Putin Endorses Trump

I wrote yesterday that the politician on the world stage who reminds me most of Donald Trump is Vladimir Putin. Some Trump fans howled at being compared with a Communist, or oligarch, or master thief, or whatever Putin is. (The point I made was that Putin, like Trump, is a populist who ran on a “Make Russia great again!” platform and whose crude macho shtick is beloved by his fans.)

Maybe Putin reads Power Line. In any event, it took him only a few hours to voice his support for Donald Trump:

President Vladimir Putin hailed Donald Trump as the “absolute leader” in the U.S. presidential contest, praising the candidate’s talk about building a deeper relationship with Russia.

The Republican candidate is “a very colorful character and talented,” Putin said after concluding his three-hour annual press conference in Moscow.

“He’s the absolute leader in the presidential race,” Putin said Thursday, in remarks first reported by the Interfax news service. …

Putin dodged a question about the abusive language and combative ploys that Trump uses to stay atop the polls, saying “it’s not our place to judge his work.”

Will Trump’s fans be fazed by Putin’s expression of support? Of course not! For the rest of us, though, it does provide a certain amount of entertainment value.

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