"Putin has gone absolutely CRAZY" - Krasnov

[Emrys]

3. "We're in the middle of talking" makes it sound like Putin committed a social faux pas.

Which is the root of Trump's griping - Putin's showing Trump up as powerless and ineffectual, with his "STOP Vladimir!" BS, and blatantly disrespecting him. Putin's been doing that for years, but it seems Trump's only just understood it. And still he has to hedge his bets with a nonsensical "both sides" jab at Zelensky.

From Putin's first year as Russian president onward:











CNN collected "80 times Trump talked about Putin" from 2013 to 2017, almost all of them complimentary - https://edition.cnn.com/interactive/2017/03/politics/trump-putin-russia-timeline/

Trump in February 2022:

“I went in yesterday and there was a television screen, and I said, ‘This is genius.’ Putin declares a big portion of the Ukraine – of Ukraine. Putin declares it as independent. Oh, that’s wonderful.”

The day after he made those comments, he effectively doubled down on them. “They say, ‘Trump said Putin’s smart.’ I mean, he’s taking over a country for two dollars’ worth of sanctions,” Trump told a crowd at a fundraiser at Mar-a-Lago, according to a recording of the event. “I’d say that’s pretty smart. He’s taking over a country – really a vast, vast location, a great piece of land with a lot of people, and just walking right in.”

Then, in a speech at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference last weekend, Trump, again, repeated his praise of Putin. “Yesterday reporters asked me if I thought President Putin was smart,” he said. “I said, ‘Of course, he’s smart,’ to which I was greeted with ‘Oh, that’s such a terrible thing to say.’” I like to tell them, ‘Yes, he’s smart.’”

But somehow it's Obama's, Biden's and Zelensky's war.

From a May 20 press conference:

You said you believe Putin wants peace, but he just attacked Ukraine yesterday. So what makes you think he wants peace?

Trump: “Well, he's in a war…They’re attacking each other…”

I guess that time Putin did it politely. And wore a suit.