The Florida Fraudster, The Russian ‘Killer’
When I covered George H.W. Bush’s presidential campaign in 1988, he was so eager to wrap himself in the American flag that he took us to a New Jersey flag factory. That way, he could claim that the Republican Party was “on the American side” while caressing pieces of striped, red-andwhite nylon.
At the time, it seemed like a cynical move by Republicans, trying to appropriate patriotism. But at least they respected America enough to try to monopolize its symbol.
That vanishing breed of Republican pledged allegiance to the American flag. Now Republicans pledge allegiance to Donald Trump.
Just as Trump has remade the Republican Party in his own nasty and selfish image, he wants to remake America in his own nasty and selfish image.
Trump does not believe America is exceptional. He only believes that Trump is exceptional.
If American laws get in his way — like counting votes — he tries to smash them. He is bigger than democracy, after all.
If American values get in his way — like the country’s distaste for authoritarians like Vladimir Putin and Hungary’s Viktor Orban — he mocks those values.
Bill O’Reilly, who was a Fox News host at the time, asked President Trump in 2017 why he respected Putin even though he was “a killer.”
“You got a lot of killers,” he replied. “What, you think our country’s so innocent?”
Get in his way, and Trump will bust up institutions, trash courts and spur on acolytes to storm the U.S. Capitol.
Trump shocked the world recently when he said at a rally that if NATO countries did not pay more for defense, he would “encourage” Russia “to do whatever the hell they want” to America’s allies.
Trump’s romance with the sociopathic Putin, unimpeded by Putin’s foul bid to swallow Ukraine, grew even more sickening with news that the Russian president’s most potent opponent, Aleksei Navalny, 47, died mysteriously in an Arctic prison — very, very suddenly, as high-profile Putin critics often do.
“Make no mistake: Putin is responsible,” President Joseph R. Biden Jr. said.
When a CNN reporter asked if Trump had a response to the heroic Navalny’s death, the Trump campaign pointed her to a Truth Social post that was not about Navalny or Putin. It was about how awful America was.
“America is no longer respected,” Trump posted, “because we have an incompetent president who is weak.”
This American Carnage garbage is how he bonds with his base, many of whom are deeply cynical about politics and government, seeing conspiracies everywhere.
His hallucinatory worshipers admire him as a strongman, even when he has shown to be liable for sexual assault, and an aggrandizing con man whose real estate empire was a Potemkin village. On February 16, a New York judge ordered Trump to pay a penalty of $355 million plus interest and barred him from holding high-up roles at any New York business — including his own — for three years, saying about Trump & Company, “Their complete lack of contrition and remorse borders on pathological.”
The Renfields to Trump’s Dracula are also busy playing sycophants to dictators. At a Miami conference hosted by the news website Axios, Jared Kushner — who was festooned with $2 billion in Saudi investments after he left the White House — called Mohammed bin Salman a “visionary leader.” Asked about the crown prince’s complicity in Jamal Khashoggi’s murder, Kushner replied with exasperation, “Are we really still doing this?”
Before Navalny’s death, the conservative commenter Tucker Carlson — who scorned Ukraine’s fight for its independence — cavorted in the Kremlin. His interview with Putin was so indulgent that even Putin complained of a “lack of sharp questions.”
In an interview with an Egyptian journalist, Carlson defended his decision not to ask Putin about freedom of speech or assassinations of his opponents.
“Every leader kills people,” Carlson said blithely, adding, “Leadership requires killing people, sorry.”
Will the craven Republicans ever stand up against autocracy — at home or abroad?
Navalny’s death at the hands of the murderous Putin has given momentum to the push for military assistance for Ukraine.
It is the American thing to do.
Not even the death of a dissident shocks Donald Trump.