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.

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    fedilink
    98 months ago

    Funny story. I went to public school in New York City. I would have said that my teachers were pretty conservative.

    When I hear about what other people’s textbooks told them, I realize how important it is to have an open mind.

    Someone told me yesterday that their books told them that Unions were a good thing in the past, but our economy had outgrown the need.

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      28 months ago

      Well at least they’re not manipulating history books like that any more.

      Right, Texas and Florida?