America Is Winning Again Video With Trump

The former President oft accuses his enemies falsely of treason, but his own featherbrained rush to side with a foreign leader who is proving to be an enemy of the Us and the West is shocking even by Trump'south cocky-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 render if he wins back the White House. Trump'due south remarks on a conservative radio testify on Tuesday will not merely find a warm welcome in the Kremlin. They also will concern allies standing aslope the US confronting Russian federation who fear for NATO'southward future if Trump returns.

Trump also sent an unmistakable message to Republicans, who are already playing into Putin's hands by branding the electric current President as weak, that siding with a US foe is the way into the ex-President's angel alee 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 Evidence."

The ex-President added: "So Putin is now maxim, 'It's contained,' a large department 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 apply that on our southern border. That's the strongest peace force I've ever seen. ... Hither's a guy who'southward very savvy. ... I know him very well. Very, very well."

Trump was referring to Putin's annunciation on Monday that he would regard two insubordinate 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 first of a Russian invasion."

In effect, the ex-President is trying to undermine The states foreign policy every bit the current President tries to finish a state of war that could kill thousands of people and threaten the mail service-Cold War peace.

Merely it's unsurprising Trump would praise annihilation Putin does, given his genuflecting to the Russian leader while in office. Given that he tried to stage a coup that would take destroyed United states commonwealth, 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-Autonomous rival, Biden -- an abuse of power that earned him the get-go of his historic ii impeachments.

More than the boilerplate 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 funfair barking and prioritizing of personal obsessions over national interests for which Trump is known.

No other living former president would dream of, permit solitary become away with, lionizing a Russian leader who may presently be waging the biggest state of war in Europe since World War Two later on declaring on Monday that Ukraine has no right to exist.

But Trump'due south status equally the probable favorite for the Republican nomination in 2024 -- and the possibility that he could return to ability -- takes his latest crowing over Putin's gangsterism to a new level. He's sending the promise of future favors and blessing of Putin's illegal land seizures, which advise he would do piffling to reverse them every bit president.

Trump's latest idolization of Putin is probable 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 similar Tucker Carlson -- who have sided with Putin.

Trump's sometime secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, a possible time to come Republican presidential candidate, also recently praised Putin, a scourge of republic, every bit 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 Flim-flam in January.

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

Some Republicans have been more subtle in their criticism of Biden. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has backed the President'south try to unite Western allies backside the United states in social club to face up Putin and is in favor of strong sanctions to punish the Russian leader. Merely not for the commencement time on Tuesday, the Kentucky Republican demonstrated that he was ready to play the game at both ends -- accusing Biden of causing the crisis through weakness.

"I don't believe Vladimir Putin would have a couple of hundred thou troops on the border with Ukraine had nosotros not precipitously withdrawn from Afghanistan last August," McConnell said in Lexington on Tuesday. "The impression nosotros have left, commencement with the abandonment of Afghanistan, is that America is non interested in playing as large a leadership role as we used to."

McConnell is tapping into a sentiment shared past many Americans of both parties that the US evacuation from Transitional islamic state of afghanistan last year was chaotic and poorly planned and hurt perceptions of Biden's leadership abroad. At the same time, however, Biden's leadership in this crisis has been more assured. He has, for case, brought NATO members closer than they have been in many years.

The thought that Biden is weak in the face of Putin is certain to play out on the midterm entrada trail all twelvemonth. Only the fact that Republicans are laying such a charge following their complicity in Trump'south 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'due south repeated fawning over Putin

While the concluding administration often laid out a business firm stance confronting 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'southward foreign policy goals, including the U.s.a. withdrawal from northern Syrian arab republic.

Trump lauded Putin in the interview Tuesday as a "tough cookie" who loves his land 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 information technology. I said, 'Yous tin can't do it. You're not going to do information technology.' But I could come across that he wanted information technology," 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 indicate.

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

Ane of the goals of Putin's pressure level on Ukraine -- every bit he has made repeatedly articulate -- is to drive NATO dorsum to its boundaries at the cease of the Cold War and to divide the Western brotherhood. With Trump in power, the Russian leader didn't need to bother with the latter goal, since his counterpart in the White House ofttimes 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 likewise took identify throughout the Trump presidency, including the SolarWinds operation that breached U.s. federal agencies. Supposed respect for the United states didn't finish Russian agents from using a biological weapon on British soil to poison a defector, co-ordinate to the Uk regime.

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

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Source: https://edition.cnn.com/2022/02/23/politics/donald-trump-vladimir-putin-joe-biden/index.html

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