Trump Praises Vladimir Putin
Two days after Vladimir Putin told the United Nations on Monday that it was an “enormous mistake” not to cooperate with the Syrian government in its fight against the Islamic State, Russian warplanes began hitting targets in the country — and not necessarily targets that were the location of Islamic State fighters.
The day after Putin’s speech, Fox News’s Bill O’Reilly asked Donald Trump what Putin was up to. “We spent $2 trillion, thousands of lives, wounded warriors all over, and Putin is now taking over what we started. He’s going into Syria. He frankly wants to fight ISIS, and I think that’s a wonderful thing.”
As for Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, Trump said that “maybe he’s better than the kind of people we’re supposed to be backing.”
Prior to that, Trump compared President Obama unfavorably to the Russian president.
“I will tell you, in terms of leadership, he’s getting an ‘A,’ and our president is not doing so well. They did not look good together.”
(h/t Washington Post)
Reality
This began a bromance between Trump and Putin, once saying Putin was was world leader he would “get along very well with.”
Republicans love Russian President Vladimir Putin. No surprises here because in the past, conservatives have heaped massive praise on Putin. Here are just a few examples.
- The American Family Association’s Bryan Fischer called Putin “The lion of Christianity.”
- World Congress of Families’ Don Feder exonerated Putin from the invasion of Ukraine because “he behaves like George W. Bush.”
- Rudolph Giuliani declared that Putin has shown great leadership by acting boldly and rapidly in Crimea.
- Sarah Palin wished Putin could be our president and suggested that the Russian president is far manlier than Obama.
- Rush Limbaugh called Putin “stratigically brilliant.”
- The conservative publication American Thinker wrote a whole article dripping with Putin praise to the point of Russian propaganda.
- Pat Buchanan probably started the conservative love-fest when pointed out Putin’s policies matched up with paleoconservative ideology and declared him, “one of us.”
Never-mind that he is a human-rights-abusing, political-enemy-killing, tyrant. Putin became the strong authoritarian model they have long desired in a president after 2 terms of “weak” Obama.
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