Sen. Marco Rubio Friday strongly disagreed with GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump's praise of Russian President Vladimir Putin's leadership capabilities over President Barack Obama's, saying Putin is a dictator, not a strong leader.
"I do not consider Vladimir Putin to be a strong leader," the Florida senator, who dropped his own bid for the Republican presidential nomination, told Reuters in a videotaped interview. "He's an autocrat, so he's a dictator basically."
Rubio told Reuters that he does "disagree with Donald Trump on many issues," while he disagrees with Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton on "virtually every issue," but when it comes to Putin, it is not fair to compare him with Obama.
"He controls the press," Rubio said of the Russian president. "He has no real political opponents because they are either dead or in jail. He controls the judiciary, every branch of the government. That's not leadership. That's a dictator."
Meanwhile, Rubio said he has "strong policy disagreements with Barack Obama," but he is a "democratically elected president of our Republic in a system which the Senate and the House also have power and the judiciary. It's not a fair thing to compare," he said.
During Wednesday's NBC/MSNBC Commander-in-Chief Forum, Trump insisted Putin has been a better leader than Obama, and that the United States' generals had been "reduced to rubble" under the leadership of Obama and Clinton, who was Obama's secretary of state during his first term in office.
Trump has praised Putin's leadership qualities several times during the 2016 election cycle, while the Russian leader last week said he is not taking sides in the election and indicated he was not thrilled by either candidate, but he'll work with whichever one wins.
"They're both using shock tactics, just each in their own way," the Russian president said in an interview. "I don't think they are setting the best example."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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