After the invasion, there may or may not be room for Putin apologists in the Republican Party, but there is certainly room for Trump apologists.
“Highest gas prices in history!” Donald Trump said in a statement that he issued last Tuesday. “do you miss me yet?” The answer is no. The world could hardly be at a more dangerous juncture, with a catastrophe in Ukraine that could spiral into a wider war—perhaps even a nuclear one. One of the few blessings of the moment is that our own nuclear arsenal is not in the hands of a Twitter-happy tantrum-thrower beholden to his own vanity.
The Republican Party, though, has a different, if predictable, response to Trump’s demand for attention. This story has played out before. There is a shock—in this case, Russian troops moved on Ukraine, as Trump declared Putin’s “genius” and “savvy.”
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/03/21/the-trumpist-ukraine-blame-game