Trump is criticized for failing to condemn Putin over the sudden death of Russian dissident Alexei Navalny after publicly referring to his death for the first time

Former Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi joined the chorus of people condemning Donald Trump’s statements on the death of Russian dissident Alexei Navalny, saying his comments show him to be a person “without values ‘ is.

Navalny, 47, died under mysterious circumstances on Friday in a Russian penal colony known as The Polar Wolf. Many Western leaders have laid the blame for the sudden death at the feet of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Trump failed to mention Putin’s possible connection in a post about Navalny’s death on TruthSocial. The former president instead compared the death to his own domestic legal troubles.

“The sudden death of Alexei Navalny has made me increasingly aware of what is happening in our country. It is slow, steady progress, with CROOKED, radical left politicians, prosecutors and judges leading us down a path to destruction,” he wrote on TruthSocial.

“Open borders, rigged elections and grossly unfair court decisions are DESTROYING AMERICA. WE ARE ONE NATION, A FAILING NATION! MAGA2024,” he added.

In response, Pelosi, 83, asked MSNBC’s Jen Psaki during an interview on Monday: “Trump speaking out the way he did about Navalny shows that he is a person without values… It makes you wonder, what does Putin have about Donald Trump that he must always be obliged, his buddy in the mean?’

The Californian liberal then called Trump’s statement “beneath the dignity of a human being.”

‘It’s so terrible that you think: ‘No, someone must have made this up. Not even Donald Trump could go that far.” This statement should disqualify him from being anything, let alone president of the United States,” she added.

On CNN, the reaction was much the same as when former Fox News host Chris Wallace said Trump and his supporters “may not want to engage Navalny.”

“You know, it’s quite extraordinary that Donald Trump somehow equates what he’s going through in the American courts with the full trial imposed on him for what Navalny went through, when he was sent to the gulag to a Siberian prison where he died under extremely harsh conditions. mysterious and frankly suspicious circumstances,” Wallace told host Abby Phillip.

“Anyone who has covered Trump during his presidency — let alone since — must be impressed by the childish approach he has given the Russian president throughout, yes, absolutely,” he added.

It has since emerged that Navalny, Putin’s most persistent critic, expressed concern about another Trump presidency in letters he sent to a friend from his prison cell.

Many have also expressed outrage over Trump’s post.

“Even for Trump, the level of malignant narcissism and sociopathy was so far removed from the accusations in this statement – ​​which made Navalny’s murder all about him – that I thought it was a parody. No, it’s real. Trump has really set this on social truth,” author Kurt Eichenwald wrote.

“Every time you think Trump can’t get any lower, there’s a knock on the floor. He glorifies himself, slanders Navalny and compares his lifelong criminality and the American legal system to dictator Putin’s persecution of the political opposition,” wrote former chess champion Garry Kasparov.

“After days of saying nothing about Navalny’s killing, Trump is finally commenting — not to honor the fallen hero; Not to condemn Putin for the murder, but to implausibly compare HIMSELF to the martyr, drawing false equivalencies and undermining our own democracy,” said former Obama adviser David Axelrod.

But on TruthSocial, many agreed with Trump’s sentiments.

‘Biden is America’s Putin. Trump is Biden’s Navalny. He wants him to die in prison,” one follower wrote.

“This administration and Biden have no right to say anything about Putin and Navalny’s death, they are trying to do the exact same thing to Trump! Hypocrites all!!!,” said another.

Others spread unfounded conspiracy theories. ‘Navalny is a terrorist. He was caught planning a color revolution to overtake Russia with MI6. He is not a ‘political opposition’. He is a foreign intelligence agent.”

Standing next to the former KGB agent in 2018, Trump declared: “President Putin says it’s not Russia. I don’t see any reason why that would be the case,” referring to U.S. intelligence agencies’ claims that Russian agents spread misinformation online in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election.

Earlier this month, Trump again said that if he returned to the White House he would not defend NATO members that fail to meet defense spending targets, days after setting off alarm bells in Europe by suggesting he Russia would tell it to attack its NATO allies. considered delinquent.

At a campaign rally in South Carolina, he told the story of his alleged conversation with the head of a NATO member state that had failed to fulfill its obligations. This time, however, he dropped the line that caused the most outrage: he encouraged Russia to “do whatever they want.”

‘Look, if they’re not going to pay, we’re not going to protect them. OK?’ he said Wednesday.

Trump stuck closer than usual to his prepared remarks following a freewheeling event several days earlier, in which he also drew criticism for mocking Nikki Haley’s husband’s military deployment.

He also revised his comments about Russian President Vladimir Putin, whom he has often praised as callous and previously suggested he treat as the apple of his eye.