Murdoch Paper Unleashes Savage Verdict on Trump’s Suck-Up to Putin

Andrew Harnik / Getty Images Rupert Murdoch-owned newspaper The Wall Street Journal has delivered a blistering verdict on President Donald Trump’s latest concessions to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

In a scathing editorial, the newspaper condemned Trump’s decision to waive tariffs and sanctions targeting Russian energy buyers and officials under legislation that was backed by overwhelming bipartisan majorities in Congress.

The legislation, which was backed by the late Lindsey Graham and passed by the Senate, 86-11, gave Trump 30 days after its enactment to impose tariffs of up to 500 percent on all Russian imports.

It also called for duties of as much as 100 percent on major buyers of Russian oil and gas, including China and India.

Trump’s order also suspends sanctions targeting Russian officials, state bodies, banks, energy companies and vessels Moscow uses to evade international restrictions.

Trump’s executive order came just two days before the measures were due to take effect.

The president offered little justification for the decision, other than it was in the “national interests” of the United States.

But the Wall Street Journal argued that “the opposite is true,” accused Trump of sticking “a shiv in the back” of the late Sen.

Graham’s legacy, and declared that the president was now “Mr.

Putin’s best friend in the world, after perhaps China’s Xi Jinping.” Trump’s decision also provoked backlash from Ukraine. ″The decision to undo all of this, to block all of it, seems wrong to me,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a post on X .

“And it definitely helps only the Russians.

It only fuels their satisfaction and their desire to keep killing people.” It also led members of Congress to jump to condemn Trump.

“Donald Trump confirms again that he stands on the side of a bloodthirsty thug & the enablers of Russia’s war machine & against the majority of Americans, their representatives in both houses of Congress, & our European allies,” Sen.

Richard Blumenthal, a Democratic lawmaker from Connecticut who also helped write the Graham Act, said in an X post.