The GOP's blind obedience to Trump echoes the 'waning days' of Russian democracy: Anti-Putin dissident

Garry Kasparov, a former world chess champion and Russian dissident, sees eerie similarities between the way the Republican Party has attached itself to Trump and the way that Russian politicians last decade attached themselves to Russian President Vladimir Putin during his rise to power.

Writing on Twitter, Kasparov remembered what it was like seeing Putin consolidate his grip over the Russian government, and he drew a comparison to what's happening right now with Trump.

"In the waning days of Russian democracy, when there were still opposition forces in Parliament, they would still speak to the people," he wrote. "The rest just tried to echo and flatter Putin, because that’s where the real power was. The GOP today sounds like them."

Kasparov also had praise for Democrats who were trying to use Wednesday's hearings with former special counsel Robert Mueller to educate voters about the contents of the Mueller report -- a sharp contrast with Republicans who only wanted to defend the president, he said.

"The Mueller hearing is a show and all of the Reps are grandstanding," he wrote. "But the Democrats are doing it to impress voters while all the Republicans are only trying to impress Trump. That’s a huge difference, democracy vs autocracy."