Our View: Yes, Trump’s Putin infatuation really is that bad

The last days in the life of Alexander Litvinenko were sheer agony. Microscopic radioactive material was attacking his vital organs, breaking down and destroying the cells as they mutated in deadly anarchy.

His insides rotted and his hair fell out. He vomited over and over. Pain gripped his entire body, as one by one his organs shut down. He suffered a heart attack and was revived, only to later fall unconscious and die.

The place was a University College Hospital in London. The year 2006.

The 44-year-old Litvinenko was a former officer of the Russian FSB or secret service, a dissident and a critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

We would later learn he was poisoned with radioactive polonium-210, secreted into his tea in a London hotel.

Before all that, Litvinenko had been a fearless critic of the Kremlin. In 2002 he co-authored the book “Blowing up Russia” in which he accused Putin of orchestrating a series of bombings of Moscow apartment buildings in 1999 that killed 293 Russians and injured more than 1,000 more.

He alleged Putin used the apartment-block bombings as pretext for the brutal repression of ethnic Chechens, who the Kremlin blamed for the atrocities.

Trump gushes over a stone-cold killer

It’s worth revisiting this history as we watch once again Donald Trump, the Republican candidate for president, throw kisses to Putin — kisses returned posthaste from Russia with love.

“(If he) says great things about me, I'm going to say great things about him, ” said Trump at NBC’s Commander-In-Chief Forum on Wednesday night. “Certainly in that system, he’s been a leader, far more than our president has been.”

This is only the latest of many warm embraces Trump has given the Russian authoritarian, making Putin more than just a bit player in the 2016 presidential election. And it’s why it’s worth knowing Vladimir Putin as we consider our vote.

Before he was poisoned, Litvinenko accused Putin of ordering the October 2006 murder of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya, shot four times in her upper body after years of writing critically of the Russian government. She too had once been poisoned while drinking tainted tea in 2004.

On his death bed, Litvinenko made his last accusation. He accused Putin of orchestrating what he knew would soon be his own demise. "You may succeed in silencing one man but the howl of protest from around the world, Mr Putin, will reverberate in your ears for the rest of your life."

In January, a 9-year British inquiry into the Litvinenko poisoning released its 328-page report, concluding that Putin ordered the killing.

This is the man Trump so admires.

Why Putin is one of the most dangerous

This is the man who has ordered the invasion of two neighboring countries, Georgia and Ukraine, and who appears poised to take more territory in the coming years. He has filled the Western world with dread that a new Cold War is dawning.

Putin has used the cutoff of Russian oil and gas to blackmail other nations. He is likely behind the serious breaches of Internet servers in the United States, including the hacks into computers of the Democratic National Committee.

He is a menace to democratic nations. A growing threat in the Middle East. And the apple of Donald Trump’s eye.

Putin’s Russia has been funding ultra-nationalist parties in Western Europe that are racist and anti-immigrant and packed with Holocaust deniers. These parties destabilize allied nations and create new enthusiasts of the new, expansionist Russia.

Of all the transgressions of Donald Trump, the lecherous descriptions of women, the mocking of the disabled, the incitements of campaign violence, the demonizing of immigrants, this is the greatest.

Trump has made himself the paramour of one of the most dangerous men in the world and an enemy of the United States.

That Trump would cozy up to such a menace sends chills through the American defense establishment and has no doubt inspired more than 100 national security leaders who are Republican to unite to defeat Trump in this election.

For months now, Trump supporters have suspended their judgment and ignored his legions of misdeeds. They ignore this one at their peril.