People are scratching their heads over Trump’s doubling down on his praise of Putin. As he told Matt Lauer, he likes Putin because Putin is a strong leader. And very popular, too, with an 82% approval rating.
Apart from the fact that no one should give any credence to the approval ratings given to dictators in their own countries–are you really going to say you don’t approve of your fearless leader?–it is clear that Trump admires Putin’s strength above all else.
Well, maybe not above everything else. Trump also likes him because Putin has made Trump think that Putin likes him. Trump is auditioning for the role of Putin’s lap dog.
But I digress. Trump really admires Putin’s strength. Of course, Saddam Hussein was strong, at one time. So was Idi Amin. (Amin didn’t just fire people; he ate them!) You could add lots of other enemies of the U.S. to the list: Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini (who Trump appears to be channeling facially), just to take examples from the 1940s–the halcyon days of Trump’s childhood. (In fairness, Trump was born about a year and six weeks after Hitler and Mussolini died, so he never had the pleasure personally.)
I suspect that Trump would have good things to say about all of these men, especially in the context of comparing them favorably to Obama, whom Trump claims is a very bad, weak man who wasn’t even born here.
What all this comes down to is that Trump aspires to be an authoritarian President (to the extent that he aspires to be President at all). Of course, there probably are a lot of Americans who would like an authoritarian President, just as there probably are a lot of Americans who think ignorance is a qualification for the office.
If Trump is elected, old Vladimir will have a friend in D.C.–a fact that Trump actually views as a selling point.