Former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had a single-word response to former President Donald Trump’s quoting of Russian President Vladimir Putin during a 2024 presidential campaign rally in Durham, New Hampshire, on Saturday.
Clinton, Trump’s defeated Democratic rival in the 2016 election, shared on X (formerly Twitter) a news report on Trump’s widely condemned comment by The Washington Post.
And she captioned the link: “Puppet.”
Trump at the event, in his latest praise of his former Russian counterpart, quoted Putin as saying: “It shows the rottenness of the American political system, which cannot pretend to teach others about democracy.”
“They’re all laughing at us,” Trump added.
Trump’s admiration for the Russian strongman goes back years with him once appealing to Moscow for help in his 2016 campaign against Clinton. Trump also took Putin’s word over that of US intelligence agencies after they concluded that Russia interfered in that election in his favour.
At the same rally at the weekend, clear Republican front-runner Trump drew fierce backlash for claiming immigrants are “pouring” into the United States and “poisoning the blood of our country.”
Clinton last month warned voters to take the four-times-indicted Trump “at his word” with his dictatorial language on the campaign trail.
“I think it would be the end of our country as we know it,” she predicted of a second Trump presidency. He was “somewhat restrained” in his first term but would become unhinged if he wins next year, Clinton told The View.