We’re entitled to expect more from a leader of the free world

Trump supporters are fond of using the phrase “Trump derangement syndrome” against anyone who dares attack their hero. What these people don’t seem to understand is that they suffer an alternative form of the same sickness.

It is certainly true that Trump critics here and in his home country have explained away the success of the US economy as good fortune or as a mere follow-on from the upward trend the economy had taken during the last few years of the Obama presidency. There is a determined resistance to admitting that the Trump tax cuts and even just his overarching presence have boosted US confidence much higher than it has been for a decade.

Those same Trump boosters, though, are completely unable to accept fallibility on the President’s behalf. The meeting between Trump and Vladimir Putin has proven to be nothing short of a disaster for the Donald. Sucking up to an evil man such as Putin was never going to be considered acceptable by any Western nation, the US included. When Trump attempted to trash his own intelligence services and accept Putin’s denial that Russia had interfered with the 2016 US presidential election he lit a fuse under his Republican critics and is still dealing with the fallout.

He had just been to Britain, where he had offered a running commentary on UK politics. He praised Boris Johnson to the skies and bemoaned his loss to the government. He openly bashed Prime Minister Theresa May about her version of the Brexit deal. Foreign leaders with any brains at all don’t interfere in another nations’ political life unless, of course they are called Vladimir Putin.

Given the storm over the use of a Russian-made nerve agent against a former Russian spy, who had turned against his home, and his daughter caused outrage in Britain. Then, to add insult to injury, two innocent people were exposed to the poison and one of them has since died. Trump was already an unpopular figure in Britain, but you can imagine how the Poms’ cheeks were reddening as he moved on to Helsinki and sucked up to Putin, drawn like a moth to a flame.

I am at a loss to understand just how elements of the far Right in Australia and around the world can praise Putin for anything he does. It is impossible to deem Russia a proper democracy when opposition parties are harassed con­stantly and opposition leaders go in and out of jail at the whim of the President. There is not much of a free press in Russia because so many pesky journalists have been mysteriously murdered by the regime. By clamping down on press freedom the messages to his people are all pro-Putin and anti-West. It is one of the great ironies that these same far-right figures rail against the Australian Human Rights Commission for shutting down free speech here while finding no fault with Putin doing much worse in his back yard.

Then there was the annexation of the Crimean peninsula, which eventually turned out to be a terrible burden on some families in Australia and Asia with the downing of flight MH17. Again, the Putin fans here chose to ignore the overwhelming evidence that a Russian rocket was fired by a pro Russian rebel from ground won by Russian tanks and troops. This cost ordinary innocent citizens from all over the world, including 38 Australians, their lives.

I really like the pro-coal Liberal warrior Craig Kelly but his statements on this matter were way out of line. He said: “I’m sure any father who lost three kids would be absolutely devastated. But the reality is nothing is going to bring those kids back … If that means some of the things Russia has gotten away with in the past have to be slightly looked over, well, I’m sorry that’s the price we have to pay sometimes to have good relations going forward.” If Trump or anybody else cravenly caves in to Putin by not insisting on justice for all those people murdered on MH17 then Putin will merely be emboldened to do it again. He must be held to account for every atrocity before being welcomed back to the conferences of the great and the powerful.

Putin, too, was responsible for the butcher Bashar al-Assad winning the Syrian civil war. Assad saw nothing wrong with slaughtering 100 innocent men, women and children to ensure a few enemies were killed. Russian barrel bombs, Russian chemical weapons and Russian-made shells from Russian tanks killed hundreds of thousands of people and sent millions more into exile.

If Trump and his supporters think cuddling this bloke is a good idea it gives us an idea about them. Tyrants must be brought to heel. To suck up so abjectly to Putin, was an enormous error on Trump’s part.

He went to Europe to lecture his allies and kiss his true enemy. Trump supporters, and Trump detractors, are entitled to expect more honour from the leader of the free world.