This was the week that the United States joined Russia in dismembering Ukraine, a nation that both superpowers had promised to protect in 1994 in exchange for the surrender of its nuclear arsenal. MAGA sophists and apologists variously claim that this is either about bringing a speedy peace or about withdrawing the U.S. from an ungrateful Europe.
A case can be made for both those positions, but neither is advanced by limiting the satellite system on which Ukrainian drones rely, unfreezing Russian assets, or buying diesel from Vladimir Putin. No, what we are seeing is what we have seen all along. When the chips are down, President Donald Trump sides with Putin.
Ukraine is an imperfect democracy with its share of corruption. Still, this is one of those rare wars where there is no question about who is in the wrong. Putin invaded a neighbor which offered him no threat. In doing so, he defied the entire post-1945 order, which rests on the idea that borders may not be changed by force. Only this time, the US, the chief beneficiary of that order, is backing the aggressor.
“A Dictator without Elections, Zelenskyy better move fast or he is not going to have a Country left,” declared Trump on Wednesday, with all the charm and subtlety of a mobster.
There is no longer any point in discussing Trump’s motives. Is he still sore about the Hunter Biden laptop business? Is he mesmerized by Putin, as by so many autocrats? Does the Kremlin, as conspiracy theorists allege, have kompromat on him? Who cares? Whether or not he is a Russian asset, he is plainly an asset to Russia.
Trump talks as though both sides are to blame. But Russia could halt the conflict tomorrow by returning to its pre-war front lines. Instead, it is demanding not only the land it has illegally seized, but territories it has been unable to capture despite its huge losses — some 50,000 men last month alone.
Nervous that voters would blame his attack on Iran for the spike in gas prices, Trump demanded and announced an “energy ceasefire,” whereby the two sides would not hit each other’s terminals or refineries. Russia responded by blowing up a Ukrainian facility the following day, explaining that Trump’s ceasefire did not commit it to anything specific. Trump, naturally, blamed Zelenskyy, falsely accusing him of having launched strikes the previous day.
The most shocking thing is the way Trump corrodes the entire state. “From Russia, with Love…” Tweeted Kash Patel, the Director of the FBI, as Putin’s drones and missiles rained down on Ukrainian towns. Now Patel is a creature of Trump’s, who owes his rise to having accused the FBI of persecuting the president.
What has happened, though, to the rest of the GOP? Secretary of State Marco Rubio has spent his entire career opposing autocrats, yet he is going along with Trump’s Putinism, just as he is going along in Venezuela with the freezing out of the democratic opposition leader, Maria Corina Machado, whom Trump resents because she won the Nobel Peace Prize instead of him.
Most Republican congressmen, too, have been lifelong hawks on Russia, yet they will not lift a finger when Trump acts as Putin’s stooge. Is it, as we keep being told, because they fear MAGA primary voters? Is it all about that base, ’bout that base?
If so, they have shackled themselves to a drowning man. Trump’s approval ratings are down to 30%, according to Pew Research Center, and little wonder. Quite apart from the damage being done by his tariffs — which, as well as raising prices, especially on component parts, have failed in their declared primary purpose, because the trade deficit is larger now than it was before Liberation Day — it is becoming harder and harder to ignore the president’s emotional state.
TRUMP INSISTS RUSSIA-UKRAINE ENERGY CEASEFIRE IS REAL ‘BECAUSE I SAID THEY AGREE’
When a mentally disturbed man was mauled to death by a tiger in an English zoo, Trump thought it was a good occasion to post a video of himself defeating the same tiger. Meanwhile, on the stump, he has returned to his favorite themes, attacking Haitians and Somalis and promising cash handouts if people return a Republican Congress. He even told one rally that his supporters clapped when he said the stupidest things — and the rally responded by clapping.
Even Trump must occasionally be surprised by the imbecility of some of his core supporters. But those supporters are fewer and fewer, as the midterm elections will demonstrate. Some good Republicans will lose their seats to socialists. All because they chose to tie themselves to the man who, more than any other, has brought America’s global hegemony to an end.