Trump Betrays Ukraine and America

Trump is ending decades of American global democratic leadership to forge alliances with autocrats, destroying America at home and abroad.

We have had a Ukrainian flag in our front yard for almost 3 years, since Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022. It is faded from the sun and worn from the winds. But it still flies.

I fear that I will have to take it down in the weeks ahead. The president of the United States has stabbed Ukraine in the back. It would take a miracle — meaning a determined Democratic opposition or the refusal of Republicans to accede to Trump’s embrace of Vladimir Putin — to stop the surrender of Ukraine to Russia’s imperialist conquest.

This AI-generated hug is not real…yet.

After a few weeks of posturing by pretending that he was going to be tough on Putin, Trump has reverted to his natural obsequious position, flattering the murderous dictator and letting loose a torrent of lies about Ukraine, its leaders and the war. In the process, Trump is not just abandoning a free and courageous nation, but the entire Western Alliance system that has been the bedrock of U.S. national security for eight decades.

It is as if President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1941 had sat down with Adolf Hitler to end his war with Great Britain, didn’t include the British in the talks and blamed Churchill for starting the war.

It is easy to find Trump’s lies exposed in the major papers and on-line. The key point isn’t so much the details but the source. Trump is repeating key Russian propaganda points, behind the seal of the President of the United States.

• Russia claims that Ukraine started the war. So does Trump.

• Russia claims that Ukrainian President Zelensky is a “dictator” who hasn’t held elections since the invasion. So does Trump.

• Russia claims Zelensky is hugely unpopular. Trump says he only has 4% approval, when he actually has 52% approval and is more popular than Trump.

• Russia claims it has a right to the people and land it has occupied. So does Trump; he says Ukraine “may be Russian someday.”

• Russia says that U.S. promotion of democracy is an effort to overthrow him. Trump and Elon Musk are dutifully defunding the venerable, bipartisan National Endowment for Democracy “NED is a scam,” Musk wrote on X on Feb. 2, adding that it’s guilty of unspecified “crimes” and supposedly “RIFE with CORRUPTION!!”

The Big Lie is that Trump says Putin wants peace. “We have zero intelligence that Putin is interested in a real peace deal right now,” one congressional officials briefed by the intelligence agencies told NBC News. Intelligence officials assess that Putin continues to believe that Ukraine is not a real nation, wants to occupy all of it territory and peoples, and believes that a cease-fire now would give Russia the time it needs to rebuild its shattered military and further weaken European support, allowing Russia to take the rest of Ukraine in the years ahead. This is precisely the deal Trump will give Putin.

Indeed, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth conceded to the Russian position before talks even began. He said there was no chance that Ukraine could regain the land Russia seized and the NATO would never accept Ukraine as a member. Vice President JD Vance then went to the Munich Security Council and trashed European democracies for not letting pro-Putin, fascist parties join their coalition governments. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent flew to Kyiv to present Zelensky with an incredible demand that Ukraine turn over to the U.S. half of Ukraine’s rare earth minerals, supposedly to repay the U.S. for its aid. Zelensky refused, even when told that Trump would be angry. Secretary of State Marco Rubio then rushed to Saudi Arabia to listen to the Russian demands. Abandoning his previous criticisms of Putin, he didn’t say a word about Russia’s war crimes, it’s killing, torturing and kidnapping of innocent Ukrainians, but bubbled over with enthusiasm for ending Putin’s diplomatic isolation, lifting sanctions and the new “opportunities” for U.S. investment in Russia. Moscow commentators cannot contain their glee.

The Trump administration’s betrayal of Ukraine and the Western Alliance is morally disgusting and strategically indefensible.

We are entering a new era unlike anything any of us have ever seen, unlike anything our parents and grandparents have ever seen. Trump is not just destroying American institutions at home, creating an autocratic government very similar to the one Putin erected in Moscow, but he is destroying the global alliances system that made American the strongest nation in the world in favor of a new axis with fellow strongmen in Russia and China. Nobody voted for this.

“This is utter madness,” retired Gen. Barry McCaffrey told MSNBC News on Wednesday, “It is against the security interests of the United States and its allies.” How can any European nation believe that Trump would honor American pledges to defend NATO nations from Russian attack? “There’s not a shred of rational argument among European powers to trust the United States and its commitment to Article V,” he said.

“This is a very dangerous moment in U.S. history. It could be a pivotal moment where we lose our allies, we lose Ukraine and then we are weak when we have to confront others, including China,” added former ambassador to Moscow Michael McFaul.

“What we’re talking about here is the end of 80 years of American foreign policy,” author Anne Applebaum told the same network. “Eighty years in which the United States prioritized a group of democratic allies, mostly in Europe and Asia. Protected them, ensured that autocratic nations did not invade them. Created zones of prosperity that were very important for the United States in terms of trade and economics: thereby made the U.S. the primary power in those regions so that other nations looked up to the United States, took leadership from the U.S….Now, everybody is re-thinking.”

This is not at all what Americans want. A new Quinnipiac poll found 81 percent of respondents said Putin should not be trusted, including 73 percent of Republicans surveyed and 93 percent of Democrats. Just 9 percent said that he should be trusted.

To paraphrase a popular chant heard at demonstrations this week in Washington and around the country, this is what autocracy looks like.

Photo by Cirincione

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