Trump Praises BFF Putin As Genius

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It took only 24 hours for Donald Trump to hail Russian President Vladimir Putin's dismembering of independent, democratic, sovereign Ukraine as an act of "genius." The former President often accuses his enemies falsely of treason, but his own giddy rush to side with a foreign leader who is proving to be an enemy of the United States and the West is shocking even by Trump's self-serving standards. Trump is showing Putin that impunity, dictator-coddling and hero worship will return if he wins back the White House. Trump's remarks on a conservative radio show on Tuesday will not only find a warm welcome in the Kremlin. They also will concern allies standing alongside the US against Russia who fear for NATO's future if Trump returns. Trump also sent an unmistakable message to Republicans, who are already playing into Putin's hands by branding the current President as weak, that siding with a US foe is the way into the ex-President's affections ahead of this year's midterm primaries. Trump didn't take long to make sure Putin knew he approved of his movement of troops into parts of eastern Ukraine, knowing that his comments would be picked up and beamed around the world. The ex-President is trying to undermine US foreign policy as the current President tries to stop a war that could kill thousands of people and threaten the post-Cold War peace. But it's unsurprising Trump would praise anything Putin does, given his genuflecting to the Russian leader while in office. Given that he tried to stage a coup that would have destroyed US democracy, it's hardly shocking either that he's not fretting at the loss of Ukrainian freedom. Trump once stood side by side with Putin at a Helsinki summit and trashed US intelligence agencies that said Moscow had interfered in the 2016 election to help him. And Trump tainted Ukrainian democracy himself, seeking to extort President Volodymyr Zelensky into announcing an investigation into his then-Democratic rival, Biden -- an abuse of power that earned him the first of his historic two impeachments. No other living former president would dream of, let alone get away with, lionizing a Russian leader who may soon be waging the biggest war in Europe since World War II after declaring on Monday that Ukraine has no right to exist. But Trump's status as the likely favorite for the Republican nomination in 2024 -- and the possibility that he could return to power -- takes his latest crowing over Putin's gangsterism to a new level. He's sending the promise of future favors and approval of Putin's illegal land seizures, which suggest he would do little to reverse them as president. The fact that this is coming from a leading member of the party of ex-President Ronald Reagan, who beseeched then-Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev to "tear down this wall" in divided Berlin and was credited with winning the Cold War, represents a startling transformation. And it shows how far the GOP has traveled away from its respect for fundamental US democratic values in the pursuit of power. There are multiple documented instances of Trump being soft on Putin. And GOP criticisms of Biden as failing to stand up to Putin conveniently forget Trump's notorious Helsinki news conference, not to mention the multiple strange contacts between his 2016 campaign team and Russian outsiders.