Yesterday, during NBC’s Commander-In-Chief Forum, Donald Trump said that Vladimir Putin was a better leader than Barack Obama.
I’ve already said, he is really very much of a leader. I mean, you can say, ‘Oh, isn’t that a terrible thing’ — the man has very strong control over a country.
Now, it’s a very different system, and I don’t happen to like the system. But certainly, in that system, he’s been a leader, far more than our president has been a leader.
As you may know, we here love Putin for his cold-hearted actions, but that’s because we are safely ten of thousands of miles away from Vladimir Putin. He’s a terrible leader, who has done horrible, horrible things to both the Russian economy and the Russian people. No one should ever be remotely complimentary of him (us included).
Normally, when Trump goes off the rails in public, his running mate, Mike Pence, walks back those statements. Today? Nah.
On CNN with Dana Bash, he (after being asked about Putin and going on and on and on about things Ronald Reagan once said) said it’s “inarguable” that Putin’s been a stronger leader than Barack Obama and that “that’s gonna change the day Donald Trump takes office.”
As Mitt Romney’s lead strategist in 2012 put it:
If in '08, Senator Barack Obama had praised Putin as a better President than the American, Republicans would have demanded he quit race.
— Stuart Stevens (@stuartpstevens) September 8, 2016
Later on when asked if Trump had shared his secret plan to defeat ISIS, Pence demurred, refusing to say even if Trump told him what it was.
Well alright.