GOP defenses of Trump’s 'outrageous' remarks proves Republicans have 'bent to his will'

12 February 2024

During a campaign speech in South Carolina on Saturday, February 10, 2024 GOP presidential frontrunner Donald Trump made some comments about Russian President Vladimir Putin and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) that both Democrats and Never Trump conservatives have been quick to attack.

Trump told the crowd that he would "encourage" Putin to invade NATO countries if they don't "pay" enough into the alliance.

But with Trump moving closer and closer to the GOP nomination, Republicans — according to New York times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan — have been afraid to criticize his NATO/Putin remarks.

In a report published on December 12, Haberman and Swan explain, "After Donald J. Trump suggested he had threatened to encourage Russia to attack 'delinquent' NATO allies, the response among many Republican officials has struck three themes — expressions of support, gaze aversion, or even cheerful indifference. Republican Party elites have become so practiced at deflecting even Mr. Trump's most outrageous statements that they quickly batted this one away."

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Florida), two former Trump critics who are now strident supporters, defended Trump's comments.

Graham told the Times, "Give me a break — I mean, it's Trump. All I can say is: while Trump was president, nobody invaded anybody. I think the point here is to, in his way, to get people to pay." And Rubio, during an interview with CNN's Jake Tapper, claimed that Trump "used leverage to get people to step up to the plate and become more active in NATO" — a claim that MSNBC's Jonathan Lemire slammed as ludicrous and "pathetic."

Haberman and Swan emphasize that this "defense of Mr. Trump" from Graham and other Republicans underscores "the trajectory of a party that the former president has largely bent to his will."

"Eight years ago, when Mr. Trump was in the thick of his first campaign for president, Mr. Graham would have given a very different response," the reporters note. "In that campaign, Mr. Graham — initially one of Mr. Trump's competitors in the primary, whom Mr. Trump quickly vanquished — saw himself as a defender of the Republican Party's internationalist values against what he perceived as the acute threat of Mr. Trump's isolationism."

Read the New York Times' full report at this link (subscription required).

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