GOP presidential candidate Nikki Haley slammed Donald Trump for his past praise of Russian President Vladimir Putin following news of opposition leader Alexei Navalny’s death.
“Putin did this. The same Putin who Donald Trump praises and defends,” Haley wrote in a social media post Friday morning.
“The same Trump who said: ‘In all fairness to Putin, you’re saying he killed people. I haven’t seen that,’” Haley continued.
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The former president made those comments in 2015, when he pushed back against the notion that Putin had killed journalists. Trump also praised Putin’s leadership, describing him as “a strong leader.”
Since then, Trump has called Putin “pretty smart,” and welcomed Putin’s praise of him, telling NBC’s Kristen Welker in September 2023, “I like that he said that.”
The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to POLITICO’s request for comment Friday.
According to the Russian federal prison service, Navalny died in a high-security prison near the Arctic Circle after losing consciousness following a walk.
Navalny has long been Putin’s most prominent foil, and survived a poisoning attempt in 2020 that his supporters say was a state-sponsored attempt to kill him. After being treated in Germany, he returned to Russia and was immediately arrested and imprisoned.
Former Vice President Mike Pence struck a similar tone: “There is no room in the Republican Party for apologists for Putin,” he wrote in a post to X, formerly known as Twitter, on Friday.
