Pompeo said.īut as the Russian onslaught neared, Mr. Putin was “an elegantly sophisticated counterpart” and “very shrewd,” Mr. Trump, and now a potential presidential aspirant, appeared to take a similar line to his former boss.
Trump’s comments, the senator responded with silence.Īs the threat of a Russian invasion rose, Mike Pompeo, a former secretary of state and C.I.A. Asked at a news conference in Louisville about Mr. Putin at length and urged the Biden administration to provide military aid to help the Ukrainians fight back. Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, denounced Mr. Republican congressional leaders on Thursday stayed far away from the Putin-friendly views that had been emanating from the former president. “Could one imagine Dwight Eisenhower praising Leonid Brezhnev for invading Czechoslovakia in 1968?” he asked in an email.
Anders Stephanson, a historian of foreign policy at Columbia University, recalled an earlier Russian invasion. amid a backlash against the Republican-led entanglements in Afghanistan and Iraq.Ĭold War-era Republicans, historians said, would have repudiated comments like Mr. Trump continues to exert over candidates seeking to tap into his base, the legacy of a decade-old effort by the Kremlin to court American conservatives and the future of the G.O.P. Putin, even as some Trump allies - from former administration figures to the Fox News host Tucker Carlson - amplified his Russian-friendly views to the party’s core.įoreign policy experts and Russia scholars said the apparent sympathy or ambivalence toward Moscow from elements of the right raised questions about the influence Mr.
Yet Republican leaders, while condemning the invasion of Ukraine, stayed silent about the ex-president’s repeated praise this week for Mr. “The idea that a former president would praise the man or leadership who American troops are even now traveling to confront and contain,” said Jeffrey Engel, a presidential historian at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, “is astounding.” Historians called the remarks unprecedented. “He’s taken over a country for $2 worth of sanctions,” he said, “taking over a country - really a vast, vast location, a great piece of land with a lot of people - and just walking right in.” Trump said on Wednesday at a Florida fund-raiser, assessing the impending invasion like a real estate deal.
Trump had nothing but admiration for President Vladimir V. Sober reality is not setting in any time soon.As Russia prepared to strike Ukraine and the United States rushed to defend neighboring allies in Europe, former President Donald J. But Trump’s first month in office has only plunged us deeper into the weirdness-he has attempted to institute a Muslim ban, his advisers lie baldly on a daily basis, and scandal after scandal is leaking out of the White House like a sieve with a hole punched through it. When BuzzFeed published the infamous pee-gate dossier alleging unsubstantiated relations between Trump and Russia, the levelheaded response was to emphasize the completely “unverified” part of it.Īfter November, the media, which failed miserably to call the election, tried to wake up to reality. Russian intelligence was allegedly involved in the hacking of the DNC, but a coordinated effort between Trump’s campaign and Russia seemed like a fever dream, in part because the Clinton campaign was clearly trying to use Russian involvement as a shield from some of the hack’s more damaging revelations. But one of the craziest aspects of the 2016 election-the possible alliance between Russian intelligence and the Trump campaign-still seemed far-fetched. After the 2016 election, Merriam-Webster announced that their word of the year wasn’t “emails” or “alt-right” or “emails,” but “surreal”-perhaps the best descriptor of the craziest year in recent memory (though 2017 looks like it will give it a run for its money).
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