Why the Republican Party Just Can't Get Enough of Vladimir Putin

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00:00Yesterday, reporters asked me if I thought President Putin was smart.

00:06I said, of course he's smart. Putin is saying, oh, they're going to sanction me.

00:10They sanctioned me for the last 25 years. You mean I can take over a whole country?

00:14Are they going to sanction me? The problem is not that Putin is smart.

00:19The real problem is that our leaders are dumb.

00:24It doesn't matter when. It doesn't matter where.

00:28If the former guy has a chance to lavish praise on Russia's maniacal dictator,

00:33you can bet he'll take it each and every time.

00:36And he did, as you just saw, last night at CPAC.

00:39Sadly, though, what's more disturbing is the growing number of other allies

00:44Vladimir Putin seems to have here in the United States.

00:49Democrats in Washington have told you you have a patriotic duty to hate Vladimir Putin.

00:54It's not a suggestion. It's a mandate.

00:56It might be worth asking yourself, since it is getting pretty serious,

00:59what is this really about? Why do I hate Putin so much?

01:03Has Putin ever called me a racist?

01:05Very shrewd. Very capable.

01:07I have enormous respect for him.

01:08I've been criticized for saying that.

01:11No, I have enormous respect for him.

01:13Look at Russia.

01:15Can we give a round of applause for Russia?

01:17The whole reason this is happening is because Joe Biden is a weak president.

01:30Now, America is a weak country and our entire world is falling apart.

01:34We're seeing war erupt, which did not happen under President Trump because we had peace through strength.

01:40Y'all, come on.

01:46So why is the party of Reagan?

01:48Which one saw Russia and communism as the evil empire now seemingly rooting for Putin?

01:55Joining me now to try to answer that question here on set with me,

01:59Charlie Sykes, MSNBC contributor and editor at large at The Bulwark,

02:02and Max Boone, columnist at The Washington Post and security studies,

02:06senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

02:09OK, Charlie, since you're here on set with me,

02:13just your reaction both to what Donald Trump had to say at CPAC last night

02:17and also that montage of crazy that we just saw,

02:20especially the chance of Putin?

02:23Come on.

02:25No, I mean, this is a disgraceful moment.

02:27This is not the party of Reagan anymore.

02:28It's the party of Trump.

02:29And I think what you demonstrated there was the entertainment wing of the Republican Party

02:34is all in on either being pro-Putin or being anti-anti-Putin.

02:38Now, this is important because right now there seems to be a moment

02:42when most Republican elected officials are reading the room

02:45and recognizing you don't want to be justifying this aggression by Vladimir Putin.

02:51And they're sort of sounding like they're kind of hawkish.

02:54But we have to remember that the entertainment wing of the Republican Party

02:57is still the dominant wing of the Republican Party.

02:59They are still the id of the Republican Party.

03:02And so these useful idiots out there may be looking bad at the moment,

03:07but don't underestimate their ability to pull the Republican Party back in a Trumpian direction.

03:15And again, this is a very clarifying moment,

03:17because as you've been talking about all morning,

03:18you know, this is a former president who has praised Vladimir Putin,

03:22who has appeased Vladimir Putin,

03:24who actually tried to extort the president of Ukraine.

03:28If you ever wanted a moment of moral clarity of what strength looks like,

03:32what patriotism looks like, what betrayal looks like, it's right there.

03:37But, Jonathan, we've been here before,

03:39and we've seen how the Republican Party reacts.

03:42Mm-hmm.

03:42Max, I would love your reaction.

03:47I'm just so gobsmacked by what we showed coming into this segment,

03:53but your reaction to everything that we've seen so far.

03:57Well, my reaction would echo what Senator Romney said on another network earlier this morning.

04:02And as you know, he is one of the few Republicans of conscience left in this party,

04:06where he said, it makes me almost ill.

04:08Well, this is nearly treasonous, what we're hearing from some of these pro-Putin Republicans,

04:13the ones who are turning GOP into the gang of Putin.

04:17I mean, it is shocking, Jonathan, and just to underline the point that Charlie was making,

04:21the entire world right now is united in condemning Putin's villainy,

04:27his aggression against Ukraine.

