Today in arm-chair prisoner exchanges:

"How dare you!"

-Some troll

What kind of person sees something like this and--like, you've got to be a miserable, bitter, troll of a human being to hear about how WNBA player Brittney Griner was freed from a Russian prison and complain about how it was accomplished. Here's Kevin McCarthy sharing his unsolicited opinion on how he would have--sorry, in fairness I guess it was solicited, I mean, whoever interviewed him on Fox News presumably asked him what he thought but yikes. I mean, just yikes...

No please, tell us how you would
have gotten her out, hmmmm?

"I'm glad an American is coming home. She was arrested for a trumped up charge...but to exchange the merchant of death for this? It's made us weaker, it's made Putin stronger, and it's made Americans more vulnerable."

-Representative Kevin McCarthy,

who didn't free Brittany Griner,

arm-chair prisoner exchanging

Hey, Representative McCarthy, I think it's pronounced: I'm glad an American is coming home. Full stop. I know it's the GOP's entire job and platform to find fault in literally everything the administration does, but holy shit. 

If the Biden Administration's cancer moonshot program cured cancer tomorrow,
Kevin McCarthy would be on Fox News blaming them for ruining Pfizer. 

Not for nothing, but isn't Walmart
an arms dealer that's been supplying 
terrorists for years? Serious question.

The Merchant of Death is the supervillain name of Viktor Bout, an arms dealer who admittedly is a monster having supplied terrorists around the world. So maybe the twitter trolls have a point? How is a basketball player worth letting this guy out? It's a fair question and exactly the kind of thing someone whose loved one isn't being held in a Russian prison might ask. Speaking of, the other criticism being levied at the exchange is coming from people who think the administration should have traded Bout for Paul Whelan instead.

"Or maybe not. I'm capricious."

-the guy the runs Russia

Whelan is a former Marine arrested in Russia for espionage. Probably erroneously, but regardless, no one deserves to be a pawn in international relations, not even a Marine who was kicked out of the corps for dereliction of duty, lying, and writing bad checks. And in fact we--the U.S. that is--have been trying to exchange Bout for Whelan for ages, but Russia wouldn't trade. But they would trade for Griner so, there you go. Also, the fact that Russia was unwilling to hand him over suggests there's something there, or at least that Russia genuinely believes there is.

"Nobody locks Americans up on
bullshit drug charges but us!"

-America

Look, I don't know anything about anything (like most people chiming in on the internet), and I genuinely hope we secure Whelan's release as well, but according to my research (of his wikipedia page, so you know, thorough) he's an ex-Marine with multiple passports who liked to brag about his Russian FSB (a post Soviet KGB rebranding) contacts. I have no idea if he was spying, but it's not impossible that he was spying, right? But Brittney Griner is definitely a civilian basketball player up on a nonsense drug charge who had the added advantage of being the one Putin was actually willing to let go.

So I guess the question is are the people loosing their shit--ok, the Republicans losing their shit--over this upset because the Biden administration got an American out of Russian prison and they didn't or that they traded for a queer woman of color rather than a white ex-Marine?

Both, it's both. 100%.