Defending Donald Trump or deflecting his statements, some top G.O.P. officials reflected the trajectory of a party that the former president has largely bent to his will.

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. Mr. Trump, the party’s likely presidential nominee, had claimed at a Saturday rally in South Carolina that he once threatened a NATO government to meet its financial commitments — or else he would encourage Russia to “do whatever the hell they want” to that country.

In a phone interview on Sunday, Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina seemed surprised to even be asked about Mr. Trump’s remark.

“Give me a break — I mean, it’s Trump,” Mr. Graham said. “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.”

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  • ZeroCool@slrpnk.netEnglish
    30·
    9 months ago

    “Give me a break — I mean, it’s Trump,” Mr. Graham said. “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.”

    Oh shut up Lindsey. It could not have been more obvious that Putin’s invasion of Ukraine depended heavily on a second Trump term so that his lapdog could continue to undermine NATO and prevent Ukraine from receiving critical support. When that didn’t happen he chose to proceed anyway which has proven to be a catastrophic miscalculation on his part.