Former President Trump finally broke his silence on the shocking death of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny — and some believe it was telling. Instead of condemning Russia and President Vladimir Putin, the Republican frontrunner compared Navalny’s tragic end to his own legal woes.

“The sudden death of Alexei Navalny has made me more and more aware of what is happening in our Country,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform. “It is a slow, steady progression, with CROOKED, Radical Left Politicians, Prosecutors, and Judges leading us down a path to destruction. Open Borders, Rigged Elections, and Grossly Unfair Courtroom Decisions are DESTROYING AMERICA. WE ARE A NATION IN DECLINE, A FAILING NATION! MAGA2024.”

Katie spoke to New Yorker staff writer Susan Glasser about this, among other topics, in a new interview. “Trump clearly has a kind of built-in, almost congenital admiration for strong men,” she said. “When he was president, he admired not only Vladimir Putin, but also China’s Xi Jinping, and he complimented Turkey’s Tayyip Erdoğan for his various crackdowns on democracy.”

These comments come after Russian authorities announced on Friday that 47-year-old Navalny mysteriously fell unconscious and died in a remote Arctic penal colony, where he was serving a three-decade sentence. This was the same day a New York judge ordered Trump to pay nearly $355 million in his civil fraud trial.

Glasser also discussed how Putin is “banking on the weakness of the West” and why ex-Fox News host Tucker Carlson’s recent trip to Russia is “BS of the highest order.”