Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump on Saturday said anyone who criticizes the warm compliments he has swapped with Russian President Vladimir Putin is simply “jealous as hell.”
Although Putin has been accused of a lengthy list of human rights violations, Trump has maintained that Russia could be a powerful partner for the United States — and one that could help the country save some money.
“You know, he feels good about me. I feel, frankly, good about him. I think that we can do things with Russia that are to our advantage. … It’s a mutual advantage,” Trump said during a rally in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, on Saturday afternoon. “Now, they’re jealous as hell because he’s not mentioning these people. He’s not going to mention them, so they’re jealous as hell. So a couple of them came out with: ‘Oh, well, you don’t want to be friends.’ Oh, no, we don’t want to be friends. No, we want to spend another 5 trillion dollars continuing to fight. We got to be smart. Now, we got to really be smart because we don’t have any money any more. You know we’re a poor nation — we’re a debtor nation.”
Putin gave Trump a strong endorsement during a wide-ranging news conference on Thursday, calling the Republican front-runner “brilliant” and “talented without doubt.”
In interviews in the days following, Trump lavished praise back on Putin, prompting some criticism from fellow Republicans. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., called the two “a match made in heaven.” Ohio Gov. John Kasich’s campaign created a satirical website, , promoting Putin as Trump’s running mate under the slogan “Make Tyranny Great Again.”
In an MSNBC interview on Friday morning, Trump seemed to shrug off accusations that Putin kills journalists and those who don’t politically agree with him, noting that the United States “does plenty of killing, too.”
Former GOP nominee Mitt Romney then tweeted: “Important distinction: thug Putin kills journalists and opponents; our presidents kill terrorists and enemy combatants.”
Trump mentioned Putin twice during his 75-minute rally Saturday: first within minutes of taking the stage then again about 30 minutes into his remarks as he warned the crowd of the country’s ballooning debt.
