Quote of the Day (John McCain, on Russia’s Leaders, ‘Corrupt With Power’)

“Russia's leaders, rich with oil wealth and corrupt with power, have rejected democratic ideals and the obligations of a responsible power. They invaded a small, democratic neighbor to gain more control over the world's oil supply, intimidate other neighbors, and further their ambitions of re-assembling the Russian empire. And the brave people of Georgia need our solidarity and our prayers.”—US Senator (R-AZ) and former POW John McCain (1936-2018), “Address Accepting the Presidential Nomination at the Republican National Convention in Saint Paul, MN,” Sept. 4, 2008, The American Presidency Project

For years, Donald Trump has acted weirdly and inexplicably towards Vladimir Putin, to say the least—from urging Russia in the 2016 Presidential campaign to release Hillary Clinton’s emails to claiming this year that Ukraine started its war with Russia. 

That behavior became even odder earlier this week, when he posted that the Russian dictator has “gone absolutely CRAZY” by escalating attacks on Ukraine amid peace negotiations.

Crazy? Hardly. That adjective, many would say, applies more to Trump.

No, despite the American President’s dictator-wanna aspirations, Putin has been unrelenting about his nationalist goals, pursuing them with a silence that Trump is temperamentally unable to maintain and with a cunning he can only envy.

Most of all, he has known how to appeal to Trump’s overweening ego, calling him a “genius” and feeding his misperception that Putin disregarded Barack Obama and Joe Biden because he didn’t “respect” them as he did their successor in the Oval Office.

So, over last weekend, Trump voiced frustration that Putin is “killing a lot of people.” Where has he been these last three years, since the invasion of Ukraine? Or the past decade? Or, to take McCain’s point, the last two decades?

You have to wonder, why is Trump squawking about Putin now? From the moment he became a serious contender for the GOP nomination a decade ago, he adopted a “see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil” attitude on the former KGB operative.

Do you think the President is reading polls that show Americans don’t approve of that posture—and wonder if he is taking a tough enough stance against Putin?

Maybe, like Rip Van Winkle, Trump fell asleep for a generation, only to wake up to find the world utterly changed. Maybe his short-term memory is vanishing.

Long ago, that same phenomenon took hold of the MAGA faithful. How else to explain why, even after Putin’s actions unleashed the concerns of McCain (and the 2012 GOP nominee, Mitt Romney), delegates to the 2016 convention agreed, without the slightest fuss and following the urging of Trump representatives, to water down that year’s platform language about “providing lethal defensive weapons” to help Ukraine fight against pro-Russian separatists?

Whatever the case may be, Moscow can barely disguise its amusement over Trump’s incoherent rhetorical flailing. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov referred to “emotional overload,” while a female flunky trotted out for Putin-controlled television said Trump’s warning that the Russian strongman might be “playing with fire” would last “until tomorrow.”

Remarkably, the Russian government finds itself in accord with Wall Street about Trump’s mood and policy shifts—all that loud blustering followed by hasty retreats. The nickname most applicable, an acronym that made the President lash out yesterday at yet another reporter for asking a “nasty question,” was TACO—“Trump Always Chickens Out.”

(The image accompanying this post—John McCain's official senatorial photo, taken Jan. 23, 2009—derived from his Facebook page.)