Traitor Trump And Putin’s Fifth Column Of Fellow Travelers In the Republican Party

It didn’t take long for Putin’s Puppet, Russian asset “Traitor” Trump, to praise his pal Putin for his invasion of Ukraine and to criticize President Joe Biden for trying to stop Russian aggression in violation of international law, and potentially spiraling out of control into World War III in Europe.

Trump called Vladimir Putin a “genius” on Buck Sexton’s podcast for moving Russian troops into parts of Ukraine.

Said Trump: “I said, ‘How smart is that?’ And he’s gonna go in and be a peacekeeper. That’s the strongest peace force… We could use that on our southern border. That’s the strongest peace force I’ve ever seen. There were more army tanks than I’ve ever seen. They’re gonna keep peace all right. No, but think of it. Here’s a guy who’s very savvy.”

He added: “But here’s a guy that says, you know, ‘I’m gonna declare a big portion of Ukraine independent,’ he used the word ‘independent’ and ‘we’re gonna go out and we’re gonna go in and we’re gonna help keep peace.’ You gotta say that’s pretty savvy. And you know what the response was from Biden? There was no response. They didn’t have one for that. No, it’s very sad. Very sad.”

As Max Boot writes, With his praise for Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, Trump makes his apologists look foolish. Again.

It is a commonplace on the right that the only reason that Vladimir Putin is invading Ukraine is that President Biden is too weak to deter him. As one right-winger tweeted: “I’m convinced that Putin would be a lot, LOT more hesitant to invade if Trump was President. Biden simply does not evoke any sense of strength or danger to our enemies.”

To believe this is to suffer from temporary amnesia about how Donald Trump actually acted toward Putin while he was in office. Who can forget Trump’s kowtow to Putin at Helsinki in 2018? The U.S. president rejected the findings of the United States’ own intelligence community about the hacking of the 2016 election and said: “President Putin says it’s not Russia. I don’t see any reason why it would be.” Or who can forget Trump’s use of U.S. military aid to extort the government of Ukraine into helping him politically? Or all of Trump’s anti-NATO animus? Trump mused about pulling out of the alliance, questioned its Article 5 security guarantees and ordered a withdrawal of 12,000 troopsfrom Germany.

It is true that the Trump administration sometimes pursued tough-on-Russia policies independent of the president, but this was largely the work of officials who were purged long before the end of Trump’s term. By the end of his presidency, Trump was surrounded by people such as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who has recently called Putin “a very talented statesman,” “very shrewd,” “very capable,” and said, “I have enormous respect for him.”

At least Pompeo is willing to admit that Putin is the “aggressor” and the Ukrainians are his “victims.” No such censure was evident in Trump’s comments Tuesday to right-wing podcaster Buck Sexton. Putin’s aggression against Ukraine is an act of “genius,” according to Trump. 

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Trump went on to rhapsodize about his relationship with Putin — “He liked me. I liked him.” — and to praise him as someone with a lot of “charm and a lot of pride” who “loves his country.”

With those few words, Trump has just made a fool of every right-winger who has tried to pretend that he would have been tougher on Putin than Biden is currently being. Trump did claim that “this never would have happened with us,” but this was merely his usual rhetorical ploy of blaming Russian aggression on former president Barack Obama or on Biden rather than on Putin. Indeed, it’s hard to think of a single negative word Trump has ever uttered about the Russian tyrant.

And that’s just the way his most devoted supporters like it. It’s true that many mainstream Republicans criticize Biden for being too weak on Russia. But the hardcore MAGA base thinks that Biden has too been too hostile to Putin, who is viewed more favorably by Republican voters than Biden is.

Tucker Carlson has become Putin’s No. 1 American apologist [and propagandist] — and a favorite of Russian state television — by incessantly arguing that the United States has no stake in Russia’s aggression against Ukraine. “Vladimir Putin does not want Belgium,” Carlson says. “He just wants to keep his western borders secure. That’s why he doesn’t want Ukraine to join NATO, and that makes sense.”

Note: This fascist Fox propagandist glosses over the part of Putin’s deranged revisionist history speech on Monday in which he waxed rhapsodic about reconstituting the glory days of the old Soviet Union, which directly threatens former Warsaw Pact countries in Eastern Europe that were under Soviet domination, but are now members of NATO. Article V of the NATO Alliance would require all NATO members, including the United States, to come to the aid and defense of a NATO member. This is how Putin threatening these Eastern European countries coud trigger World War III. What we can expect after Putin’s conquest of Ukraine:

Putin has been clear about his goals: He wants to reestablish Russia’s traditional sphere of influence in Eastern and Central Europe. Some are willing to concede as much, but it is worth recalling that when the Russian empire was at its height, Poland did not exist as a country; the Baltics were imperial holdings; and southeastern Europe was contested with Austria and Germany. During the Soviet period, the nations of the Warsaw Pact, despite the occasional rebellion, were effectively run from Moscow.

