Conservative rips Trump defenders’ 'grotesque' comparison to Russian opposition leader

20 February 2024

After the news broke that Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny had died in a Siberian prison, many Never Trump conservatives — including MSNBC's Joe Scarborough and The Bulwark's Jonathan V. Last — cited Donald Trump's praise of Russian President Vladimir Putin as a prime example of why Trump should never return to the White House.

But Trump's defenders on the far-right responded to Navalny's death with a very different argument, claiming that the four criminal indictments against Trump are comparable to Navalny's imprisonment in Siberia — a comparison that conservative Jonah Goldberg slams as a "grotesque" in his February 19 column for the Los Angeles Times.

On X, formerly Twitter, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Georgia) posted, "Navalny's death in prison is a brutal reminder that jailing your political opponents is inhumane and a violation of every principle of a free society. Watch the Biden Administration speak out against Putin and his jailing of his leading political opponent while Democrats in four different jurisdictions try to turn President Trump into an American Navalny. The hypocrisy and corruption of the left is astonishing."

Conspiracy theorist Dinish D'Souza tweeted, "Navalny=Trump. The plan of the Biden regime and the Democrats is to ensure their leading political opponent dies in prison. There's no real difference between the two cases."

Those tweets, Goldberg argues in his column, underscore "the moral rot on parts of the American right."

"For numerous right-wing and Republican figures," Goldberg laments, "the real lesson of Navalny's killing is that 'Navalny = Trump,' in the words of Trump-pardoned writer Dinesh D'Souza…. D'Souza and Gingrich were hardly alone in indulging this grotesque exercise in Soviet-style propaganda. On Monday, Trump himself invoked the comparison on social media."

Goldberg continues, "His first mention of Navalny's name wasn't to condemn his death or Putin's role in it, but to cast himself as an American Navalny. 'The sudden death of Alexei Navalny has made me more and more aware of what is happening in our Country,' he declared before spewing the usual self-serving grievances."

The conservative columnist stresses that Trump "is not an innocent anti-corruption crusader brutalized and murdered for championing democracy and the rule of law" and that it is ridiculous to describe President Joe Biden as "the moral equivalent of Vladimir Putin."

"Publicly criticizing Putin's treatment of Navalny can land you in a Russian cell," Goldberg observes. "Criticizing Biden's alleged treatment of Trump can land you in a Fox News studio."

Jonah Goldberg's full Los Angeles Times column is available at this link.

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