Donald Trump has offered a belated acknowledgment of the purportedly sudden death of Alexei Navalny, three days after the Russian opposition leader collapsed in one of Russia’s penal colonies. But Trump failed to join with – or acknowledge – international outrage at Navalny’s political nemesis, the Russian president, Vladimir Putin.
“The sudden death of Alexei Navalny has made me more and more aware of what is happening in our country,” Trump posted on his Truth Social network. The former US president and presumptive Republican White House nominee added: “It is a slow, steady progression, with CROOKED, Radical Left Politicians, Prosecutors, and Judges leading us down a path to destruction.”
Trump’s statement, which turned a grave global political issue into one of significance to his agenda, comes one day after Nikki Haley – his lone remaining opponent in the Republican presidential primary – criticized him for avoiding substantial comment on Navalny’s death.
“Either he sides with Putin and thinks it’s cool that Putin killed one of his political opponents – or he just doesn’t think it’s that big of a deal,” Haley said on Sunday on ABC News’ This Week. “Either one of those is concerning. Either one of those is a problem.”
Separately, minutes before his Truth Social post about Navalny on Monday, Haley had appeared on Fox News and said: “It is amazing to me how weak in the knees [Trump] is when it comes to Putin.”
“He is yet to say anything about Navalny’s death, which – Putin murdered him,” Haley said.
Haley, who served as US ambassador to the United Nations during Trump’s presidency, joined other prominent American politicians, including Joe Biden, in condemning Putin for Navalny’s death.
Navalny’s widow, Yulia Navalnaya, on Monday accused Putin of killing her husband. She also accused Russian authorities of hiding his corpse and of waiting for traces of the novichok nerve agent to disappear from his body.
“I urge you to stand next to me,” Navalnaya said in comments directed to Russians generally. “I ask you to share the rage with me – rage, anger, hatred towards those who dared to kill our future.”
But Trump, who frequently praised Putin during his single term in the White House, has largely elected to remain silent about Navalny’s death.
Haley’s criticism of Trump’s approach to Navalny’s death comes as the former president leads her by 30 percentage points in polling ahead of the forthcoming Republican presidential primary in South Carolina, where she was once governor.
At a recent campaign rally in that state, Trump claimed to have told the head of state “of a big country” while he was in the Oval Office that if the foreign leader’s nation did not meet its financial obligations to Nato, then Russia could “do whatever the hell they want” as far as Trump was concerned.
The Republican US senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina on Sunday said that he supported Trump’s call for fair contributions to the Nato alliance. “I want to have a system where if you don’t pay, you get kicked out,” he said.
But, Graham added, “No, I’m not inviting Russia to invade Ukraine,” as it did nearly two years ago.
In his statement on Navalny, Trump identified only his personal political priorities and issues, alluding to the immigration crisis at the US-Mexico border and his lies that he lost the 2020 election to Biden because of electoral fraud.
He also referred to “unfair courtroom decisions” as he faces more than 90 pending criminal charges, including for subversion of the election that he lost to Biden. Trump additionally is grappling with how to pay civil judgments in excess of half a billion dollars after being adjudicated a business fraudster as well as being found liable for sexually abusing and defaming the magazine columnist E Jean Carroll.
“WE ARE A NATION IN DECLINE, A FAILING NATION!” he wrote in his post about Navalny.
Despite his reluctance to dwell on Navalny, polls at the moment suggests Trump enjoys a slight advantage with the American electorate over Biden.