Carlson’s views are echoed by other America Firsters. Right-wing troll Candace Owens tweets: “NATO (under direction from the United States) is violating previous agreements and expanding eastward. WE are at fault.” Her fellow troll Charlie Kirk opines: “It feels as if Putin is going into places that want him … It is a family dispute that we shouldn’t get in the midst of, that’s for certain.” Ohio senate candidate J.D. Vance said, “I don’t really care what happens to Ukraine.” Fox’s Trump Fluffer Maria Bartiromo imaginatively suggested that the Biden administration’s “hysteria” about a Russian invasion of Ukraine might be a “ruse” to distract from the latest nonsensical allegations about Hillary Clinton spying on Trump.

Don’t forget other GQP trolls like Sen Ted Cruz, Sen, Josh  Hawley, Sen John Kennedy, Sen Ron Johnson, Sen. Tom Cotton, and on and on. The Republican Party, like Fox News, are Putin propagandists. The GOP Is the Russian Propaganda Party Now.

Compare right-wing complacency about Putin’s invasion of Ukraine with their hysteria about Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada ordering the arrests of anti-vaccine mandate protesters who were blocking major thoroughfares. Carlson claims that “Canada canceled democracy,” while ignoring the actual, existential threat to democracy in Ukraine.

This is the authentic voice of Trump’s America First movement — and it would be solidly in control of a second Trump term in a way it was not during most of his first term. Indeed, if Trump stages a comeback in 2024, he may well be counting on more political aid from Putin of the kind that he received in 2016.

So please don’t insult our intelligence by suggesting that Trump is the tough-on-Russia candidate or that his volatility would deter Putin. He’s more about Russia First than America First.

Stephen Collinson adds at CNN, Trump sides with Putin as Biden tries to stop a war:

It took only 24 hours for Donald Trump to hail Russian President Vladimir Putin’s dismembering of independent, democratic, sovereign Ukraine as an act of “genius.”

The former President often accuses his enemies falsely of treason, but his own giddy rush to side with a foreign leader who is proving to be an enemy of the United States and the West is shocking even by Trump’s self-serving standards.

As President Joe Biden reprises the fabled presidential role of leading the free world, the predecessor who wants to succeed him is showing Putin that impunity, dictator-coddling and hero worship will return if he wins back the White House. Trump’s remarks on a conservative radio show on Tuesday will not only find a warm welcome in the Kremlin. They also will concern allies standing alongside the US against Russia who fear for NATO’s future if Trump returns.

Trump also sent an unmistakable message to Republicans, who are already playing into Putin’s hands by branding the current President as weak, that siding with a US foe is the way into the ex-President’s affections ahead of this year’s midterm primaries.

Trump didn’t take long to make sure Putin knew he approved of his movement of troops into parts of eastern Ukraine, knowing that his comments would be picked up and beamed around the world.

“I went in yesterday and there was a television screen, and I said, ‘This is genius.’ Putin declares a big portion of the Ukraine, of Ukraine, Putin declares it as independent. Oh, that’s wonderful,” Trump said in an interview on “The Clay Travis & Buck Sexton Show.”

The ex-President added: “So Putin is now saying, ‘It’s independent,’ a large section of Ukraine. I said, ‘How smart is that?’ And he’s going to go in and be a peacekeeper. That’s the strongest peace force,” Trump said. “We could use that on our southern border. That’s the strongest peace force I’ve ever seen. … Here’s a guy who’s very savvy. … I know him very well. Very, very well.”

Trump was referring to Putin’s declaration on Monday that he would regard two rebel regions of eastern Ukraine, where he has been fostering separatism, as independent and his order for Russian troops, which Putin misleadingly called “peacekeeping” forces, to reinforce the enclaves. The move was a flagrant violation of international law, was resonant of the tyrannical territorial aggrandizement of the 1930s that led to World War II and was, as Biden said on Tuesday, tantamount to “the beginning of a Russian invasion.”

In effect, the ex-President is trying to undermine US foreign policy as the current President tries to stop a war that could kill thousands of people and threaten the post-Cold War peace.

But it’s unsurprising Trump would praise anything Putin does, given his genuflecting to the Russian leader while in office. Given that he tried to stage a coup that would have destroyed US democracy, it’s hardly shocking either that he’s not fretting at the loss of Ukrainian freedom. Trump once stood side by side with Putin at a Helsinki summit and trashed US intelligence agencies that said Moscow had interfered in the 2016 election to help him. And Trump tainted Ukrainian democracy himself, seeking to extort President Volodymyr Zelensky into announcing an investigation into his then-Democratic rival, Biden — an abuse of power that earned him the first of his historic two impeachments.

