Days after being impeached by the House of Representatives, President Trump echoed and endorsed Russian President Vladimir Putin’s take on the impeachment process.
In his press conference in Moscow, Putin argued Trump was impeached for “far-fetched” reasons.
“It’s simply a continuation of internal political struggle,” Putin said.
Echoing a Republican talking point, the Russian president continued, “The party that lost the [2016] election, the Democratic Party, is trying to achieve results by other means.”
Democrats, Putin claimed — again, as Republicans did during impeachment proceedings Wednesday — have always wanted to impeach Trump and had been looking for a reason to do so all year.
“It turned out there was no collusion,” Putin said, referring to the conclusions of the Mueller report. “It could not form the basis for impeachment, and now there is this made-up pressure on Ukraine.”
The pressure on Ukraine is, of course, well documented, including in evidence released by the White House.
Like Putin, however, Trump and his Republican allies have claimed the evidence does not show this.
Trump, for instance, wrote to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi Tuesday, that the articles of impeachment “include no crimes, no misdemeanors, no offenses whatsoever. You have cheapened the importance of the very ugly word, impeachment!”
Friday, he was a bit more succinct in replying to an Associated Press report detailing Putin’s comments, responding to a tweet containing Putin’s assessment of the president’s impeachment by writing, “A total Witch Hunt!”
The timing of Trump’s tweet was less than ideal given it came not just after his impeachment, but in the wake of a Washington Post report detailing the president’s affinity for — and trust in — his Russian counterpart.
Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA), a frequent critic of the president, appeared to refer to that report in a Friday rebuke of Trump in which she called him Putin’s “puppet.”
Referring to a “revelation by former [White House] officials,” she warned that if the Senate doesn’t remove him from office, Trump would invite Putin to the White House next year.
Both tweets — Waters’ and Trump’s — underscore concerns over the president’s relationship with Russia and election security during the 2020 presidential contest.
Trump has told Russia he didn’t care about that country’s meddling in the 2016 election, and he was criticized recently for giving Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov a White House meeting, something he has refused to grant US ally Ukraine, despite Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky repeatedly asking for one.
Trump has also been criticized for his adherence to the conspiracy theory that it was Ukraine, not Russia, that interfered in the 2016 election, and that it did so in an effort to benefit Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton.
This conspiracy theory has been disproved by national security experts — one of who, former homeland security adviser Thomas Bossert, has said he repeatedly told Trump it was false — but it has lingered in the presidential and Republican consciousnesses.
The Washington Post report that so concerned Waters focused on this theory, and according to that report, one former senior White House official said Trump told him that “he knew Ukraine was the real culprit because ‘Putin told me.’”
Trump’s full embrace of this conspiracy theory has now directly affected how his presidency will be remembered; he brought it up on his July 25 call with Zelensky — and his pursuit of an official Ukrainian investigation into the theory (as well as into another conspiracy theory, that former Vice President Joe Biden misused his power to help a Ukrainian company on whose board his son sat) led to his eventual impeachment.
Democrats are increasingly concerned however, that impeachment will not chasten the president, and that the 2020 election won’t be free of foreign influence — not just due to concerns that Trump will invite meddling, but because the president and his allies continue to promote Russian propaganda.