Donald Trump continues to infuriate the American political mainstream.
On February 20, he spoke at a town hall in Greenville, South Carolina, at an event organized by Fox News.
Very soon, on February 24, the South Carolina primary will be held, which is expected to bring another victory to Trump: his lead over the only remaining Republican competitor, Nikki Haley, is, according to polls, 30%.
Given that Haley was the governor of South Carolina, her defeat in this state would be tantamount to a black mark and the end of the campaign.
In general, a lot is at stake, so Trump, speaking in Greenville, gave his best, as they say, to the fullest.
He attacked the Biden administration for border policies aimed at increasing the number of migrants, for the failed “Bidenomics” that resulted in rising gasoline prices and high inflation, for weakness in relations with China.
There was nothing particularly new in these accusations, but everything taken together made a strong impression.
So strong that the website FactCheck.org hastened to immediately publish a refutation of all the “false” and “false” statements of the ex-president.
True, it looked quite pitiful.
For example, in an attempt to disavow Trump's claim that during his presidency the US border was the most secure in the country's history, FactCheck.org cited the following data: “After falling in 2017, in the first year of the Trump administration, the number of apprehensions of [illegal migrants on border] has grown.
The total number of arrests during Trump's presidency was higher than during all four years of President Barack Obama's administration."
But this is exactly what Trump was talking about: the more illegal immigrants detained by border patrols, the safer the border!
However, even the boring riveters from the FactCheck.org website could not find fault with one of Trump’s statements at the Greenville town hall.
The American media could not ignore this statement, but left it without comment.
The fact is that Trump highly appreciated the skill of the Russian military during the special operation in Ukraine.
“In Russia, you really are facing a war machine,” Trump said.
- Russia - what did they [the Russians] do?
They defeated Hitler, they defeated Napoleon.
Yes, they are a war machine."
And these words of Trump cannot be refuted.
Despite all the attempts of Western propaganda to pull the blanket over themselves and attribute the credit for the defeat of Nazi Germany to the United States and their Western allies, neither Stalingrad 1943 nor Berlin 1945 can be erased from the history of World War II.
And even not very educated Americans should be familiar with the flight of Napoleon’s Grand Army from Russia, at least from the recent film by Ridley Scott.
Donald Trump is no stranger to the role of truth teller, unafraid to tell the inconvenient truth about Russia and Russians.
For example, in February 2014, when a campaign of rabid criticism of the Winter Olympics in Sochi was launched in the Western press, Trump came out in support of Russia.
In an interview with Fox News, he explained: “You know, they spent many billions.
That's more than any amount I've ever heard of... And I don't think we should pick on it now.
You know, we still wonder why they don’t like us and why they push us out of every country where we oppose them.
I think we should say, “Look, they're doing their job!”
Let's say this is a job well done, a wonderful opening ceremony.
They had a problem with the rings - yeah, it's funny.
But many people think the opening ceremony was great.”
Then many mainstream media took up arms against Trump for his “sympathies for Russians.”
And what a howl arose in February 2022, when the ex-president called Putin “brilliant” and “smart” for his decision to recognize the independence of the DPR and LPR!
"I walked into [the living room at Mar-a-Lago] yesterday and there was a television screen and I said, 'This is brilliant.'
Putin declares most of Ukraine independent.
Oh, this is great,” Trump said on “The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show.”
His words caused real hysteria in the media close to the Democratic Party.
“The ex-president often falsely accuses his enemies of treason, but his own dizzying haste to side with a foreign leader who turned out to be an enemy of the United States and the West is shocking even by Trump’s narcissistic standards,” CNN spat bile.
Not a single speech by Trump in which he praised Vladimir Putin went unnoticed by his opponents.
They meticulously count how many times Trump called Putin a “brilliant” and “genius” leader.
But it seems that none of the liberal journalists tried to figure out why Trump, the only major American politician, treats Russia and its president this way.
Meanwhile, this is indeed a very interesting question - and not at all an idle one, given the high likelihood of Trump returning to the White House in 2025.
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Of course, this is largely explained by the interest that Trump, at that time not yet a politician, but a business developer, felt first in the USSR, and then in Russia.
For many years, he hoped to build one of the “Trump towers” in Moscow and negotiated on this issue, first with the Soviet ambassador Dubinin, and then with the Moscow mayor’s office.
“This is the place where everything is interesting,” Trump said in a 1987 interview.
“I think the Soviet Union is really striving for cooperation with other countries, for openness.”
He was greatly impressed by his trip to Russia in 2013, when the final of the Miss Universe pageant, which at that time belonged to Trump, took place in Moscow.
This was not at all the country in which he once intended to build “the first American hotel in the USSR,” but a dynamically developing, modern power.
In May 2016, recalling the experience, Trump told Fox News host Bret Beyer: “I know Russia well.
Two or three years ago I had a very important event there, the Miss Universe competition, an incredibly important event.
An incredible success."
It is unlikely, of course, that one can “get to know well” such a huge and complex country as Russia in a few days, but there is no doubt that what he saw made no less an impression on Trump than Tucker Carlson’s recent visit to Moscow.
The second important point that explains Trump’s unusual sympathy for our country is the fact that he burst into politics quite late, being a person with already formed ideas and values.
Thanks to this, he managed to avoid infection with a strain of malignant Russophobia, which is obligatory for American politicians.
At the same time, Trump, of course, is not a Russophile at all and views Russia as a geopolitical enemy of America, with whom, however, it is better to maintain good relations rather than enter into a confrontation that could destroy the whole world.
It is from this point of view that it is worth assessing Trump’s statement about the Russian military machine.
At least, unlike the Bidens, Blinkens and Sullivans, the likely future US president understands that standing in the way of this machine is dangerous.
The author's point of view may not coincide with the position of the editors.