Jake Tapper said Wednesday that Donald Trump is “breaking from basic decency” by blaming Ukraine for its war with the invading Russia, comparing the false assertion to the president describing the deadly Jan. 6 insurrection on the Capitol as a “peaceful protest.”
“He’s breaking with facts. He’s breaking with truth, and in some ways, he’s breaking with basic decency,” Tapper said on CNN’s “The Lead.”
The anchor added that Trump falsely accusing Ukraine of starting the war with Russia — and, essentially, invading itself — is “more than just upending the normal way of doing things.”
Watch the journalist’s breakdown below:
After mentioning that Trump tried to recast the images and video of rioters from Jan. 6 as “patriots,” Tapper added, “The president is once again falsely casting Ukraine, the victim of an aggressive and bloody territorial seizure, as the aggressor.”
He added that Trump calling Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky a dictator “sent shock waves” throughout Europe.
“President Trump called Zelensky a dictator, while former KGB officer Vladimir Putin — whose political opponents have a habit of ending up in prison or the morgue —while President Trump uses no such words for him,” Tapper said.
He described the president’s new executive order as a “power grab” that aims to to “put all government agencies, even those that are supposed to operate with a degree of independence, under closer control of him and the White House.”
Watch Tapper’s opening Wednesday evening segment in the video above.
