Never one to stray from the big lie, former President Donald Trump called in to Fox News while Russia attacked Ukraine to claim that the invasion “happened because of a rigged election.”
In between winding tangents on Afghanistan interrupted by Fox News host Laura Ingraham, Trump spent most of the call beating up on President Joe Biden and expressing his affection for Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“I don’t think he’s monitoring, I think he’s probably sleeping right now,” Trump said of Biden. “He doesn’t know what the hell he’s doing, it’s an absolute disgrace.”
Trump said that the invasion never would have happened under his administration, since he and Putin “get along fantastically.”
“I really don’t believe he wanted to do this initially,” Trump said of Putin attacking Ukraine. “Then he saw the weakness.”
Ingraham happily mimicked Trump’s posture, calling Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s call for peace earlier Wednesday “a pathetic display” and accusing the United States of weakness.
In one uncomfortable moment, Trump seemed to misunderstand Ingraham’s update that Russians, not Americans, had launched an amphibious attack and started berating Ingraham for revealing the United States’ “secret” maneuvers on the air.
“No, that was the Russians,” Ingraham interrupted.
Many standard-bearers on the right have adopted similar stances recently, praising Putin and vilifying Ukraine to excuse Russia’s aggression.
Earlier Wednesday, during an event at Mar-a-Lago, Trump heaped more praise upon his favorite autocrat.
“He’s taken over a country for $2 worth of sanctions,” he said of Putin. “I’d say that’s pretty smart.”
There’s simply not enough Thorazine in the world…
If we could just get his Secret Service agents to all call sick on the same day…
And some people still think that Trump isn’t a putin puppet? All of the rest of the crazy far right are on the same page. These line up with Christianist and confederate factions, and their counterparts in western Europe. Folks, we’ve got a fifth column at work, one that has shown it can la harderunch terrorist attacks in the US. I hope that “normal” conservatives are getting the message. And our many foreign misadventures have made this much harder.
But at least we know who the Russian fellow travelers are now.
They are certainly advertising it loudly enough. The good part is, it a self-reveal that will make most Republicans incredibly nervous about T****'s ongoing control over the “base.” And may shake some of them lose from being so sycophantic to him.
The bad part is, it’s encouraging Putin to go as far as he can, because he sees how divided the U.S. is. And it will encourage Putin to continue to divide us by ever-sneakier and more clandestine methods.
Trump’s right - this happened because of a rigged election, but it was the one in 2016, not 2020. Putin’s pet, Trump, tried his damndest to breakup NATO so that the Red Army could just walk into Ukraine and Kiev without firing a shot. The support of NATO, the EU and the United States for Zelensky’s democratically elected government was a development Putin could not stand and so the events of this evening. It is a terrible shame for a people that have been under Russia’s thumb since Stalin tried to starve them all to death in the 1930’s and 1940’s.
There must be a special place in Hell reserved for Hitler and Stalin and they now will have to reserve a place for Putin. With any luck, our useful idiot, Trump, will also join them some day, soon.