With Friends Like These. . . (editorial)

As has been widely reported, when Trump was recently questioned by Bill O'Reilly about his respect for Vladimir Putin given that Putin is a killer, Trump responded

Trump: There are a lot of killers. We’ve got a lot of killers. What, you think our country’s so innocent?

 You may have also heard that the Kremlin has demanded an apology . . . from Bill O'Reilly.

There's a lot that's interesting about this, but one of the most fascinating is that no such apology was demanded of Trump.

This is fascinating because Trump essentially agreed with O'Reilly's characterization.  He did not push back against O'Reilly's label; his response was to suggest that this label wasn't all that damning since it could be leveled against "our country."

And it's fascinating because Putin did not demand an apology from both Trump and O'Reilly, only the latter.

Tabling for the moment the twisted attempt at moral equivalence (a recurring feature of Trumpian rhetoric), it is revealing that Trump's defense of Putin is not that he's not a killer, but rather that "there are a lot of killers" in the world.  And it's revealing that Putin's honor was besmirched by the premise of the question asked, but not by Trump's acceptance of it.