It’s like it’s 2017 again. Or 2018, 2019, or 2020. Donald Trump has said something mind-blowingly unacceptable—once again trying to get a foreign leader to trash his political opponents for him—and Republicans are dodging and weaving and making excuses for him, to whatever extent reporters even bother to ask them about it.
Trump did an interview pleading with Russia's Vladimir Putin to release dirt on Hunter Biden, the president’s son, relating to an unsubstantiated claim that the president’s son was associated with a company that got a $3.5 million payment from a Russian oligarch. If you’re going to call on Putin to do one thing right now there’s an obvious choice, and that ain’t it.
Trump’s plea to Putin put some Republicans in a position they’re very used to: trying to express media-friendly disapproval of Trump without going so far that he attacks them for disloyalty. But at least one was willing to say he kind of agrees with Trump.
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That would be Sen. Kevin Cramer of North Dakota. Asked by reporters about Trump’s comments, he responded, “Well, I don’t know if [Putin] has dirt on Biden. If he does he should reveal it, but he is a war criminal, so I don't expect that he’s right now sitting around thinking about ways that he can, you know, reveal other information, if in fact he has it, I don’t know of any that he has so I don’t know what the president might be talking about.”
How’s that for a mess of a word salad? But at base, yes, Cramer thinks it would be helpful if Putin responded to Trump’s ask for dirt on President Joe Biden or his family members. Cramer doesn’t appear too concerned about the veracity of any dirt that Putin might release, but does he think it’s appropriate that Trump asked Putin for a political favor?
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“You know, the appropriateness of things that Trump asks for, is more amusing to you than it is to me. We have a current president who’s way more concerning to me, frankly, than what the former president might be doing.”
Yes, Biden doing policy that Republicans disagree with is way more concerning to Republicans than their guy running around asking Putin to interfere in another U.S. election.
Sen. Lindsey Graham hates Russia and Putin enough that he wasn’t looking to pivot straight to an attack on Biden. “My message to Putin is he needs to go,” Graham said, which is substantially different, to be fair, than if his message to Putin was that he’d like a political favor. As for Trump’s ask, “That would not be something that I would do, no.”
It’s not exactly a full-throated denunciation of Trump, but he didn’t join the request, which means that on this occasion, Graham cleared the very low bar his party sets.
“We have very little control over what the former president says, obviously,” said Sen. John Thune, the No. 2 Senate Republican. No. You have control over how you respond, and if you respond with weak tea, you show that you are more afraid of the consequences Trump could dole out for criticizing him than he is of any consequences you could impose.
Sen. Mitt Romney: “I don't think Vladimir Putin ought to be one of the people we go to for favors right now. He's one of the worst people on the planet, and America shouldn't be asking for favors.”
“America” wasn’t asking for favors. One of the other worst people on the planet was.
Romney is what passes for extreme moral uprightness in the Republican Party these days, yet even he is subdued in his condemnation of Trump asking for election help from the murderous autocratic leader of a country that’s waging war on a neighbor for no reason. And it is not the first time Trump has asked for exactly that kind of help from exactly that person, having said in 2016 as he was running against Hillary Clinton, “Russia, if you're listening, I hope you're able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing.” We know he’s not joking. We know Russian state television is openly rooting for him.
Republicans are telling us by what they don’t say that they’re okay with Trump seeking Russian help to steal an election as long as they gain power along with him.
