New Hampshire Republican compares Volodymyr Zelensky to Osama bin Laden

In New Hampshire, millionaire Bruce Fenton — known for aggressively promoting the Bitcoin cryptocurrency — is among the Republicans competing in a 2022 U.S. Senate primary. And Fenton, according to the Daily Beast’s Roger Sollenberger, is the latest Republican to attack Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky — who he has compared to al-Qaeda terrorist Osama bin Laden.

Zelensky is being hailed all over the world as a profile in courage for refusing to back down during the horrific invasion of Ukraine by Russian forces, which is the worst military crisis in Europe since World War 2. But Fenton, during an appearance on WMUR-TV in Manchester, New Hampshire, claimed that there are parallels between the Ukrainian government and al-Qaeda.

Felton told WMUR, “Remember, as Zelensky is a hero now, Osama bin Laden was once considered a hero.”

Bin Laden had one thing in common with the United States and the Reagan Administration in the early 1980s: He was vehemently opposed to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and supported the anti-Soviet Mujahadeen resistance. But bin Laden subsequently became a bitter enemy of the United States, founding the terrorist organization al-Qaeda and masterminding the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Sollenberger notes, “It’s true that bin Laden — a mass-murdering terrorist and sworn enemy of the United States who was killed in a 2011 U.S. Navy SEAL team raid — was hailed by devoted followers. But that was not the pernicious idolatry to which Fenton was referring. Fenton, who served for a time in the Navy as a hospital corpsman and claims to have completed ‘much of’ SEAL training, was instead referring to the United States — specifically, the 1980s, when bin Laden battled the Soviet Union alongside the Afghan Mujahideen, which American operatives secretly armed as a proxy force.”

Sollenberger notes that during the WMUR interview, Fenton “went on to bemoan the CIA’s Reagan-era meddling in Afghanistan as a possible parallel for the Russian invasion of Ukraine, warning that the United States should only deploy troops if ‘it is a true threat to the U.S. Constitution.’”

“The Biden Administration has repeatedly shot down the idea of sending troops to Ukraine, though it has provided more than a billion dollars in military aid and appears to be training or preparing to train Ukrainian troops in Poland,” Sollenberg observes. “But this isn’t the first time Fenton made this specious argument. He wrote something similar in a lengthy 2015 Facebook post, kicking off with, ‘Our government once thought Osama bin Laden was a hero.’”