Republicans concerned, Russians pleased with Trump’s moral relativism on state-sanctioned killing

Senior Republicans are shaking their heads over comments on Russia by President Donald Trump over the weekend.

Trump told Bill O'Reilly of Fox News he respected Russian President Vladimir Putin.

But then O’Reilly put to the president a bald statement — that “Putin's a killer.”

President Trump responded, “We got a lot of killers. What? You think our country’s so innocent?”

The president went on: “Take a look at what we’ve done, too. We’ve made a lot of mistakes. … So, lot of killers around, believe me."

Republican leaders, like Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, have criticized the president for drawing a moral equivalence between US and Russian government actions. Senator Marco Rubio tweeted: "We are not the same as Putin."

In Moscow, the reaction has been more critical of O'Reilly. A Kremlin spokesman asked for an apology from Fox.

But there’s enthusiasm in Russia for Trump’s view, says David Filipov, Moscow bureau chief for the Washington Post, who’s currently visiting Boston and stopped by our studios.

“Really, what Donald Trump said is music to everyone’s ears over there. The idea that America is somehow morally superior has never sat well in Russia. Not just among the Kremlin.” 

“The idea that Donald Trump is setting the groundwork for the idea that we’re just another country, just like you, [is popular]," says Filipov. “Let’s do business as countries rather than as though we’re teaching you how to be morally superior.”

“The way that people, politicians, analysts, see it is Trump is a pragmatist,” adds Filipov, describing Russian views. “He realizes the bankruptcy of the idea of a unipolar world, where the United States reigns over all, teaching everyone democracy. He’s seen that it all has failed, and he’s going to start a new pragmatic approach, and part of that is stepping down from the high horse and talking to Russia as an equal.”  

“One thing he is doing,” cautions Filipov, “he’s preparing us for the idea that he’s going to be morally relativistic, as opposed to morally superior.”

O’Reilly gave no attribution for his Putin-as-killer claim. Putin has never been charged in connection with any of the violent deaths of his opponents. The closest anyone has come was a British judge in early 2016, who ruled on the 2006 killing of Russian dissident Alexander Litvinenko in London. He found that Litvinenko was poisoned by Russian agents, acting on orders from Moscow, and that the act was “probably” ordered by Putin himself.  

“I think that every Russian who thinks that Putin is a killer, probably believes that all other state leaders are killers, regardless of what they think about what Putin may or may not have ordered," Filipov says.

Filipov suggested his own formulation of a question to President Trump:

“I’m not going to accuse Putin of political murders, because I haven’t got anywhere near that kind of evidence. But I can say, and anyone can say that in the interests of maintaining the stability of Russia, in defense of what Russia considers the onslaught of Western liberalism, Putin has shaved away most of the trappings of a rule-of-law state; and you Donald Trump, President of the United States, do you intend to do the same thing here and is that what you’re preparing us for, with all of these decrees, and all of this talk about moral relativism?”