Earlier today at the Vostochny Cosmodrome in Russia’s Far East, that nation’s authoritarian war criminal, Vladimir Putin, greeted North Korean totalitarian Kim Jong Un. “Russia is now rising to the sacred struggle to defend its state sovereignty and protect its security,” Kim said of Putin’s crimes against humanity—a practice in which the North Korean is an expert—in Ukraine. “We have always supported and stand by all decisions of President Putin and the Russian government. “I hope that we will always stand together in the fight against imperialism.”
A day earlier, Putin once again offered his support to Donald Trump, saying that the charges against his favorite American represent the “persecution of one’s political rival for political motives.”
Persecution of political opponents—which, of course, is not what is happening with the charges against Trump—is one of Putin’s areas of greatest proficiency. Just last week, his regime apparently sent Russian dissident Vladimir Kara-Murza to a Siberian prison camp for 25 years for criticizing Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Putin’s opponents have a proclivity for falling out of windows. The Russian authoritarian so admired by Trump has political opponents poisoned. A few weeks ago, the plane carrying the slaughterer of humans and former Putin ally Yevgeny Prigozhin was, almost certainly, shot down on the order of the Russian president.
Harvard Law professor and champion of the United States Constitution Laurence Tribe provided the proper response in a tweet (or whatever Elon Musk now calls them) yesterday:
Donald Trump loves both of these utterly evil dictators. The former occupant of the White House has probably never smiled as broadly as he did when he was with the Butcher of Pyongyang, the most evil totalitarian on the face of the earth.
Why was Trump so happy? Kim referred to him repeatedly as “Your Excellency,” in letters, Trump explained. “And then we fell in love, okay? No, really—he wrote me beautiful letters, and they’re great letters.”
At Helsinki in 2018, Trump infamously sided with Putin over United States intelligence agencies. “This is genius,” Trump gushed last year when Putin invaded Ukraine. “Oh, that’s wonderful … You gotta say that’s pretty savvy.”
It is easy enough to see why the dictators of basket-case countries like Trump. They see him as a useful idiot.
What is beyond understanding is how any American could support Trump. Maybe it’s the hope that Trump can make the American economy like that of North Korea, the prosperity of which is illustrated by satellite photos at night?