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Raw Story (Tuesday, September 26): Republican congresswoman used Russian fighter jet images in salute to U.S. Air Force
Raw Story (Wednesday, September 27): GOP Rep. Anna Paulina Luna deletes social media posts featuring Russian fighter jets
Freshman Republican Anna Paulina celebrated the U.S. Air Force’s birthday by posting Russian MiG-29 jets on her social media platforms.
To make matters worse, after Raw Story originally published their investigation on Tuesday evening, Luna deleted her social media posts.
[Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, Twitter, 9/18/23]
“As I examine them, the silhouettes look most like MiG-29s,” Rob Young, said Rob Young, historian for the National Air and Space Intelligence Center at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton, Ohio, and a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel, told Raw Story.
Anna Paulina Luna is an Air Force veteran who is calling to shut down the government. Florida’s 66,900 active-duty servicemembers would go unpaid if Anna Paulina Luna had her way.
Read more about Luna’s Air Force celebrations below.
Raw Story: Republican congresswoman used Russian fighter jet images in salute to U.S. Air Force
By Mark Alesia
September 26, 2023
Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL), who uses her status as a veteran of the U.S. Air Force to boost a hard-right, MAGA-fueled political career, wanted to wish her military branch a happy birthday.
So last week on X, formerly Twitter, and also on Instagram, Luna posted a celebratory graphic with the Air Force logo and a political logo for herself, superimposed over six silhouettes of fighter jets.
“Happy Birthday United States Air Force! As an Air Force Veteran myself, I’m especially thankful for everything I learned while serving in this incredible branch of our Armed Forces,” Luna, an influencer on Instagram before being elected to Congress last year, wrote on her post.
The problem?
The jets aren’t American.
They appear to be Russian.
“As I examine them, the silhouettes look most like MiG-29s,” said Rob Young, historian for the National Air and Space Intelligence Center at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton, Ohio, and a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel.
Indeed, the fighter jet images that Luna used are noticeably different than those of common U.S. fighter jets past and present, such as the F-14 Tomcat, F-15 Eagle, F-16 Fighting Falcon, F/A-18 Super Hornet, F-22 Raptor and F-35 Lightning.
Multiple messages from Raw Story to Luna’s office before publication were not returned. The posts had been online since Sept. 18.
Late Tuesday night, Edie Heipel, Luna’s communications director, sent a response via email.
“This post was published without approval from me as the comms director, via a junior staffer,” she wrote. “Rep. Luna is a US Air Force veteran who worked in airfield management and her husband is a Bronze Star/Purple Heart Combat Controller. To suggest she doesn’t know the difference between American and Russian fighter jets is asinine.”
The Mikoyan MiG-29, which first became operational in 1984, was a singular achievement for Soviet military aviation that evolved into an ever more deadly weapon of warfare. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Russian military made them a centerpiece of their fighter complement, and the jets spread worldwide — to the point where the United States purchased some in an effort to keep them away from bad actors. […]
Despite being an Air Force veteran, Luna has confused types of fighter jets before. In May, after meeting with representatives of Ukraine’s parliament in Poland, she said they “demanded F-35s.” They were asking for F-16s, which they eventually obtained, with pilots being trained by Americans. […]
Luna has said U.S. involvement in the Russia-Ukraine war could “potentially start WWIII” and, in a post last week on X, she wrote, “NO MORE FUNDING FOR UKRAINE.”
As an enlisted servicemember, Luna worked as an airfield management specialist in the Air Force. She changed her name from Anna Paulina Mayerhofer to Anna Paulina Luna in 2019, at age 29, according to the Washington Post.
Former President Donald Trump endorsed Luna’s run for Congress from a district that includes Clearwater, Fla. Other far-right lawmakers, including Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), campaigned for her. […]
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