Views from the nation’s press
The St. Louis Post-dispatch on how the GOP has ‘Putin wing’ — it’s not just Trump anymore:
Among the most disturbing aspects of Donald Trump’s political persona has long been his consistent servility toward Russian dictator Vladimir Putin.
Trump, always ready to publicly savage U.S. allies and even slander American war heroes, remains strangely, stubbornly averse to leveling even the most mild criticism at a murderous autocrat who is one of America’s top global adversaries.
That eerie dynamic has been obvious since Trump’s first presidential campaign, when he publicly invited Russia to interfere in America’s election (and which, we now know, Russia promptly did).
But in an even more disturbing development today, it’s becoming increasingly clear that mimicking Trump’s Kremlin fetish is now required of his most slavish elected enablers. How else to explain the shameful silence of some in the GOP regarding the death of Russian dissident Alexei Navalny?
It’s almost irrelevant whether Navalny’s death was a deliberate murder on Putin’s orders or the medical result of an unjustified and brutal Siberian imprisonment. Either way, Putin has managed to permanently silence another of his pro-democracy critics, as he has many times before.
Leaders the world over, including in both major parties in the U.S., immediately condemned Putin and demanded explanations . ... Trump, meanwhile, was silent for days regarding Navalny’s death. When he finally fired up his social media thumbs to comment Monday, it was in the form of a typically self-serving screed in which he compared his own supposed legal persecution by “Radical Left Politicians” to Navalny’s martyrdom.
That Trump would implicitly acknowledge Navalny’s victimhood while carefully avoiding any mention of the brutal dictator behind it was unsurprising. Trump’s chilling fealty to Putin has always been one of the few constants in his chaotic politics . ... This is today’s standard bearer for the “Party of Reagan.” Sit with that a moment.
Yet, in apparent deference to Trump’s deference to the Russian murderer, some have chosen to stay silent.
What are they afraid of? That Trump’s followers will view any unfavorable mention of Putin as somehow anti-maga? Has that designation somehow become worse than anti-democracy?
It may well be, at least among what GOP outcast Liz Cheney, the former Wyoming congresswoman, told CNN over the weekend is “the Putin wing of the Republican Party.”