Former president Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, has made no public statements on Russia\u2019s detention of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, who has been held for one year without formal charges or a trial.<\/p>\n
Asked directly to clarify Trump\u2019s position on Friday, his campaign did not respond to requests for comment. Trump has consistently gone out of his way to avoid criticizing Russian president Vladimir Putin, and Trump himself routinely demonizes reporters with terms such as \u201cthe enemy\u201d and \u201ccriminals.\u201d<\/p>\n
His silence stands out among bipartisan condemnation of the detention and calls for Gershkovich\u2019s release. The Journal\u2019s editorial board, whose page Trump is known to read, noted the exception on Tuesday, pointedly asking, \u201cWhy the silence, sir?\u201d The Journal commemorated the anniversary of Gershkovich\u2019s arrest Friday by leaving a blank space on the newspaper\u2019s front page.<\/p>\n
Even Tucker Carlson, the former Fox News host who has been among the harshest critics of Ukraine and mostly sympathetic to Putin, concluded his interview with the Russian dictator in February by asking for Gershkovich\u2019s release. Putin\u2019s response was noncommittal.<\/p>\n
President Biden\u2019s campaign slammed Trump for accommodating Putin.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s shameful but unsurprising from Donald Trump, who has made it quite clear repeatedly he would side with Putin over the American people,\u201d Biden-Harris spokesman Ammar Moussa said. \u201cThis is the same guy who told the world he\u2019d let Putin do whatever he wants to our NATO allies \u2014 even if it meant more war and suffering.\u201d<\/p>\n
Biden on Friday vowed to keep working to secure Gershkovich\u2019s release. \u201cWe\u2019ve tried everything we can so far,\u201d he told reporters at Joint Base Andrews on his way to Camp David. \u201cWe are not going to give up.\u201d<\/p>\n
In an interview this month on Fox News, Trump demurred when asked about the recent death in prison of Putin opponent Alexei Navalny, saying, \u201cI don\u2019t know, you certainly can\u2019t say for sure, but certainly that would look like something very bad happened.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump has also compared himself to Navalny, who died in prison after previously surviving a near-fatal poisoning in 2020. \u201cIt\u2019s a form of Navalny,\u201d Trump said in a Fox News town hall on February, responding to a question from Laura Ingraham about the $355 million fine against his businesses after a New York civil fraud trial. \u201cIt\u2019s happening in our country, too.\u201d<\/p>\n
During his presidency, Trump met with Putin and sided with him over U.S. intelligence agencies in doubting the assessment that Russian spy services interfered in the 2016 election through the damaging release of hacked communications.<\/p>\n
He also pushed for more leak investigations, including seizing reporters\u2019 phone records, and has threatened to jail reporters or use government agencies to punish media companies for their coverage.<\/p>\n
Trump also did not condemn Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman after the CIA concluded he ordered the killing of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who wrote opinion columns for The Washington Post.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Former president Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, has made no public statements on Russia\u2019s detention of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, who has been held for one year without formal charges or a trial. Asked directly to clarify Trump\u2019s position on Friday, his campaign did not respond to requests for comment. Trump has […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":2586,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2585","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2585","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2585"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2585\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2586"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2585"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2585"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2585"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}