Take note of right-wing leaders who stand with Putin against Ukraine

Sunday, Feb. 27, 2022 | 2 a.m.

Donald Trump calls Russia’s attack of Ukraine a stroke of genius by Vladimir Putin and says it offers a lesson to the U.S. about how to treat Mexico. Tucker Carlson repeatedly defends Putin and pushes back on the idea that the brutal Russian dictator should be vilified. Infowars host Alex Jones blames the West for the crisis in Ukraine, saying it pushed Putin into action.

As Russia wages an unjustified assault on its independent European neighbor, it’s important for Americans to pay attention to who’s commenting on the situation, what they’re saying and why they’re saying it. Remember these people, because they are showing themselves to be the servants of tyrants and the enemies of freedom.

Numerous leaders on the right are giving Putin cover, or outright supporting him, in his act of naked aggression that has pushed the world toward a second Cold War and, if Russia’s actions continue and other countries are swept up, will eventually lead to another world war.

It doesn’t take much reading between the lines to hear the message coming from those in Putin’s corner: They want to transform America into Putin’s Russia.

Figures like Trump are all but presenting Putin as a model for U.S. leadership, with Trump calling it “wonderful” that Putin declared areas of Ukraine independent as justification for sending in troops.

“I said, ‘How smart is that?’ And he’s going to go in and be a peacekeeper,” Trump said.

Trump went a step further by saying “we could use (Putin’s approach) on our southern border,” seemingly suggesting that U.S. troops should invade Mexico. Surely, Mexico is listening carefully.

In these words, Trump laid to rest any notion that he understands or respects international law and the manner in which civilized nations interact.

Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo echoed his former boss on Putin, gushingly calling the despot a “very talented statesman” who “knows how to use power.”

“We should respect that,” Pompeo said. Perhaps realizing how he outed himself as a toady for a dictator, Pompeo tried feebly to walk back some of his comments Friday.

But perhaps no one in extremist-right leadership has pumped up Putin as much as Carlson, who has repeatedly excused the ruthless kleptocrat’s actions and encouraged his audience to somehow see him as a nonthreatening figure.

“Why is it disloyal to side with Russia but loyal to side with Ukraine?” he asked late last year. And Tuesday, he urged his viewers to ask themselves, “Why do I hate Putin so much?” — a question he followed by suggesting that Putin was less of a threat to the U.S. than American progressives. Russia’s state-controlled international TV station liked Carlson’s take so much that it translated it into Russian to advance Russian domestic propaganda. With that single move, Russia proved what any dispassionate viewer already knew: Carlson proves to be a willing, even enthusiastic, Russian propaganda tool.

To anyone who may be pondering Carlson’s question about why to hate Putin, remember that the Russian president is a man who sanctioned brutal bombings of Syrian civilians, whose government has murdered a string of Russian dissidents and democratic leaders, whose nation meddled in American elections, has undertaken poisoning campaigns abroad and at home to kill opponents, and who rose to the presidency after allegedly playing part in a series of bombings of Russian apartment buildings as a false-flag operation to spark the Second Chechen War.

The late Sen. John McCain was on point when he described Putin as a “murderer and a thug” who revilesAmerican freedoms and Western liberty to his core. Now with Putin’s actions in Ukraine, we must reconsider whether Putin is simply evil, or whether he has lost his mind as well.

Yet some extreme-right leaders say Americans should pay no attention to Putin’s homicidal rampage through Ukraine, saying that nation is immaterial to the interests of the U.S.

Steve Bannon is in the pro-tyranny camp, as are several Trumpist lawmakers like Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley. Hawley was among about a dozen Senate Republicans who broke away from the party and opted not to back GOP legislation proposing a harsh slate of sanctions against Russia.

Trump, Bannon and their fellow travelers were eager to dismantle NATO to give Putin the victory he dreams of most passionately. When Trump crows that Putin wouldn’t invade Ukraine while he was president, he’s right in one respect. Putin wouldn’t see a need to invade Ukraine because Trump and his team of groveling Russian servants were actively trying to destroy NATO and give Putin everything he wanted without lifting a finger other than to manipulate an election.

Bannon’s comment on the issue: “We don’t have any interest — no one in the Trump movement has any interest at all in the Russian-speaking provinces of eastern Ukraine. Zero.”

This makes you wonder: How many other democratic nations would Bannon and his ilk allow Russia to swallow up and expand its sphere of influence until it threatened to march over America as well? Would those like Bannon welcome Putin with open arms?

Such comments bring to mind the unhinged support of Joseph Stalin and his murderous Communist Party apparatus by some left-leaning intellectuals and labor organizers in the U.S. during the 1930s, even as a Stalin-engineered famine was killing millions in the Soviet Union. Blinded to Stalin’s monstrosity by their domestic political goals and to their enduring shame, some American left wingers supported a figure who was at war with everything a free world represented. Many recanted their stand later, but those who refused to do so were rightly scorned as the enemies of democracy.

Now we’re seeing a modern Russian mass-murderer being held up by Americans on the right for the same domestic reasons. Like the pro-Stalinists among the left in the 1930s, Putin’s defenders today are proving they must not be trusted in public life and leadership. It’s a binary issue: You can’t admire dictators or support their aggressions and uphold freedom too.

But as with Stalin, there’s only one way for freedom-loving people to react to Putin — by unconditionally condemning him and uniting in opposition to his aggression.

With the heart-rending news coming from Ukraine of bloodshed in the streets and civilians huddling for safety, the U.S. must stand firm with NATO and must unify in defense of democracy in Eastern Europe and across the globe.