Former Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull Says Trump’s Admiration For Putin Is ‘Really Creepy:’ ‘Like A 12-Year-Old Boy With Football Captain’

Former Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull stated that he views Donald Trump‘s admiration for Vladimir Putin as very unsettling.

“When you see Trump with Putin, as I have on a few occasions, he’s like the 12-year-old boy that goes to high school and meets the captain of the football team,” Turnbull declared on the Australian ABC talk show, Q+A. “‘My hero!’ It is really creepy. It’s really creepy.”

The former Australian prime minister admitted that he found this Trump’s admiration for Putin as striking at the time while also saying that it “struck everybody.”

“It was like you could touch it,” he then mentioned, “It was creepy. The creepiness was palpable.”

Turnbull said that there was no bromance between Trump and Putin.

He also stated that it is unfortunate that the Republican Party under the former president and “particularly the right wing of the Republican Party” have sympathy for the Russian president.

“I mean, I’ve been with Trump and Putin,” he added, “Trump is in awe of Putin.”

“Tyrants are often popular,” he claimed.

“You see, the key to democracy – liberal democracy – is that it empowers the majority,” the ex-prime minister pointed out. “But it also, through the rule of law, constrains the majority.”

“And if you get to the point where anybody who can muster a majority – and I don’t think Trump can do that by the way – but anyone who can muster a majority is given absolute power and then can do whatever they like to the minority, that’s not a democracy,” Turnbull argued.

“That is a tyranny,” he then stated. “That – that is – that is an autocracy.”

“Even if it’s got the support of 50 – 51% of the population, that is not what makes a democracy,” he declared.

“A democracy – as we understand it – is one where the rule of law protects all citizens, and the rule of law applies to all citizens, whether they’re the president, or the prime minister, or an ordinary elector,” the ex-prime minister stated.

During the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, Russia, in September 2023, Putin said that the many criminal cases against Trump are “political persecution.”

Putin said that the 91 felony counts against the former president represent the “persecution of one’s political rival for political motives.” He also believed that when considering “today’s conditions,” this persecution benefits everyone since it displays “the rottenness of the American political system, which cannot pretend to teach democracy to others.”

Additionally, Putin said that Trump having “special ties to Russia” was “complete nonsense.”

He also stated his belief that relations between U.S. and Russia are not going to improve, regardless of who wins the 2024 presidential election. He feels that the current government has arranged the American society “in such an anti-Russian manner and spirit.”

In late February, John Bolton, the former United States U.N. ambassador and Trump’s national security adviser, declared that Russia will “celebrate” if Trump gets reelected.

Putin already made comments in an interview with the Russian media saying that Joe Biden is “more experienced” and “more predictable.” He also said that even though the current U.S. president is “a politician of the old formation,” Russia is going to “work with any U.S. leader whom the American people trust.”

Trump replied to this during a speech he made at his South Carolina rally, stating that it was a “compliment.”

Bolton told MSNBC that Putin’s comment was a ploy to provoke the former president into making his own comments. According to Bolton, what the Russian president said was “clear disinformation” and he “thinks [Trump] is an easy mark.”