FILE PHOTO: U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin shake hands as they hold a joint news conference after their meeting in Helsinki, Finland July 16, 2018. REUTERS/Grigory Dukor
Last updated on February 28th, 2024 at 03:43 pm
Former Prime Minister of Australia Malcolm Turnbull warned of Donald Trump returning to the White House, saying Trump’s “awe” of Vladimir Putin directly threatens Australia’s security.
“When you see Trump with Putin, as I have on a few occasions, he’s like the 12-year-old boy that goes to high school and meets the captain of the football team. ‘My hero!’ It’s really creepy,” Turnbull said on Australia’s ABC News Q+A.
He noted that the Republican Party are very sympathetic to Putin.
The Republican Party under Donald Trump, and particularly the right wing of the Republican Party, are very sympathetic to Vladimir Putin.
The former Prime Minister, who was in office during Trump’s time as U.S. President (2015 to 2018), called Trump a “terrifying” threat to democratic order, noting “creepy” embrace of autocrats like Vladimir Putin.
“I’ve been with Trump and Putin. Trump is in awe of Putin. When you see Trump with Putin, as I have on a few occasions, he’s like a 12-year-old boy that goes to high school and meets the captain of the football team.”
“‘My hero.’ It is really creepy, it’s really creepy… It struck everybody. You could touch it. The creepiness was palpable.”
Turnball brought up Tucker Carlson’s sycophantic pretend interview with Putin and later pointed to Trump’s attraction to dictators and tyrants like Kim Jong Un and Xi Jinping.
“Are we going to find ourselves not dealing just with two autocracies in Russia and China, but what is Trump’s America going to look like?”
Trump’s awe of Putin is a direct threat to Australia’s national security if he returns to the White House, Turnball warned.
“This is a guy leading a party that is no longer committed to democracy as we understand it.”
The host asked if he thinks America is sliding into an autocracy.
“If by democracy, you mean a country that is governed by the rule of law, yeah for sure,” Turnball responded. “Donald Trump doesn’t believe the law applies to him. Donald Trump lost the 2020 election and refused to accept it and saw the mob, encouraged a mob to overthrow the constitutional process in the Congress. Tried to overthrow his own Constitution.”
“Tyrants are often popular…. If you get to the point where anybody can muster a majority is given absolute power and can do whatever they like to the minority, that’s not a democracy. That is a tyranny. That is an autocracy, even if it’s got the support of 51% of the population.”
“A democracy as we understand it is one where the rule of law protects all citizens and the rule of law applies to all citizens, whether they’re the president or the prime minister or an ordinary elector.”
Trump’s worship of Putin is a global humiliation for the United States of America, and one that if emboldened to return to office will surely destroy the “free” part of the American experiment.
Trump’s awe of Putin is clear to global leaders around the world, and is the opposite of “making America great again.” Trump continues to weaken the United States on the global stage and here at home.
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