Tom Brady may have shocked the sports world Sunday with his 25-point comeback in the second half of Super Bowl LI, but it was President Trump who yet again shocked the political world during his interview with Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly. Yet again, Trump was asked about Vladimir Putin and Russia, and yet again, Trump managed to cause an unnecessary controversy when he seemed to compare Putin’s crimes over the last two decades with United States foreign policy misadventures over the previous fifteen years.
If you’ve been paying any attention to the news lately, you probably already heard or read about the exchange between Trump and O’Reilly during the nine-minute interview. But just in case you missed it amidst the Super Bowl hype, here is the excerpt:
O’Reilly: Do you respect Putin?
Trump: I do respect him but —
O’Reilly: Do you? Why?
Trump: Well, I respect a lot of people but that doesn’t mean I’m going to get along with him. He’s a leader of his country. I say it’s better to get along with Russia than not. And if Russia helps us in the fight against ISIS, which is a major fight, and Islamic terrorism all over the world — that’s a good thing. Will I get along with him? I have no idea.
O’Reilly: But he’s a killer though. Putin’s a killer.
Trump: There are a lot of killers. We’ve got a lot of killers. What do you think — our country’s so innocent. You think our country’s so innocent?
O’Reilly: I don’t know of any government leaders that are killers.
Trump: Well — take a look at what we’ve done too. We made a lot of mistakes. I’ve been against the war in Iraq from the beginning.
Republican lawmakers saw those words last Sunday and were visibly aghast that Trump seems incapable of saying a negative word about Russia or its president. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., responded in typical McConnell fashion, simply stating the fact that Russia and the U.S. are completely different countries who have different histories, values and interests. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., was more heated, tweeting a metaphorical question that implied that Trump doesn’t know what he’s talking about, “When has a Democratic political activist [sic] been poisoned by the GOP, or vice versa? We are not the same as #Putin.”
When has a Democratic political activists been poisoned by the GOP, or vice versa? We are not the same as #Putin. MR
— Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) February 5, 2017
Indeed, we aren’t. The U.S. military doesn’t deliberately bombard civilian neighborhoods like the Russian Air Force does in Syria, causing the deaths of thousands of men, women, and children who have nowhere to go. The U.S. doesn’t sell some of the most sophisticated defensive weapons to the Iranians, such as the S-400 missile system. U.S. presidents don’t order the poisoning of their domestic political rivals when they start mouthing off or going off the reservation. Putin, according to an exhaustive British investigation, likely approved the poisoning of former KGB officer-turned-critic Alexander Litvinenko.
Trump’s unwillingness to criticize Putin would be a mere curiosity if it weren’t for the fact that he is now the most powerful person on the planet and that any statements he makes, or tweets, have real world consequences.
But more than that, every utterance that Trump makes about Putin diminishes his political space to actually explore whether a different relationship with Moscow is possible, a goal that on its face would serve U.S. national security interests well if Washington were able to find some kind of productive modus-vivenidi with the Russians.
The anti-Russia sentiment in Washington has reached such a high level — sometimes, you could be forgiven for thinking that we’re living in 1983 again — that a rapprochement or detente with Moscow is an exceedingly difficult policy to sell. Trump isn’t making his task any easier by conflating U.S. history with Putin’s aggressive behavior.
Daniel DePetris (@DanDePetris) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is a fellow at Defense Priorities.
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