Donald Trump shocked MSNBC hosts by praising Vladimir Putin and saying he’s better than Barack Obama, despite the murdering of political opponents.
Donald Trump loves praise. The GOP frontrunner regularly posts tweets from fawning supporters. A staple of his stump speeches is sharing his poll numbers, which are “huge.”
So when Russian oligarch Vladimir Putin in essence endorsed Trump Thursday, the GOP frontrunner was thrilled, calling it a “great honor.”
Which made it, apparently, very difficult for Trump to say anything negative about his new BFF Friday morning when he called into “Morning Joe.”
MSNBC co-host co-host Mika Brzezinski asked Trump if he liked Putin’s comments about him.
“Sure, when people call you ‘brilliant’ it’s always good. Especially when the person heads up Russia,” Trump said, glowing.
“Well, I mean, it’s also a person who kills journalists, political opponents, and invades countries. Obviously that would be a concern, would it not?” Joe Scarborough interjected.Â
“He’s running his country and at least he’s a leader. Unlike what we have in this country,” was Trump’s stunning response.
“But again, he kills journalists that don’t agree with him,” Scarborough reminded Trump.
“I think our country does plenty of killing, also, Joe, so, you know,” Trump replied. “There’s a lot of stupidity going in the world right now, Joe. A lot of killing going on. A lot of stupidity. And that’s the way it is. But you didn’t ask me the question, you asked me a different question. So that’s fine.”
Watch:
Some responses via Twitter:
UPDATE: 10:27 AM EST – Although the video doesn’t show it, immediately after Scarborough pressed him to condemn Putin’s murdering of his critics, and Trump said he absolutely” condemns it.
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Image by Gage Skidmore via Flickr and a CC license