Both Putin and Trump are 80s relics and so it matters little how much the wor[l]d has changed, the cold war facet applies to the blindly pro-russian stance of Trump.
Of all the stances to take, this one is insane. Almost every violent conflict has shades of gray, nuance rather than unambiguous good and bad. The Ukraine-Russia conflict is one of those supremely rare straightforward ones where Russia is just straight up the bad guys.
That’s certainly the trajectory Project 2025 wants to really drive home. That’s not exactly a defense of Russia.
Yeah, it’s amazing. He’s not a “Republican” he’s Trump. He’s not your friend/ally/supporter no matter who you are, he only supports himself. Your welfare is only vaguely relevant so long as it directly supports his status, the instant you aren’t useful, you will get backstabbed hard.
Unfortunately that’s not a particularly useful fact to highlight to republicans, and democrats bet too heavily on that being a talking point and it won them no favors.
McConnell basically stated that Trump deserved conviction, but didn’t want congress to be the ones to do it. He wagered that it’s a problem that would take care of itself without having to be the ones to piss off the MAGA people he hoped to keep energized and aligned to the GOP even as Trump went away.
Then the SC basically said it’s the job of congress, and not the courts (although they reserved the power to specifically declare something as not a duty of the president, so the courts could proceed if and only if the supreme court signs off on it).
To the extent that it could have maybe had the SC ultimately rule that January 6th was not an official duty, DOJ slow walked the process so that it was way too late before the SC would have even had the chance.