Russian relations

President hesitant to criticize Russian leader

Scrutiny is rightfully due for any and every president.

That said, we’ve seen this public sense of accountability monumentally heightened for President Donald Trump every day since the conclusion of 2016’s pivotal election.

Every day, Trump seems to be making or breaking history, according to the columnists, the self-appointed watchdogs or sundry, other critics from every shade possible on the political spectrum.

In many ways, the outrageous fervor reminiscent of the 2016 election has not truly ended and probably never will until 2021.

This perpetual scrutiny of Trump’s every word is legitimate, even if it is at times a bit excessive and often flavored with residual post-election resent.

Though I personally often roll my eyes at either side of the scrutiny, I remember the weight of Trump’s words has significantly increased now that he is president and not simply candidate.

Thankfully, it seems Trump is becoming increasingly cognizant of that fact as well.

Not completely, perhaps, but increasingly.

However, Trump reminded us all on Super Bowl Sunday that he still has a long way to go with weighing his words, and we ought not become numb to his inherent awkwardness when he says something that just may be worthy of some rightful disturbance.

During a Feb. 5 interview with Bill O’Reilly, Trump affirmed his apparent respect for Russian president Vladimir Putin by rebutting O’Reilly’s blunt statement that Putin was “a killer.”

“There are a lot of killers,” Trump responded.

“You think our country’s so innocent?”

This remark spawned a wave of rebuke from both Democrats and Republicans.

The common tagline of the criticism was “moral equivalency,” indicating that Trump put America’s government on moral par with that of Russia.

Even those who have unwaveringly resolved to stand behind Trump and always assume the best intentions of him have voiced their concern over his seemingly flippant comparison.

A notable example was when Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell responded to CNN’s Jake Tapper on the “State of the Union” program.

McConnell proved to understand the aforementioned inflated scrutiny of President Trump’s words, but he also demonstrated that despite the grit-your-teeth loyalty of Republicans at large there still must be reasonable room for discomfort over something like a faulty, even borderline disparaging, comparison like that which Trump indicated.

And while the U.S. has a less than perfect history of its own, comparison to the Russian federation seem  unsuitable.

“I’m not going to critique the president’s every utterance,” McConnell said.

“But I do think America is exceptional, America is different. We don’t operate in any way the way the Russians do. I think there’s a clear distinction here that all Americans understand and no, I would not have characterized it that way.”

Trump has previously tried qualifying his “respect” for Putin in what seem to be terms of hopeful acknowledgement, the underlying hope being to gain a common ally in the fight against Islamic terrorism.

Yet this hopeful “infatuation,” as many crassly call it, seems to be eroding somewhat since the zenith of Trump and Putin exchanging a phone call in January.

There was the staggering resignation of Michael Flynn over his loose-lipped phone exchange with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak.

Then came the unsettling launching of a cruise missile by Russia, reported on Valentine’s Day.

There was a Russian spy ship afloat off the coast of Delaware.

And there is also the ongoing drama of Crimea’s annexation.

Sounds like the beginning of a conspiracy theorist’s tirade, doesn’t it?

Yet each element, though perhaps unlinked, has been dubiously timed and thus has gathered together into an ominous, hovering storm cloud over the Trump Administration.

As Trump currently works to ensure security at our immediate borders, he would do well to firmly establish what the working relationship with Russia actually is, and secure our relational borders.

As he learns to fit better into the presidency and to weigh his words carefully, Trump must scale his comparisons ever so delicately.

jarrett is a feature writer.