Tweet Share Share Comment This is Totally Normal Quote of the Day, a feature highlighting a statement from the news that exemplifies just how extremely normal everything has become.
“It’s a form of Navalny.” —Donald Trump, speaking of his own legal troubles on Tuesday
It took Donald Trump three long days to respond to the news of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny’s death. When he did, he didn’t accuse President Vladimir Putin of murder. Instead, he described the episode as a warning sign of autocracy—in the U.S. As Trump wrote on Truth Social on Monday:
The sudden death of Alexei Navalny has made me more and more aware of what is happening in our Country. It is a slow, steady progression, with CROOKED, Radical Left Politicians, Prosecutors, and Judges leading us down a path to destruction. Open Borders, Rigged Elections, and Grossly Unfair Courtroom Decisions are DESTROYING AMERICA. WE ARE A NATION IN DECLINE, A FAILING NATION! MAGA2024
He didn’t elaborate as to how, exactly, Navalny’s death in a remote Arctic prison colony made him “more aware of what is happening in our Country,” given that Putin’s silencing of dissidents seems much more motivated by Russia’s domestic politics than America’s. Luckily, the next day, Trump offered some more clarity.
During a town hall in South Carolina on Tuesday, Fox News host Laura Ingraham asked Trump how he was going to pay off the $355 million he now owes in damages from his New York civil fraud trial.
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“It’s a form of Navalny,” Trump replied. “It is a form of communism or fascism.”
While it was a bit of a muddled answer, what he meant was that he, Donald Trump, was a Navalny-like figure facing political persecution. He argued that his various legal troubles—he still faces four separate criminal cases—should be seen as a president abusing his power to quash his rival. “We are turning into a communist country in many ways,” he added.
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Joe Biden has no control over the cases against Trump. But that hasn’t stopped Trump and his supporters from making the former president into a heroic opposition figure, facing tyrannical show trials. On The Ingraham Angle Monday, Ingraham floated the idea that Trump was “at risk of being America’s first real political prisoner.”
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Trump’s claim of kinship with Navalny would be strange enough on its own, given that the American here encouraged an anti-democratic insurrection, publicly claimed to want to be a temporary dictator, and has repeatedly praised strongman rulers such as Hungary’s Viktor Orbán for their political dominance. But it’s made all the more bizarre by Trump’s history of cozying up to Putin. Trump has repeatedly bragged about his relationship with the Russian leader, arguing that he would have been able to avert the war with Ukraine. He has defended Putin’s extrajudicial killings (“You think our country is so innocent?”); praised him, ahead of the Ukraine invasion, for being smart; and said he would “encourage” Russia to “do whatever the hell they want” to any American ally in NATO that he thought was not spending enough on defense.
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So what are we supposed to conclude about Trump’s position on Putin and Navalny? Does he think that Putin’s suppression and assassination attempts against Navalny were astute moves by a strong leader? Or does he think Navalny was as unworthy of poisoning, imprisonment, and death as he, the innocent Donald Trump, is of his punishments?
Expecting logical consistency from Trump during a campaign cycle is pointless. His policy positions are based on whatever he feels at any given moment, and what he feels right now, under serious legal threat for his actions, is persecuted.
In his conversation with Ingraham on Tuesday, Trump did call Navalny’s death “sad,” but his anguish on behalf of Putin’s most powerful domestic critic came across as rather limited. Navalny, Trump said, was “very brave”—but would have been better served by “staying away and talking from outside of the country.”
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Presidential Front-Runner Recently Busted for Decades of Corporate Fraud: I’m Like Alexei Navalny
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22.02.2024
Tweet Share Share Comment This is Totally Normal Quote of the Day, a feature highlighting a statement from the news that exemplifies just how extremely normal everything has become.
“It’s a form of Navalny.” —Donald Trump, speaking of his own legal troubles on Tuesday
It took Donald Trump three long days to respond to the news of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny’s death. When he did, he didn’t accuse President Vladimir Putin of murder. Instead, he described the episode as a warning sign of autocracy—in the U.S. As Trump wrote on Truth Social on Monday:
The sudden death of Alexei Navalny has made me more and more aware of what is happening in our Country. It is a slow, steady progression, with CROOKED, Radical Left Politicians, Prosecutors, and Judges leading us down a path to destruction. Open Borders, Rigged Elections, and Grossly Unfair Courtroom Decisions are DESTROYING AMERICA. WE ARE A NATION IN DECLINE, A FAILING NATION! MAGA2024
He didn’t elaborate as to how, exactly, Navalny’s death in a remote Arctic prison colony made him “more aware of what is happening in our Country,” given that Putin’s silencing of dissidents........
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