“However, make no mistake, then Russia would not dare to annex a single inch of territory if I were in the White House,” Trump told a weekend gathering in South Carolina. “Actually, they never did that when I was there. Many people ask the question, “Why did they never do this when Trump was president and China?” He said they know better. Yes it’s true”.
Now Eric Trump – the former president’s second oldest son – thinks he knows why.
“Putin was in touch with the KGB,” Eric Trump told Fox correspondent Sean Hannity Monday night. “He can read people and can tell that Donald Trump was a very strong man.”
First, Eric’s comment – almost certainly unintentional – is an echo of what George W. Bush once said about Putin.
“I looked the man in the eye. He seemed very straightforward and trustworthy to me,” Bush said of Putin after the June 2001 Slovenian summit. We had a very good dialogue. soul; a man deeply devoted to his country and the best interests of his country.”
This comment was widely ridiculed at the time and obviously looks even worse in hindsight.
Eric Trump’s claim that Putin somehow conducted a psychological assessment of his father and therefore did not invade Ukraine is also ripe for ridicule.
(Meanwhile, John Bolton, who served as Donald Trump’s national security adviser, recently suggested in a podcast that Putin may have delayed the invasion of Ukraine because he thought Trump would take the United States out of NATO if he won re-election.)
Also, consider what we already know about Russia and Trump, which is that Russia actively interfered in the 2016 election to help Trump.
From the report of Special Counsel Robert Mueller, it is clear what Russia has done:
“Firstly, the Russian organization launched a social media campaign in support of presidential candidate Donald J. Trump and derogatory treatment of presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. Second, the Russian intelligence service conducted computer intrusion operations against organizations, employees, and volunteers involved in the Clinton campaign. and then released the stolen documents. The investigation also uncovered multiple links between the Russian government and the Trump campaign.”
Given these facts, Trump’s oft-repeated assertion that “no one” has been tougher than him on Russia seems laughable. And that makes Eric Trump’s claim that Putin knew his father was a “very strong man” just as amusing.