A MERICAN politics has no superior practitioner of the old Soviet art of "whataboutism", which aims to deflect criticism by pointing out that other people elsewhere have done bad things, than President Donald Trump. At a now-infamous press conference, when asked about the murderous violence of far-right marauders in Charlottesville, Virginia he snapped, "What about the alt-left"? When an interviewer noted that Vladimir Putin, whom Mr Trump said he respected, killed political opponents, Mr Trump responded, "We've got a lot of killers. What, you think our country is so innocent?"
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