Donald Trump on Vladimir Putin and the United States

I’m back, and happy Lincoln’s Birthday.  Before the important things start (i.e., pitchers and catchers report, let me make a comment on other things.  We were in Southeast Asia during the inaugural festivities.  (Lucky us.)  Given that the main US news choice on TV over there was CNN, we got lots of coverage of the anti-Trump protests.  You almost had the feeling that, if the protesters had been as active last fall, they wouldn’t have had to be protesting in January.  On the other hand, most of the protests, at least the biggest ones, seemed to be in states that Hillary Clinton won, so maybe it wouldn’t have made a difference.

Donald Trump said, and did, so many things while we were gone, it is hard to pick one to comment on, but I feel obligated to talk about what he said about the United States and Russia.  I am picking this one because, if Barack Obama had said it, Republicans would have gone crazy.  In fact, what some people saw as President Obama’s apologizing-for-the-US-too-often foreign policy, was something many Republicans disliked most about President Obama.  And yet, President Obama never said anything like what President Trump said in response to Bill O’Reilly’s statement that Vladimir Putin was “a killer”: “There are a lot of killers.  Do you think our country is so innocent?”

While we missed the response to President Trump’s comment, I hope that Republicans were as outraged – and as vocal in their outrage – when Donald Trump said this, as they would have been if Barack Obama had said it.

There is no moral equivalence between the United States and Vladimir Putin, and it doesn’t matter who says it, Democrat or Republican.  It is wrong, and it needs to be repudiated.  Regardless of who says it.