Ex-president’s support for the Russian strongman has experts fretting over American interests and security sources overseas
Donald Trump’s continuing lavish praise and support for Russian president Vladimir Putin are fueling alarm among former intelligence officials and other experts who fear another Trump presidency would benefit Moscow and harm American democracy and interests overseas.
Trump praised Putin as a “genius” and “pretty savvy” when Russia invaded Ukraine in early 2022, and has boasted he would end the war in a “day”, sparking critics’ fears that if he’s elected again Trump would help Russia achieve a favorable peace deal by cutting off aid to Kyiv. Trump also recently greenlit Russia to “do whatever the hell they want” to Nato members who don’t pay enough to the alliance.
“Trump views Putin as a strongman,” said Fiona Hill, a senior fellow at Brookings Institution and a national security official in the first two years of Trump’s administration. “In a way they’re working in parallel because they’re both trying to weaken the US, but for very different reasons.”
More recently, instead of criticizing Putin for the death of Alexei Navalny, Russia’s leading opposition figure, who the Kremlin once tried to kill with poison, and who died suddenly last month in an Arctic penal colony, Trump weirdly equated the four criminal prosecutions he faces with Navalny’s fate as political prisoners.
Look, no one wants to help trump win because he would do exactly that, as you say. The problem is an entirely different country on the other side of the world is stepping way over the line, and Biden is stubbornly honoring political alignments and so we have to denounce him loudly to help trump win so trump can utterly destroy all known cooperative agreements in order to enrich himself personally. And if you disagree, you’re a centrist who hates poor people and women. I mean - we can’t just not help trump win, obvs.
Okay? I never said otherwise.