Vladimir Putin is a war criminal
The Great Putin Disciples: Trump and the Far Right, how much harm have they caused?
Let me be clear. Vladimir Putin and the Russians are to blame for the invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Yet, to what degree do the American Far Right and Donald Trump share the guilt?
Fox News’ Tucker Carlson parrots Putin’s defense of Russia and, worse, blames Ukraine for Russia’s aggression on Ukraine. Speaking of American sanctions against Russia, Carlson said, “No American government had ever done anything like that before.” RIA Novosti, a Russian state news agency, quoted Carlson and wrote that “the average U.S. citizen is simply horrified by what is happening.” Sergey Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, said on the Russian owned television station RT, “We understood long ago that there is no such thing as an independent Western media…only Fox News is trying to present some alternative point of view.”
Far Right politician, Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-N.C.) said: “Remember that Zelensky is a thug. Remember that the Ukrainian government is incredibly corrupt and is incredibly evil and has been pushing woke ideologies.” Not one to worry about sounding pro-Putin, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) said on March 15: “NATO has been supplying the neo-Nazis in Ukraine with powerful weapons and extensive training on how to use them.” Ohio Republican Senate candidate J.D. Vance, supported by Trump, said on Feb. 19: “I don’t really care what happens to Ukraine one way or another.”
According to Thomas Rid, a professor at Johns Hopkins University who studies Russian information warfare, “People are asking if the far right in the U.S. is influencing Russia or if Russia is influencing the far right, but the truth is they are influencing each other.”
Trump says he admires Putin’s control of the annoying media, holding onto power, and admits that winning as more important than good governing.
March 2022, Trump said during an interview, “This is genius…Putin declares [a large portion of Ukraine] as independent. Oh, that's wonderful!" Immediately after Putin’s invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, Trump said, “Putin’s taking over a country for two dollars' worth of sanctions." Trump told a crowd at Mar-a-Lago, "I'd say that's pretty smart. He's taking over a country -- really a vast, vast location, a great piece of land with a lot of people, and just walking right in."
In 2014, Trump praised Putin for occupying Crimea, a region of Ukraine. He said that Putin did “an amazing job of taking the mantle.”
And then, Trump supported Putin’s campaign against Western Europe and the organizations structured to keep Europe safe from Russian aggression. Trump said NATO was "obsolete," and threatened to withdraw the United States from it. NATO is an organization designed after World War II to protect Europe from Russian aggression.
Trump’s former national security adviser John Bolton in late February 2022, appeared on Newsmax and told the host that it was “not accurate to say that Trump’s behavior somehow deterred the Russians…I think one of the reasons that Putin did not move (to invade Ukraine) during Trump’s term in office was he saw the President’s hostility of NATO. Putin saw Trump doing a lot of his work for him, and thought, maybe in a second term, Trump would make good on his desire to get out of NATO, and then it would just ease Putin’s path just that much more.”
Former Trump White House chief of staff John Kelly said that stopping Trump from exiting NATO was one of his most difficult tasks as chief of staff.
In March 2022, Kevin Madden, a Republican strategist and former senior adviser of Mitt Romney's 2012 presidential campaign said, "There's just a lot of evidence that Trump was wrong on this issue [Ukraine] and that in many ways, we undermined the NATO alliance and we undermined Zelenskyy's position in the eyes of Russia and Putin."
Also, in June 2020, Trump approved plans to withdraw troops from Germany. The Pentagon opposed Trump’s plan to remove one-third of the American force in Germany because it would compromise Europe-based defenses against Russia. Even Republican lawmakers opposed the withdrawal.
Finally, Trump weakened American military and diplomatic support for Ukraine during his administration.
Trump opposed sanctions against Russia that were in response to Russia’s 2014 aggression against Ukraine in Crimea and Donbas. John Bolton said, “In almost every case, the sanctions (against Russia) were imposed with Trump complaining about it, saying we were being too hard.”
On top of that, Trump weakened Ukraine militarily by blackmailing Ukraine, refusing to provide promised arms unless Ukraine would gather evidence against Trump’s political opponents. When Ukrainian President Zelensky asked to purchase more Javelin anti-tank missiles, Trump responded by saying, “I would like you to do us a favor, though.” John Bolton said, “Every other senior national security advisor--Mike Pompeo, Mark Esper at Defense--all of us felt that we needed to bolster Ukraine’s security and were appalled at what Trump was doing.”
Putin and his Russian troops have invaded an innocent sovereign nation and committed war crimes and inhumane acts of brutality. American conservative broadcasters and politicians relieved Russia from blame and expressed indifference to the suffering of the Ukrainians.