> He was very pro-Putin, he still is - he spoke about how brilliant Putin's strategy in Ukraine is during this latest escalation of conflict (https://www.rawstory.com/trump-putin-ukraine/).
Having an opinion about brilliance of someone's strategy is not a value judgement. There were plenty of brilliant strategists who were awful people and fought for awful ideas.
I remember how western media attacked Trump after he praised Lee as a great general, making it look as if he supported confederacy — which in context of his speech was clear he did not. In both cases, it's either a gross logical fallacy or a weak manipulation, and just as I can't take the media that reported it seriously after that, I can't take your arguments seriously after this either.
It's clear that trump was cheerleading Putin's actions and mocking the US. He even "joked" that we should do something similar on our southern border:
"And he’s gonna go in and be a peacekeeper. That’s the strongest peace force… We could use that on our southern border."
His surrogates like Tucker Carlson are also praising Putin and suggesting that liberals are your enemy, not Putin (https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1496290844797992960). This attitude among the American right became prevalent at trump's direction, and it is not an accident.
This may not seem like much to a non-American, but it's a shameful change in our national discourse for a political leader to cheerlead an enemy like this in the middle of a crisis. If you ignore this, fine - but my other point still stands, trump was anti-NATO and wanted to get out of it:
"‘Yeah, the second term. We’ll do it in the second term,’ then-president reportedly said"
My thought on the entire situation - Putin expected trump to win again and pull from NATO, and then he'd kick this shit off. That didn't happen but he didn't expect Biden to be able to lead a strong, unified response (sanctions etc.) after the disastrous years of trump poisoning the relationship the US has with Europe.
Unfortunately Putin just has to wait until western nations to elect fickle / Russian aligned leaders (like maybe trump again in 2024) to win out.
Having an opinion about brilliance of someone's strategy is not a value judgement. There were plenty of brilliant strategists who were awful people and fought for awful ideas.
I remember how western media attacked Trump after he praised Lee as a great general, making it look as if he supported confederacy — which in context of his speech was clear he did not. In both cases, it's either a gross logical fallacy or a weak manipulation, and just as I can't take the media that reported it seriously after that, I can't take your arguments seriously after this either.