Former President Donald Trump spent nearly a week after Vladimir Putin’s late-February invasion of Ukraine complimenting his Fascist bestie in abhorrent interviews while the first Russian missiles hit their targets and the death toll of his first Ukrainian victims began. Trump praised the invasion, called Putin “smart” and Biden “stupid” and made an ugly reference to what similar aggressive actions he would like to take on our southern (Mexican) border.

“This is genius,” he said of Putin’s first salvos on Monday Feb. 24 officially authorizing the use of Russian military personnel to “assist” the nation’s breakaway provinces. “So Putin is now saying it’s independent – a large section of Ukraine. I said, how smart is that? And he’s gonna go in and be a peacekeeper. We could use that on our southern border. There were more army tanks than I’ve ever seen. They’re gonna keep peace, all right.”

Of course, both Trump and anyone else paying attention knew the true murderous aims of Russia’s monstrous leader, and seven weeks later as the death toll on both sides continues to rise and the truths of the atrocities and genocide being carried on by the Russian “peacekeepers” continues, anyone with a shred of decency disavows the horrors foisted on an innocent nation by Vladimir Putin, this era’s Adolf Hitler without the mustache.

But Trump’s Wednesday Washington Post interview defending his indefensible actions presaging the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection of the Washington Capitol, along with the incredibly ignorant sea of blame that he cast over everyone from Nancy Pelosi to Capitol security and the D.C. police force for the destruction he himself invited, beggared belief.

While Trump watched the proceedings with warped satisfaction on TV from the safety of his nearby White House digs after his incendiary afternoon speech to his obedient followers starting the nightmare, he ignored all the concerted pleas for nearly four hours from everyone from Washington lawmakers, mayor Muriel Bowser and his own family to release a statement telling his fans to go home, until after the afternoon’s death and destruction was complete.

“And I kept asking why isn’t she doing something about it?” Trump said in Wednesday’s interview. “Why isn’t Nancy Pelosi doing something about it? And the mayor of D.C. also. The mayor of D.C. and Nancy Pelosi are in charge. I hated seeing it. And I said, ‘It’s got to be taken care of,’ and I assumed they were taking care of it.”

The answer, easily understandable to anyone save a Trump supporter, is that the mayor and the police force WERE doing everything they could do to stem the violent white sea of hate that savaged the Capitol grounds for hours, policemen and women fighting back against what was a murderous mob of crazies, while being assaulted by flagpoles, fire extinguishers, wooden and metal weapons and fists, with some of them losing their lives in the process.

This was all captured on live TV while it was happening, but leave it to Trump, a man with absolutely no actual sense regarding anything existing in the real world as it pertains to him, to claim otherwise. And also to refuse all pleas to call in the National Guard while the insurrection was happening, leaving the police force on their own against the horde, and then insulting them afterwards. As well as hitting the “rewind” TV button over and over again for hours to re-view various violent scenes of destruction live as they unfolded, this reported later by on-the-premises ex-Chief of Staff Stephanie Grisham.

Nancy Pelosi had been spirited away to safety away from the building as the savagers stormed her office along with every other room they could access, smashing furniture, destroying statues, breaking windows and decorating many office floors and hallways with their own urine and feces. This is what the United States’ Republican Party has devolved into by allowing a miscreant like Donald Trump his evil four years of fame in the White House. And millions of American voters are, despite everything, champing at the bit to vote for him again if he runs in two years.

Trump ignored all this in his lie-filled April 6th interview, instead complaining about the lack of press coverage for what he described as the “huge throng” that came to hear him on the fateful Capitol afternoon. And he also skirted the fact of the destroyed seven hours of White House telephone call logs which undoubtedly contained lots of damning information of his various conversations with allies including House minority GOP leader Kevin McCarthy, as well as his continued refusals to release a video plea for the rioting to stop the carnage until hours later.

The best statement to sum up Trump’s phony abdication last Wednesday of all blame for inciting the Jan. 6 riots came from Pelosi spokesman Drew Hammill when he told the Post afterwards, “The former president’s desperate lies aside, the speaker was no more in charge of the security of the U.S. Capitol that day than Mitch McConnell.” End of story.