Former President Donald Trump praised Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine.
President Putin sends some of the Russian Military Force to support Russian-backed separatists in the Luhansk and Donetsk provinces. In an appearance on the right-wing talk radio program “The Buck Sexton Show,” Trump broke his conspicuous silence on the crisis to applaud the Russian dictator.
In an interview on The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton the former US president, speaking from his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida heaped praise on Putin. Trump was quoted as saying: “I went in yesterday and there was a television screen, and I said, “This is genius”, Putin declares a big portion … of Ukraine, Putin declares it as an independent.”
Trump is a long-standing fan of Putin. In 2013, he wondered on Twitter if the Russian autocrat would attend his Miss Universe pageant in Moscow and whether the two would become “best friends”, but Putin did not show up.
In the following years, Trump repeatedly spoke highly of Putin’s strategic acumen, noting the strongman’s intention to “re-build the Russian Empire” and defended Putin’s habit of killing dissidents and journalists, arguing that the United States does the same thing.
The former President said: “I knew Putin very well. I got along with him great. He liked me. I liked him. I mean, you know, he’s a tough cookie, got a lot of the great charm and a lot of pride. But the way he loved his country, you know? He loves his country.”
Trump’s remarks come as the US has ordered sanctions to try to kneecap Russia’s ability to do business with the West.
President Biden on Tuesday called the arrival of troops to Donbas “the beginning of a Russian invasion,” and ordered sanctions in response to Putin’s “flagrant violation of international law.”
During the 2016 campaign, Trump publicly encouraged Russia to continue its efforts to hack into the campaign email system of his opponent, Hillary Clinton, as part of the enemy nation’s effort to help him win.
Once in office, he sided with Russia over U.S. intelligence agencies in accepting Russia’s claims not to have been involved in election interference.
After facing bipartisan criticism over this in Washington, Trump walked back his statements and said he misspoke. But he’s continued to shower Putin with flattery in the years since.
At the White House on Tuesday, press secretary Jen Psaki was asked about Trump’s comments. She said: “We try not to take advice from anyone who praises President Putin and his military strategy.”
She noted how Trump had sided with Russia when it annexed the Crimean Peninsula, another portion of Ukraine, she says: “There’s a bit of a different approach.”
In 2019, Trump asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to launch a scurrilous investigation of Biden because Trump wanted to weaken his likely 2020 Democratic opponent. When Zelensky refused, the Trump administration withheld congressionally approved aid to Ukraine, which is illegal according to the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office. That resulted in Trump’s first impeachment.