On Friday’s “PBS NewsHour,” New York Times columnist David Brooks said it “totally makes sense that Trump admires the cut of Putin’s jib,” and “bullies can be sycophantic toward better bullies.”

Brooks stated, “You know, some people think, oh, Trump has — Putin must have something on Trump. There’s some blackmail. There’s something like that. I think — I — maybe that’s true. To me, it totally makes sense that Trump admires the cut of Putin’s jib, and he has a long history of business ties with Russia. They — ideologically, they have, actually, some similarities. If you look at the European parties that are populist like Trump, they all are pro-Putin. They just think, I like strongmen. That guy’s a strongman. He’s my kind of guy. And bullies can be sycophantic toward better bullies. And so, I take the psychological, cultural, more than the blackmail theory. But I could be wrong.”

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