Former President Donald Trump — now the Republican presidential nominee for this year’s race — faced more steep criticism this weekend after saying he wanted to “congratulate” Russian leader Vladimir Putin. A clip of Trump making those comments at a Georgia rally appeared to indicate that he was talking about a recent prisoner exchange involving the U.S., Russia, and other countries that brought detained Americans back home.
Trump’s demeanor, combined with past comments, suggested that his overarching point was an accusation that the exchange deal was somehow a hit for the U.S. Some observers, though, took great offense at Trump “congratulating” the Russian leader in any context.
“Donald Trump is an embarrassment to the United States of America. He’s also weird,” said leading House Democrat Ted Lieu of California in response to a clip of Trump’s remarks. “Trump is an ongoing national security threat and a traitor to the United States,” added a post to social media from VoteVets, a veterans-focused organization.
Trump has a history of more directly characterizing foreign leaders like Putin as strategically cunning and impressive, though Trump has distanced himself morally from the specifics of what they’ve done. But still, that praise for their supposed strategic prowess has driven rounds of prior criticism. And real-world circumstances poke holes in the narrative, anyway. In Putin’s case, the Russian military — though still brutalizing Ukraine — faced highly documented, strategic setbacks in its ongoing invasion of the latter, smaller country, failing to take the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, and reportedly facing massive casualties.
