One of the biggest issues of the 2016 presidential election is the relationship between the United States and Russia, specifically their president, Vladimir Putin. Both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton have very different views regarding the Russian dictator, but something that Trump recently said shows exactly how dangerous his view of Putin is to America.
There is no doubt that the Russian government has been attempting to sway the election in favor of Trump. Putin himself has been employing international scare tactics in a vain attempt to threaten the entirety of America with nuclear war should Hillary Clinton be elected. While the threat has been taken differently by many different sects of American society, the reason behind it is quite clear. Hillary Clinton is a candidate who would stand up to Putin and his totalitarian ways. Trump, on the other hand, would basically become Putin’s sidekick if he were to be elected, which is exactly what Putin wants.
Now, just weeks before the election, Trump has openly admitted that he plans on working closely with Putin if he is elected. While talking on Michael Savage’s radio talk show, Trump flat-out admitted he would try to meet with Putin and the Russian government before he even took office. If you can understand that statement and it doesn’t immediately terrify you, then you should do a bit of research regarding Trump’s relationship with Putin.
Trump has been praising Putin for quite some time, long before his political career got off the ground. Clinton might be the candidate who would actually stand up to the bully that is Putin, but Trump is the exact opposite. Trump sees Putin as a role model, despite the fact the dictator got his country removed from the G8 by illegally annexing Crimea.
It is no secret that Putin is one of the most dangerous world leaders in existence, yet Trump seems to have no regard for the atrocities that Putin has committed. Whether or not Trump is even aware of these atrocities is still up for debate since it seems highly unlikely that any true American would sympathize with such a dangerous zealot.
The deeper fear that many Republicans and nearly all Democrats harbor is that Trump not only knows exactly the sort of leader Putin really is, but that he hopes to emulate the dictator if he wins the election. Putin’s Russia already resembles many of the fascist countries pre-WWII, and a lot of his policies mirror Trump’s highly acerbic language. Russia is currently ruled by an anti-democratic autocracy, they are intensely nationalist, they believe in strong militarization and international reach, they have a state-run economy, and they work to suppress society in order to stop uprisings.
Trump has used language that shows his support to many of these tools for dictating over a populace. Since it is quite clear Trump wouldn’t be meeting with Putin to discuss the dissolving US-Russia relations, what purpose could Trump possibly have for wanting to meet with Putin before he is even inaugurated? The answer is quite simple: he wants advice.
Much of the language used by Trump in the recent weeks leading up to the election, and throughout his entire campaign, really, has been creepily reminiscent of dictators like Hitler, Stalin, and Putin. Ironically, Hitler was in a similar situation to Trump. He was swayed by Russian propaganda that eventually led to one of the largest genocides in human history. Trump’s language regarding Muslims isn’t too far off from the language used by Hitler to justify sending multitudes of Jewish men, women, and children to their deaths. A Trump presidency could lead to one of the most destructive repetitions of history ever recorded.