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In his Hillsdale address, Caldwell began by explaining that he wasn’t intent on telling anyone what to think about the Russian dictator (a term, incidentally, he never used to describe Putin) but how to think about him. He went out of his way to deride Western “globalist leaders” for pretending that sovereignty was passé. Putin didn’t. “Vladimir Vladimirovich,” Caldwell affirmed, “is not the president of a feminist NGO. He is not a transgender-rights activist. He is not an ombudsman appointed by the United Nations to make and deliver slide shows about green energy. He is the elected leader of Russia—a rugged, relatively poor, militarily powerful country that in recent years has been frequently humiliated, robbed, and misled.
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Jacob Heilbrunn (America Last: The Right's Century-Long Romance with Foreign Dictators)