More than the average Trump controversy

In the hierarchy of vital news stories on Tuesday, the ex-President’s boastful ramblings pale in significance to the alarming events in Eastern Europe. But his comments amounted to more than the normal carnival barking and prioritizing of personal obsessions over national interests for which Trump is known.

No other living former president would dream of, let alone get away with, lionizing a Russian leader who may soon be waging the biggest war in Europe since World War II after declaring on Monday that Ukraine has no right to exist.

But Trump’s status as the likely favorite for the Republican nomination in 2024 — and the possibility that he could return to power — takes his latest crowing over Putin’s gangsterism to a new level. He’s sending the promise of future favors and approval of Putin’s illegal land seizures, which suggest he would do little to reverse them as president.

Trump’s latest idolization of Putin is likely to widen the growing divide in the GOP between traditional hawks, who have sometimes praised Biden for standing up to the Russian leader, and pro-Trump lawmakers — and conservative media stars like Tucker Carlson — who have sided with Putin.

Trump’s former secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, a possible future Republican presidential candidate, also recently praised Putin, a scourge of democracy, as a “very talented” and gifted statesman. “He was a KGB agent for goodness sakes. He knows how to use power. We should respect that,” Pompeo told Fox in January.

The fact that this is coming from leading members of the party of ex-President Ronald Reagan, who beseeched then-Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev to “tear down this wall” in divided Berlin and was credited with winning the Cold War, represents a startling transformation. And it shows how far the GOP has traveled away from its respect for fundamental US democratic values in the pursuit of power.

The last two remaining members of the party of ex-President Ronald Reagan condemned “Traitor” Trump for his fawning support of Valdimir Putin. Republicans Cheney and Kinzinger slam GOP, Trump over Ukraine crisis:

Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) called out fellow House Republicans on Tuesday for criticizing President Biden’s response to Russia invading Ukraine.

Meanwhile, Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) criticized former President Trump, saying by calling Russian President Vladimir Putin a genius, he “aids our enemies.”

Former President Trump’s adulation of Putin today – including calling him a “genius” – aids our enemies.

Trump’s interests don’t seem to align with the interests of the United States of America. https://t.co/snclqW8yCL

— Rep. Liz Cheney (@RepLizCheney) February 22, 2022

Driving the news: House Republicans tweeted a screenshot of Biden walking away with the comment: “This is what weakness on the world stage looks like.”

What he’s saying: Kinzinger retweeted the post with the comment: “As still ‘technically’ a member of house Republicans, let me, with all my might, condemn this damn awful tweet during this crisis. You can criticize policy but this is insane and feeds into Putins narrative. But hey, retweets amirite?”

Stephen Collinson continues:

The idea that Biden is weak in the face of Putin is sure to play out on the midterm campaign trail all year. But the fact that Republicans are laying such a charge following their complicity in Trump’s obsequious attitude toward Putin is hypocritical and absurd. The House Republican leadership, which is in Trump’s pocket, accused Biden of “appeasement” on Tuesday — the same day that their de facto leader described Putin as a “genius.”

Trump’s repeated fawning over Putin

While the last administration often laid out a firm stance against Russia, it was repeatedly undermined by Trump’s gushing admiration for Putin in public and his habit of making impulsive decisions that played into Russia’s foreign policy goals, including the US withdrawal from northern Syria.

Trump lauded Putin in the interview Tuesday as a “tough cookie” who loves his country and he insisted that he had stopped Putin from invading Ukraine on his watch.

“I knew that he always wanted Ukraine. I used to talk to him about it. I said, ‘You can’t do it. You’re not going to do it.’ But I could see that he wanted it,” the former President said. In reality, Trump suggested during his 2016 campaign that Russia could keep Crimea, another Ukrainian territory which Putin had annexed in 2014. “The people of Crimea, from what I’ve heard, would rather be with Russia than where they were,” Trump said, parroting a Kremlin talking point.

The idea that Trump’s toughness prevented Putin from invading Ukraine is undermined not only by his chummy exchanges with a leader who imprisoned opponents and presides over a country where journalists are often killed.

One of the goals of Putin’s pressure on Ukraine — as he has made repeatedly clear — is to drive NATO back to its boundaries at the end of the Cold War and to divide the Western alliance. With Trump in power, the Russian leader didn’t need to bother with the latter goal, since his counterpart in the White House frequently berated trans-Atlantic allies and cozied up to US enemies.

And it’s not as if Putin let up on America when Trump was in power. Cyberattacks emanating from Russian soil also took place throughout the Trump presidency, including the SolarWinds operation that breached US federal agencies. Supposed respect for the US didn’t stop Russian agents from using a biological weapon on British soil to poison a defector, according to the UK government.

There are multiple documented instances of Trump being soft on Putin. And GOP criticisms of Biden as failing to stand up to Putin conveniently forget Trump’s notorious Helsinki news conference, not to mention the multiple strange contacts between his 2016 campaign team and Russian outsiders.