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Will the GOP’s Trumpist Wing Persist in Its Embrace of Putin?
The Russian autocrat hasn’t changed since the Cold War, but many Republicans have come full circle.
AS WITH EVERYTHING ELSE on the right today, the support for Putin starts with Donald Trump, who has developed a long track record as an apologist for Putin and Russian aggression. He said this week that Putin’s move into Ukraine was “genius,” adding that he admired the Russian leader’s strategy. “Putin declares a big portion of the Ukraine … as independent. Oh, that’s wonderful. He used the word ‘independent’ and ‘we’re going to go out and we’re going to go in and we’re going to help keep peace.’”
Mike Pompeo, Trump’s former CIA director and secretary of state, last week called Putin “savvy” and “very talented,” adding, “I have enormous respect for him.” Last month, Pompeo told Fox News, “He knows how to use power. And we should respect that.”
Russian TV Uses Tucker Carlson and Tulsi Gabbard to Sell Putin’s War:
Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson echoes Trump’s pro-Russian stance, as do the right-wing minions and other fringe characters who appear on his show regularly. In the process, Carlson is becoming the modern media successor to Walter Duranty, the New York Times Moscow bureau chief in the 1930s who became infamous as an apologist for Joseph Stalin when the Soviet dictator engineered a massive famine in Ukraine that killed millions. (Carlson has received so much criticism that he was forced to back pedal after the invasion. “I don’t think anybody approves of what Putin did yesterday,” Carlson said on his show Thursday night.)
But others in Trump world have joined the slavish adulation for Putin. Michael Flynn, the former general and, very briefly, Trump’s national security adviser, issued a statement criticizing President Joe Biden because he “ignored and laughed at Putin’s legitimate security concerns, and legitimate ethnic problems in the Ukraine.”
The Russian autocrat hasn’t changed since the Cold War, but many Republicans have come full circle.
AS WITH EVERYTHING ELSE on the right today, the support for Putin starts with Donald Trump, who has developed a long track record as an apologist for Putin and Russian aggression. He said this week that Putin’s move into Ukraine was “genius,” adding that he admired the Russian leader’s strategy. “Putin declares a big portion of the Ukraine … as independent. Oh, that’s wonderful. He used the word ‘independent’ and ‘we’re going to go out and we’re going to go in and we’re going to help keep peace.’”
Mike Pompeo, Trump’s former CIA director and secretary of state, last week called Putin “savvy” and “very talented,” adding, “I have enormous respect for him.” Last month, Pompeo told Fox News, “He knows how to use power. And we should respect that.”
Russian TV Uses Tucker Carlson and Tulsi Gabbard to Sell Putin’s War:
Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson echoes Trump’s pro-Russian stance, as do the right-wing minions and other fringe characters who appear on his show regularly. In the process, Carlson is becoming the modern media successor to Walter Duranty, the New York Times Moscow bureau chief in the 1930s who became infamous as an apologist for Joseph Stalin when the Soviet dictator engineered a massive famine in Ukraine that killed millions. (Carlson has received so much criticism that he was forced to back pedal after the invasion. “I don’t think anybody approves of what Putin did yesterday,” Carlson said on his show Thursday night.)
But others in Trump world have joined the slavish adulation for Putin. Michael Flynn, the former general and, very briefly, Trump’s national security adviser, issued a statement criticizing President Joe Biden because he “ignored and laughed at Putin’s legitimate security concerns, and legitimate ethnic problems in the Ukraine.”