pretty serious, what is this really about? Why do I hate Putin so much? Has Putin ever called me a racist? Has he threatened to get me fired for disagreeing with him?" (Not many people, by the way, are going paint Putin as an angel. Case in point: Human rights abuses, including the killings of politicians and journalists and the torture of LGBTQ people in Chechnya, that have seemingly gone unchecked in Russia on his watch.) 2. The hawks This is the traditional Republican Party position. And it includes some Trump allies, such as Sens. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Ted Cruz of Texas. Graham regularly calls Putin a "thug." These lawmakers typically characterize President Biden as weak for not putting more sanctions on Putin sooner. And when they're asked to explain Trump's glowing reflections about Putin, they often assert that the Russia sympathizers among Republicans are in the minority, an assertion The Post's Aaron Blake says public polling agrees with — at least for now, until those pro-Putin voices get louder. 3. The 'Why should we care?' contingent A number of Trump's allies in Congress aren't going quite as far as he is to compliment Putin. But they are asking: Why should Biden devote any resources to protecting Ukraine? "Sending new troops, expanding the security commitment and expanding NATO — I just think that's a strategic mistake," Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) has said. Steve Bannon, a Trump ally, summed it up like this on his podcast recently: "We don't have any interest — no one in the Trump movement has any interest at all in the Russian-speaking provinces of eastern Ukraine. Zero." While the hawks criticize Biden for not doing enough, this group criticizes Biden for doing anything at all in Ukraine, saying it's a waste of time. Why these splits matter: This November, Republicans could capture control of Congress. Their divisions on something as basic as whether one nation should invade another without provocation underscore that they have some pretty big schisms to deal with if they are going to govern. Trump has a new social media app  It's called "Truth." (Leon Neal/Getty Images) | After Trump was booted from several social media platforms last year, he decided to create his own app. So Truth Social launched Monday. It brands itself as "America's 'Big Tent' social media platform that encourages an open, free, and honest global conversation without discriminating against political ideology." However, it's safe to assume any app championed by Trump will almost exclusively attract conservative users. The app is essentially Twitter, but instead of tweets, users post "truths." (And yes, you can "retruth.") The launch was not graceful. Truth Social was "almost entirely inaccessible in the first days of its grand debut because of technical glitches, a 13-hour outage and a 300,000-person waitlist," my colleague Drew Harwell reports. But as of midday Wednesday, it was the top free app on the App Store. Trump's newest venture is a rebuttal to what he has called "censorship" from big platforms such as Twitter, but Truth Social's terms and conditions include a sizable but vague list of things you can't post — including anything "false," "indecent," "misleading," "profane" or "otherwise objectionable." Because the app is a private company, it can kick off whoever it wants for whatever reason, just like Twitter and Facebook can. There's no First Amendment protections. Trump's goal here is obvious: to regain the following and power he lost when he got banned from social media after the Jan. 6 attacks. But it's very hard to see a conservative app attracting the millions of people (and thus millions of followers for Trump) that major social media apps do, especially when the most publicity it's received so far is for a bad rollout. | 
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