How Many Big Lies Will It Take for Republicans to Abandon Trump?
The GOP's conservative base must explain its loyalty to a leader who falsely claims election fraud and now is pretending he was an obstacle to Putin instead of an enabler.
Trump has no message for Putin.
Photographer: Chris McGrath/Getty Images
The days when “politics stopped at the water’s edge” are long gone. It seems quaint to think that U.S. foreign policy was once based on bipartisan consensus, shaped by a need to restrain Soviet Union-era communism. Even so, it’s jarring for Americans to see a former president calling his successor “dumb” at a time when the commander-in-chief is conducting sensitive negotiations for international sanctions to stop an aggressive Russian bear.
Yet so it was when Donald Trump spoke Saturday night at the winter Conservative Political Action Committee. After a week in which he praised Vladimir Putin as “smart” and “savvy” for attacking Ukraine, Trump piled on in an even uglier manner, claiming that, “This horrific attack would have never happened if the election wasn’t rigged and I was still president.” In so doing, Trump intertwined two “Big Lies.” His false stolen-election narrative, entering its third year, has now been augmented with the claim that only his strong foreign policy kept Vladimir Putin in check, rather than his erratic policy praising the Russian president to the heavens while doing everything possible to destabilize NATO.