So? Vladimir Putin killed people. He killed journalists and opponents and such. Big whoop! Does that make American any better than Russia?
Heck, no. Those are, effectively, the sentiments of the 45th President of the United States of America.
In an interview taped with Bill O’Reilly of Fox News to be aired during tonight’s Super Bowl, Trump doubled down on his praise for Putin by saying America is just as bad as Russia when it comes to political murder.
“I do respect him. Well, I respect a lot of people, but that doesn’t mean I’ll get along with them,” Trump told O’Reilly.
O’Reilly pressed on, declaring to the president that “Putin is a killer.”
Unfazed, Trump didn’t back away, but rather compared Putin’s reputation for extrajudicial killings with the United States’.
“There are a lot of killers. We have a lot of killers,” Trump said. “Well, you think our country is so innocent?”
The reader is asked to imagine the GOP response if former President Obama had said anything like that.
In fact, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell had an opportunity to condemn the President’s remarks this morning on CNN.
CNN host Jake Tapper pressed McConnell about Trump’s remarks during a Sunday interview.
“He is a former KGB agent, a thug, not elected in a way that most people consider a credible election,” McConnell said of Putin. “No, I don’t think there is any equivalency with the way the Russians conduct themselves and the way the United States does.”
But the Senate Majority Leader refused to rebuke Trump for the remarks.
“Look, Jake, I can speak to myself and I have about my feelings for Vladimir Putin,” he told Tapper. “I’m not going to critique every utterance of the president.”
We suggest that the Republican silence on the issue indicates their treasonous endorsement of Trump’s lickspittle attitude towards the Russian dictator.