Transcript: Kamala’s Harsh Takedown of Trump on Putin Shocker Nails It
Grossman: Putin’s right in that he was right to probably want to try to keep it secret. It is another example of how Trump clearly has a strong affinity for Russia, for Putin, even—both in personal activity, in rhetoric, and sometimes even in foreign policy, high-level national security foreign policy—has deferred or even kowtowed to Putin’s point of view and put Putin above what is commonly understood to be interests of the United States of America.
Sargent: Well, before we get into that, I want to remind everyone that Trump was downplaying the seriousness of the disease at the time, saying it was like a cold. Countless people died, including many in red states. Trump didn’t encourage people to get the vaccine during his final months in the White House, then quietly got it himself without doing it in front of the cameras, which could have been an example to people. So Trump takes care of himself, he takes care of Putin, meanwhile his own people are dying. Doesn’t this go to the core of what this type of autocrat is really about?
Grossman: It does, and it shows how Trump’s policy for many things, and actually another example is with Hurricane Helene currently, is that his approach to crises is not to try to address them. It’s to lie to the American people about them. His big concern has been his reputation, not, in any particular way, the interests of the United States. The authoritarian governments often will lie, sometimes very blatantly lie, not just for the purpose of trying to convince people, especially its followers, of something false. It’s also to try to attack any authoritative sources of truth, independent sources of information, and to make it where what is true is just whatever they say, no matter how crazy, and then anything they say is false is false. That also creates a degree of a cultlike loyalty around them. We’ve seen this in a number of both flat-out authoritarian countries, Russia in the worst case, North Korea, and also a number of democratic backsliding countries like Hungary, which Trump and a lot of MAGA admire.