04:29This is a battle of good versus evil.

04:32And we see where a lot of Republicans stand.

04:34And it's really striking that the most popular Republican political leader in America,

04:39Donald Trump, and the most popular Republican broadcaster in America,

04:43Tucker Carlson, are both unabashed fans of Putin.

04:47And there are very few Republicans out there like Mitt Romney or Liz Cheney

04:51who have the courage to call them out.

04:54This is a disgrace.

04:55This is shocking.

04:57I still can't believe, as somebody who grew up in the Republican Party of Ronald Reagan

05:01in the 1980s when he was calling the Soviet Union the evil empire,

05:04I still can't believe this is where the Republican Party has wound up.

05:08But this is where it is.

05:09And, you know, I keep hoping that there will be some kind of recalibration.

05:13I kept hoping that after January 6th,

05:15the Republican Party would end its infatuation with Trump and with authoritarianism.

05:20That didn't happen.

05:21Now I'm hoping that after the invasion of Ukraine,

05:23the Republican Party, a lot of the MAGA base,

05:26will end their infatuation with Putin and authoritarianism.

05:30And sadly, I suspect I'll be disappointed in that regard as well.

05:33You know, Max, I keep thinking back to a question that was asked of Vice President Harris

05:39at the Munich Security Conference after she gave her speech from the president of the organization,

05:45who kind of put her on the spot by asking her to give assurances to the world and to Europeans

05:52that Donald Trump wouldn't come back.

05:55I understand where that question comes from, because folks are worried.

05:59And tell me if I'm wrong, but our allies are worried that this moment that we're in

06:05is just an interregnum before we go back to what we had four years ago,

06:11and that is the United States run by a president with autocratic tendencies

06:16who has more in common or feels he has more in common with Vladimir Putin

06:21than he does with NATO, the EU, and the allies who've been stalwart allies

06:27of the United States for more than seven decades.

06:30Well, I wish I could say that those concerns are groundless,

06:34but I fear that they are, in fact, rooted in reality.

06:37I mean, if you look at it right now,

06:39Donald Trump is the clear frontrunner for the Republican nomination in 2024.

06:44I would go so far as to say I don't think anybody else will even run against him

06:48if he throws his hat into the ring.

06:50And he could easily get the Republican nomination,

06:53and then he could just as easily, I think, defeat either Joe Biden or Vice President Harris,

06:58depending on the state of the economy.

07:00I mean, right now, you look at President Biden's approval ratings,

07:04they're under 40 percent.

07:05That's shocking.

07:06That's terrible news for Democrats.

07:08They're almost certainly going to lose the midterm elections in the fall,

07:12and it's setting up a very tough re-election campaign in 2024.

07:16And guess what?

07:17Donald Trump is making clear that he loves Putin.

07:20He called his invasion of Ukraine an active genius, said it's very smart.

07:24And so you have to be concerned.

07:26Is Donald Trump expecting Putin to help elect him once again, as he did in 2016?

07:31Charlie, I'm going to give you the last word here.

07:35Well, I share the concerns because in a lot of ways, this feels like January 7th,

07:41you asked about this before, where you had a moment where you realized how absolutely unhinged

07:46and irresponsible and traitorous Donald Trump was.

07:50But then Republicans took a deep breath and they decided they were okay with that.

07:53That may happen again.

07:55On the other hand, we do have this moment of clarity.

07:57The reason that Vladimir Putin did not invade Ukraine when Trump was president is because

08:02he was getting everything he wanted.

08:04He saw Donald Trump as the way to break up and undermine NATO.

08:09And that's what's at stake now in Trump 2.0.

08:13You bring Donald Trump back and Donald Trump will destroy the alliance that we are now seeing

08:18standing up against Vladimir Putin.

08:20And quite frankly, I guess I do have some residual confidence in the American people that they

08:24will not want to do that.

08:26I have residual confidence, too.

08:29And y'all better not disappoint.

08:31Charlie Sykes, Max Boot, thank you both very much for coming to the Sunday show.

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