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Donald Trump’s Bromance With The Awful Vlad Putin Is Killing Us
Once again, Donald Trump has reminded us how much of a crush he has on Vladimir Putin. This time, Trump praised Putin as “a stronger leader” than Obama with great poll numbers.
Trump also appeared on RT, an English-language Russian propaganda outlet, to tell Larry King that he thought it was “unlikely” that the Russians would try to influence the U.S. election. Of course, in July Trump all but invited the Russians to do just that by releasing emails it would presumably hack from Hillary Clinton‘s private server, the classic definition of treason.
Trump loves to be outrageous because he knows it will get him media attention, but his love affair with Russia and Putin in particular is a very bad sign indeed.
Praising Putin is bad enough. Trump has strongly signaled that he will let Putin do pretty much what he wants, including invading NATO members. And that bodes really badly for LGBT rights in Russia.
Trump would have you believe, based on one comment at the GOP convention, that he’s a great defender of LGBTQ despite his promise to overturn marriage equality. It should go without saying that anyone who is a friend of Putin’s is no friend of ours. Under Putin’s leadership, Russia has become a state of perpetual siege for the LGBT community, a fact that Putin simply dismisses. Violence is common, as are arrests and harassment.
In short, the very type of terrorism that Trump purports to save us from is commonplace in Russia. But you won’t hear Trump speaking up about that. If he is elected President, Trump will likely use the same “we’re not innocent either” rhetoric that he’s employed in talking about Russian aggression.
6 Reasons For Donald Trump’s Insane Man-Crush On Vladimir Putin
Worse still, Trump is normalizing this outrageous belief among fellow Republicans. The number of Republicans who think of Putin “very unfavorably” dropped from 51% in 2014 to 22% in 2016. That will have a ripple effect among Republican elected officials, who will be even less inclined to condemn Putin for fear of angering their conservative base.
Thinking about your peers half the world away isn’t always easy. But keep this in mind: Trump would accept homophobic violence as the sign of a “strong leader.” In doing so, he’d let homophobes in other countries know that he’s not going to lecture them on LGBT rights the way the Obama administration did.
So ask yourself this question: With friends like that, who needs enemies?
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