The Russian autocrat doesn’t deserve such admiration from the Republican nominee.
The most disturbing aspect of Donald Trump’s sustained man crush on Russian President Vladimir Putin may be that Mr. Putin seems to be the only foreign dignitary that Mr. Trump much respects—something to ponder while choosing the next leader of the free world.
“Today we have a Republican nominee in Mr. Trump who hasn’t only been steadfastly uncritical of Moscow but can’t stop praising Mr. Putin’s leadership skills.”
If there are other heads of state that the Republican presidential nominee admires, he doesn’t spend much time talking about them. But Mr. Trump simply won’t shut up about the Russian autocrat, even though it is clear that he’s playing the role of Mr. Putin’s useful idiot.
Listening to a presidential candidate laud an adversary of America is galling and ought to be disqualifying. But the businessman’s musings also suggest that a Trump presidency could look a lot like President Obama’s third term when it comes to U.S. military engagement.
During the 2012 presidential race, you’ll recall, Mitt Romney criticized Mr. Obama for going too easy on Russia and playing down the global threat posed by Mr. Putin. Republicans rightly cheered the line of attack, and subsequent events have vindicated Mr. Romney. Today we have a Republican nominee in Mr. Trump who hasn’t only been steadfastly uncritical of Moscow but can’t stop praising Mr. Putin’s leadership skills.
In recent weeks, Mr. Trump has explained to voters that Mr. Putin is worthy of admiration because he “has very strong control over a country” and “says great things about me.” In December the New York billionaire said, “he’s running his country and at least he’s a leader, unlike what we have in this country.” What we have in this country, according to U.S. intelligence officials and news reports, is mounting evidence that Russia has been hacking the Democratic National Committee and other groups in an effort to manipulate the November elections.
Mr. Trump, however, is unpersuaded. In an interview with Larry King on a Russian TV network controlled by Mr. Putin, he defended the former KGB lieutenant colonel, said it was “unlikely” that Russians stole files from DNC servers, suggested that his political opponents concocted the story—“maybe the Democrats are putting that out, who knows”—and complained about the “dishonesty” of the U.S. media. Is Mr. Trump trying to put Russian propagandists out of work?
The next commander in chief’s first priority will be combating radical Islam, and Mr. Trump has noted that Islamic State was born of the Obama administration’s premature withdrawal from Iraq. Still, the nominee has spent much more time debasing U.S. military leaders than he has spent providing details on how he would address Islamic terrorism going forward. When asked about other global hot spots, his default position has been closer to the current administration’s strategy of “leading from behind” than Mr. Trump and his supporters want to admit.
Republicans, for example, have faulted the president for not doing more to stop Russian aggression in eastern Ukraine, while Mr. Trump has called for less U.S. involvement in the conflict and more reliance on European allies. “I think maybe we should do a little following and let the neighbors take a little bit more of an active role in the Ukraine,” Mr. Trump told MSNBC in December.
The GOP candidate cites Mr. Putin’s high approval rating as another praiseworthy accomplishment, notwithstanding the fact that Mr. Putin runs a country with no independent legislature or judiciary and restricted press freedoms. When your political opponents wind up dead or imprisoned, people tend to tell you what you want to hear.
In Garry Kasparov’s recent book “Winter is Coming: Why Vladimir Putin and the Enemies of the Free World Must Be Stopped,” the Russian chess champion turned democracy activist details the Putin leadership style that Mr. Trump holds in such high regard. After Mr. Putin first became president in 2000, democratic reforms were “steadily rolled back” and the “government launched crackdowns on the media and across civil society.”
The suppression of pro-democracy groups was especially harsh. “The Kremlin’s domination of the mass media and ruthless persecution of all opposition in civil society made it impossible to build any lasting momentum” for reform, writes Mr. Kasparov. “Jump forward to the beginning of 2015 and Putin is still in the Kremlin. Russian forces have attacked Ukraine and annexed Crimea, six years after invading another neighbor, the Republic of Georgia. Just days after hosting the Winter Olympics in Sochi in February 2014, Putin fomented a war in Eastern Ukraine and became the first person to annex sovereign foreign territory by force since Saddam Hussein in Kuwait.”
This is the record that has led Mr. Trump to call Mr. Putin a “better leader” than our current president. Mr. Obama should take that as a compliment. Mr. Trump should have his head examined—and release the results.
This piece originally appeared in The Wall Street Journal
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Jason L. Riley is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a columnist at The Wall Street Journal, and a Fox News commentator.
This piece originally appeared in The Wall Street Journal