Andy Davidson 🇬🇧🇪🇺🇫🇷Proud European do-gooder

In this powerful monologue, Joe Scarborough proves that Trump and his cronies acting as cheerleaders for putin are no different from the Nazi sympathisers of the 1930s. It’s a chilling, crystal-clear wake-up call about what happens when leaders trade American democracy for a dictator's favour. Joe Scarborough: “… just peeling what putin has had a collection of useful idiots across America do now for the past five years. I really I really don't say this often in American politics. but when you're defending vladimir putin, an ex KGB agent who is committing war crimes by the day, I'm not sure how you sleep at night. And this phenomenon though, has historical parallels. It was 89 years ago this month in October 1937, that the former king of England walked up the steps of Adolf Hitler's mountain retreat in Bavaria. The Duke of Windsor had given up the throne less than a year earlier, but he toured German factories, inspected the SS and was photographed greeting the Führer. Time Magazine reported that Hitler gave the Duke a Nazi salute as they parted and Edward returned that Nazi salute. Later he told friends that Britain shouldn't fight Hitler, the war should not start. Winston Churchill had to actually send him to the Bahamas to keep him away from his new friend in Berlin. But the Duke wasn't alone, just like Donald Trump isn't alone. Here at home, Charles Lindbergh, an American hero who accepted the medal of freedom from Hermann Goering in 1938, went on to lead America First. And in a 1941 speech in Des Moines, he blamed Jews and the British for pushing America toward war. Even FDR's US Ambassador to Britain, Joseph Kennedy, predicted democracy is finished in England. His appeasement and his lack of moral alarm cost Kennedy his job. In Britain, aristocrats like the Astors and Lord Halifax thought Hitler was a man they could do business with. Does that sound familiar? Sounded so respectable, trade, stability, money, peace in our time. History remembers them now as morally vacuous opportunists who looked at a tyrant who was devouring his neighbours, the only thing they saw, a business partner. The parallels with Trump are too on point. Now on Friday, Donald Trump got on the phone with vladimir putin who always plays him when they get on the phone and what happened? He lifted sanctions on the Russian diesel deal, he did it three weeks after Republicans had forced him to sign a Russia sanctions bill in honour of Lindsey Graham. The White House says his gift to putin will lower prices at the pump, but it won't. The first shipment is only about 2.2 million barrels and America burns through more than that every day. It's not going to lower gas prices in America. But it will help putin kill innocence in Ukraine, a country Trump has always hated. Trump's four billion dollar gift to the man he kowtows to every day will buy missiles, drones, and glide bombs that will keep terrorising and killing Ukrainians who are fighting for their country's freedom and their children's lives and yes, our freedom. A bipartisan group of senators including Susan Collins wrote in a statement Sunday that the United States should not provide putin with a financial lifeline while Russia continues to kill Ukrainian civilians. But Trump's aping of putin’s talking points, they just keep getting worse. With this weak president attacking Ukrainian freedom fighters and perversely calling for new leadership in Kyiv. We do need new leadership, Mr. President, but not in Ukraine. Donald, I've known you a long time and I know you don't read history, so let me tell you how this story ends. The Duke of Windsor ended up a footnote, a cautionary tale in a fancy suit forever assigned to the dustbin of British history. And your time to finally do the right thing in Ukraine, Mr. President, it's running out. Stop bowing down to putin. And start doing your job. 1/2