Quotes
He rejected this proposal for an unconditional ceasefire, he wants conditional, he wants a ceasefire on his terms.”
Appearing on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, he said
Absent Trump, I don’t think you would see this reorientation of the Republican party. Even with Trump a lot of Republicans, especially on Capitol Hill, are very uneasy about it and don’t like what Trump is doing but they’re afraid to speak out.”
Max Boot, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations thinktank and author of Reagan: His Life and Legend, said
Let’s talk about what this really is, Steve: this is a war against Christianity. The Ukrainian government is attacking Christians; the Ukrainian government is executing priests. Russia is not doing that; they’re not attacking Christianity. As a matter of fact, they seem to be protecting it.”
Indeed, last year, on the rightwing strategist Steven Bannon’s War Room podcast, the Republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene saidI push back against the idea that Republicans have become entranced with Putin because there’s not evidence for that. There is evidence that Republicans have become tired of the fight in Ukraine. These things are not the same.”
Henry Olsen, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center thinktank in Washington, said
The reversal is dramatic and the willingness of the Republican party to go along with it continues to be breathtaking,
said Charlie Sykes, a political commentator and author of How the Right Lost Its Mind
They have definitely shown a sympathy for Vladimir Putin’s autocratic, ‘traditional’ values, which are very troubling if you care about the problems of bigotry and discrimination. There is growing sympathy and the wing of the Republican party that’s against that is getting weaker while the other wing is getting stronger.”
Adam Smith, the top Democrat on the House of Representatives’ armed services committee, told the Guardian of the “Make American great again” movementThey invented five or six genders: transformers, trans – you see, I do not even understand what it is.”
He said of the westThey believe that they’re going to promote ‘traditional values’ and they see Putin as an ideological ally in that. I still think it is a minority within the Republican party but Trump’s the president. He’s the leader of that party and they’re adhering to him. Trump has an enormous amount of sympathy for that worldview and more and more of them are drifting in that direction.”
He added