The Kremlin connection

It would be easy to dismiss as comic opera President Trump’s bromance with Russian President Vladimir Putin and even the increasingly dubious web of relationships between the Trump campaign and Russia.

It would be easy — until another Putin foe is gunned down in the streets, this time the streets of Kiev in what Ukraine’s president called “an act of state terrorism” by Russia.

Bad things just have a way of happening to people who become enemies of the Russian leader. So it was with Denis Voronenkov, a former Russian lawmaker, policeman and prosecutor, who once headed Russia’s now abandoned Drug Control Service. In the latter capacity he was presumably in possession of way too much information.

He defected to Ukraine last fall. He also provided evidence to Ukrainian authorities in the treason probe of their former President Viktor Yanukovych — yes, that would be former Trump campaign Chairman Paul Manafort’s client.

Now Voronenkov joins a long list of those who opposed Putin and ended up dead under strange circumstances.

Which brings us back to an interview Trump did with Bill O’Reilly on Fox News last month in which Trump insisted, “I do respect Putin.

“Will I get along with him? I have no idea. It’s very possible I won’t.”

It was then that O’Reilly said: “He’s a killer, though. Putin’s a killer.”

“There are a lot of killers,” Trump replied. “We’ve got a lot of killers. What, do you think our country’s so innocent?”

Moral equivalency? Really? When was the last time an American president was accused of arranging to have someone gunned down in the street? Or poisoned with radioactive polonium? Or maybe thrown from a window?

Which brings us full circle to the gaggle of Trump campaign advisers and their contacts with the Kremlin. This isn’t comic opera. This is a malicious and dangerous regime that thrives on corruption — that must not be allowed to corrupt our own system.