Donald Trump has been inconsistent on many things — his immigration views, for example — but he has been utterly consistent on Putin: He admires him. He hails him as a “strong leader.” And he cites poll numbers to assert Putin’s popularity in Russia.

He did all this again tonight. And this put me in mind of George W. Bush, whom I interviewed earlier this year.


We were talking about dictators and their methods of maintaining control. One method is to imprison opponents. Another is to monopolize the media. Bush brought up Putin, unprompted. “People say, ‘He’s the most popular guy in Russia.’ I say, ‘Yeah, I’d be popular too if I owned NBC’” (and the other networks, presumably).

Today’s GOP is very different from Bush’s, of course. The GOP nominee, Trump, obviously admires Putin a lot more than he does Bush (or Mitt Romney or John McCain, to cite the recent Republican nominees). He asserts that Bush lied our country into war, and that he should have been impeached.

Say this for Bush: He knows about democracies and dictatorships, and he knows the differences between them. And he is foursquare for democracy.


Democracy, human rights, and freedom are in bad odor on the right at the moment (and you can forget about the Left). But they will make a comeback. They always do, especially when championed by leaders willing to take a stand.

Trump thinks that Putin is so popular among the Russian people? Fine. Let Putin allow a free and diverse press, multiple, unharassed parties, and free and fair elections. Let him stop murdering his political opponents, such as Boris Nemtsov. And then we’ll see.


The Left has told me for years that Castro — first the elder brother, now the younger — is popular in Cuba. Okay. Let them prove it, in democratic contests. But they never do, do they?

And now the Right, in the person of Trump, repeats propaganda for the KGB thug in the Kremlin. There we are, in 2016.