Donald Trump tried on Friday night to dial down his apparent admiration for Vladimir Putin that has made critics and rivals ask if the Republican nominee harbours some of the same traits as the Russian president.
“I don’t know the gentleman. He’s nice to me,” the Republican nominee told supporters at a rally in Florida, days after calling Putin a better leader than President Barack Obama. “But if he’s nice to me it doesn’t mean anything unless we make some great deals for our country.”
That wasn’t the first time Trump had said nice things about Putin, compared to Obama. He continues to praise Putin, saying he is merely returning the favour for the Russian leader calling him “brilliant” in an interview in December 2015. Putin has denied ever using that word for Trump, telling CNN in June, he only called him a “bright person”. That’s it. “Isn’t he bright? He is. I did not say anything else about him.” But that’s not what Trump believes.
Whatever Trump’s reasons, his admiration for Putin goes beyond just that. During the alleged hacking of Democratic party’s servers by Russian entities earlier this year, which outraged even Republicans, Trump gleefully asked for more of it to determine the content of the Hillary Clinton’s deleted emails.
{{/usCountry}}Whatever Trump’s reasons, his admiration for Putin goes beyond just that. During the alleged hacking of Democratic party’s servers by Russian entities earlier this year, which outraged even Republicans, Trump gleefully asked for more of it to determine the content of the Hillary Clinton’s deleted emails.
{{/usCountry}}Speaker Paul Ryan, the senior-most elected Republican in the country, called Putin an “aggressor”, and said, “It certainly appears that he is conducting state-sponsored cyber-attacks on what appears to be our political system”. But he said nothing about Trump.
Putin is generally held in low regard by Americans, polls show. Only 21% of Americans polled by PEW in 2015 said they had confidence in his handling of world affairs. The agency did not poll Americans on Obama for the same survey, but Gallup, another polling body, found the president’s numbers at 39% for his handling of world affairs in February, up from 36% in 2015. Obamas doing much better against Putin, for most Americans except for Trump, who, incidentally, trails Putin in favourability.