A new Yahoo News/YouGov poll has found that 62% of Republicans and GOP-leaning independents think Putin is “a stronger leader” than Biden.
A former CIA station chief who ran operations in Russia isn’t having it. “Shame on them,” he says.
“That’s incredibly, incredibly myopic, political, silly kind of thinking,” he said. “Putin hates the United States. He wants to do everything he can to weaken the United States around the world. He’s attacked our troops in Afghanistan. He’s undercut every foreign policy issue, [including] foreign policy issues that Republicans have supported for years around the world. He’s assassinating people around the world.”
Those Putin-loving Republicans undoubtedly are influenced by Trump’s cozy relationship with the Russian strongman. “Republican views on Russia were likely altered by several years of sympathetic statements from President Donald Trump,” Yahoo News says in an article here.
But there’s also another influencer beating the pro-Russia drum. The article notes, “In recent weeks and months, Fox’s top primetime anchor, Tucker Carlson, has repeatedly favored Russia over Ukraine, asking on Nov. 10 why the U.S. would ‘take Ukraine’s side and not Russia’s side’ and arguing in December that Putin was justified in building up troops along the border.”
Uh, maybe because Putin is a hostile dictator, and today Ukraine is a democracy aligned with the West and NATO? I guess Republicans like dictators and don’t like democracy now.
How things have changed.