[miami_fan]

Originally Posted by Solecismic

I'd hesitate to connect Trump to praise of Putin's current actions. Trump is all about himself, yes. He has no qualms about criticizing the current administration, which frankly people on both sides do with regularity. This is an ugly quality. But he isn't pro-Russia nuking the world.

I think this is an excellent example of what I was writing about. If we persist in this hate - this desire to connect people we hate to the worst the world has ever seen - then the politicians and the otherwise irrelevant personalities in the media win. If we give them power to make us hate, then we stop questioning the loss of civility or reason.

Is that a world even worth saving? Don't mistake this for praise of Putin, but maybe that puppet in the Russia media has a point, for all the wrong reasons. It's not a world without Russia that isn't worth having. It's a world without freedom or civility that's not worth having.

But Jim, he did praise Putin. Nobody made that up. The praise came out of his mouth under his own free will. He has doubled and tripled down on the praise since the initial comments on Wednesday.

There is no reason to try and connect the words that Trump has said since Wednesday to Putin's actions today. I will wait for his comments on those. However, there is also no reason to not acknowledge that Trump praised Putin's actions up to today. Actions that the world in general find abhorrent Whether he did it as a way to criticize the current administration is irrelevant IMO. He can do the latter without doing the former. The "hate" ( I think that word is too strong in this case) is based on his commentary lacking civility and reason.