Donald Trump hosted Hungarian leader Viktor Orbán at Mar-a-Lago Friday, lavishing him with praise the type of which he's given other authoritarian leaders in the past.
“There’s nobody that’s better, smarter or a better leader than Viktor Orbán,” Trump said. “He’s the boss and he’s a great leader, fantastic leader. In Europe and around the world, they respect him.”
The praise echoes that given in the past to Vladamir Putin, Xi Jinping, and even Adolf Hitler. In a book written by CNN's Jim Sciutto and due for release Tuesday, the reporter quotes a senior adviser saying Trump told him Hitler, “Did some good things"
Other praise detailed in the book include Orbán being called “fantastic,” Chinese leader Xi “brilliant,” and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un “an OK guy."
MSNBC host Nicolle Wallace recalled Gen. John Kelly, who served as Trump's chief of staff for a short time and who was a source for Sciutto, alleged that his former boss wasthe "most disturbed person he's seen."
Wallace went on to read from Sciutto's book: "Trump's former advisers say he most consistently lavished praise on Russian President Vladimir Putin. Bolton recalled a comment from Trump during the 2018 NATO summit. Following sometimes tense encounters with NATO leaders, Trump said his meeting with Putin, the leader of America's great power adversary, 'may be the easiest of them all. Who would think?'"
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The conservative Charlie Sykes, Editor-in-Chief of The Bulwark, said that comments like these from Trump, "Will never not be surreal."
"I think that's the main point," explained Sykes. "It's not just that Donald Trump has an obvious fetish for strong men. It's that ... he wishes he could be more like them. You have to ask, when he looks at them with admiration, what does that tell you about what he wants to do when he becomes the big tough guy again?"
In Orbán's case, for example, Sykes recalled he's attacked the press and the independent judiciary and has advocated white nationalist rhetoric and encouraged cruel treatment of refugees.
"He has inferred anti-Semitism," Sykes continued. "And yet Donald Trump looks at him and says he's the boss, he's the guy that I admire so much. So I think this is this moment. This is kind of a challenge because this is not 'Trump Derangement Syndrome.' This is out of the mouth of Donald Trump on a regular and consistent basis."
The reports detailed by Sciutto, he remarked, are from those within Trump's inner circle.
"There's really no precedent in American history for something like this," Sykes lamented.
Wallace called quotes like "Hitler did a lot of good things" just the "tip of the iceberg" of Trump.
"It does seem like something worth understanding," Sykes said.
"And if this is not disqualifying, what would be? And yet, I have to tell you that I think it's unlikely that Donald Trump will lose a single Republican endorsement as a result of all of this. Although it's hard to even imagine, it's hard to even come up with something that would be more disturbing."
See the full conversation with the panelists in the video below or at the link here.
Trump's pro-Hitler-Putin-Orbán talk should be 'disqualifying' — but Republicans won't care www.youtube.com