During the Republican primaries, Putin praised Trump, and Trump praised him back. On television, Joe Scarborough pointed out to Trump that Putin kills his political opponents, invades other countries, etc.
Trump said, “He’s running his country and at least he’s a leader, you know, unlike what we have in this country.”
Scarborough pressed him: But what about the killing of political opponents?
Trump: “Well, I think our country does plenty of killing also, Joe.”
This is the kind of moral equivalence that would make Oberlin poli-sci profs blush.
Just yesterday, the New York Times asked Trump about Turkey and the depredations now going on. He answered, “When the world sees how bad the United States is and we start talking about civil liberties, I don’t think we are a very good messenger.”
Jeane Kirkpatrick was a Democrat when she spoke at the Republican convention of 1984. (She did not change her party registration until after she left the U.N. and the Reagan administration.) She said that her native party had the habit of “blaming America first.”
What would Kirkpatrick do today, when faced with Trump’s GOP or the Obama-Hillary Democratic party? Many of us are now homeless. May it not last forever …