Among the many bizarre and uncomfortable moments at the meeting of today’s oval office between Donald Trump, JD Vance and Volodymyr Zelensky-during what Trump finally broke the American alliance with Ukraine-one was particularly revealing: what a journalist asked, if the cease-fire Trump was trying to negotiate should be raped by Russia? “What if something?” What if a bomb falls on your head right now? Trump spat, as if Russia violated the sovereignty of a neighbor was the craziest and improbable possibility, rather than a frequently recurring event.
Then Trump explained why he considered such an unlikely event. “They respect me”, he forled. “Let me tell you, Putin has gone through a lot with me. He crossed a witch can, where they used it and Russia. Russia,, Russia,, RussiaHave you ever heard of this case? … It was a bogus democratic scam. He had to cross it. And he crossed it. 
Trump really seems to feel that he and Vladimir Putin have forged a personal link by the shared trauma of being persecuted by the Democratic Party. Trump is known for his transactional approach to cold eyes, and yet he was here, displaying affection and loyalty. (At another time, Trump complained that Zelensky has a “huge hatred” towards Putin and insisted: “It is very difficult for me to conclude an agreement with this kind of hatred”.) He did not explain why an agreement with Russia would advance the interests of America, or why Russia would honor it. He defended the integrity of Russia by guaranteeing Putin’s character.
In recent years, kinship between Trump and Putin has become somewhat old -fashioned to emphasize. After Robert Mueller disappointed the Liberals by not having proven a criminal plot between the Trump campaign and Russia, conventional wisdom on a large part of the center and the left of the political spectrum came to treat the scandal as exaggerated. But even the facts that Mueller was able to produce, despite the non-cooperation of Trump’s main lieutenants, was surprising. Putin suspended a Moscow construction agreement in front of the Trump organization worth hundreds of millions of dollars, and Trump lied about it, giving a lever effect to Putin on him. The president of Trump’s campaign, Paul Manafort, was in business with a Russian intelligence officer. Russia has published hacked democratic emails at a time when they were as much useful in Trump’s campaign, and made another piracy attempt after asking the television to find missing emails from Hillary Clinton. The cooperation scheme between Trump and Putin may not have been proven to be criminal, but it was extraordinarily overwhelming.
The conservatives have invested even more in the refusal of any basis for the Trump-Russia scandal. A handful of Maga faithful openly approved Russian propaganda, but no more Republicans explained Trump’s behavior as reflecting a motivation other than pure and simple sympathy for Moscow: he is transactional, he is a nationalist, he admires strength and holds the weaknesses of contempt.
And everything is true: Trump admires dictators. He instinctively puts himself with intimidators on the victims. There is a lack of framework based on values for American foreign policy. But many Republicans who recognized these features nevertheless believed that Trump could be convinced to stay in the Ukraine corner. They were wrong. The reason they were wrong is that, in addition to its generalized amorality, Trump presents a special affection for Putin and Russia.
Immediately after Zelensky left the Oval office, Trump poster In social truth, “I determined that President Zelenskyy is not ready for peace if America is involved.” The clear involvement is that the United States will reduce its support for the Ukrainian war effort. Trump’s allies have already tried not to be the blame for this crucial decision on Zelensky. Trump “felt failed” by the body language of the Ukrainian leader and the argumentative way, the White House officials said Fox News. “Zelensky was in a terrible position”, ” National review editor -in -chief Rich Lowry recognized On X, “but he should never have been born in the realization of argumentative points.” And, he added“He should have worn a suit.”
All this ignores the much more plausible explanation of what happened today: it was a configuration. Trump and Vance seem to have participated in the meeting with the intention of reprimanding Zelensky and doing so in an argument as a pretext for the diplomatic break. Why should anyone have expected something different? Trump regurgitated Russian propaganda, not only with regard to Ukraine, since Zelensky even took up his functions. He defended The seizure of Crimea by Russia in 2018 (the year preceding the election of Zelensky), repeatedly refused to recognize Russian guilt for various murders, and even stood at Russian discussion points on idiosyncratic subjects that the allegedly defensive Soviets Soviets reasoning To invade Afghanistan in 1979 and their fear That a “aggressive” Montenegro would attack Russia, leading NATO into war.
In recent weeks, Trump has made very little effort to hide his pro-Russian inclination. He called Zelensky a dictator, and when he was asked if he would say the same thing about Putin, refused, insisting: “I do not use these words lightly.” (No President of American History has used more lightly words than Trump.) He declared that Ukraine “could be Russian one day” and blamed Ukraine for having triggered the war. The United States has even joined Russia, North Korea, and a small block of Russian allies to vote against a United Nations resolution condemning the invasion of Ukraine by Russia.
The less overwhelming explanations on the model of Trump of pro-Russian positions were all collapsed in the face of evidence. A line of defense, transported by Republican Hawks to explain Trump’s constant efforts to undermine NATO, is that Trump actually wants Europe to spend more on its own defense. Like a hard football coach, he simply reprimands his team to become the best version of himself.
Except when European countries have declared themselves ready to increase their defense expenses to 2% of GDP, the level that Trump said he wanted, he increased demand to 5%. More recently, he pleaded for the election of the right, pro-Russian AFD party and anti-nato in Germany. This is a strange thing to do if your goal is to push the allies to defend itself against Russia, but a perfectly sensible position if your goal is to undermine the anti-Russian alliance.
Russia Républicaine-Hawks hoped that they could bring Trump by forcing Ukraine to sign a transaction putting part of its mineral wealth in the United States. Instead, Trump announced that the mineral agreement was dead. It would also be a strange decision if his motivations were purely transactional, but very understandable if his motivations were to abandon Ukraine to the tender Mercy of Putin.
Even today, Trump’s intimidation started long before Zelensky opens his mouth. Trump praised his counterpart on the alley of the White House with a condescending mockery, pointing to him and developer Spectators, “he is all dressed today”, like Bill Batts Goodfellas moving the character of Joe Pesci. (“Hey, Tommy, all dressed!”) The outfit of Zelensky – The Ukrainian President carries a military attire, not a costume, to remind the world that his country is at war – was a fixing on the right, and the conservatives grabbed it as a pretext to blame it for Trump’s anger. Curiously, they did not seem to care that Elon Musk introduced himself to the White House this week in a t-shirt and a baseball cap.
Could Zelensky have obtained a different result by taking the abuse and the flow of lies of Trump in more auto-abandon? Of course, it is possible; If you reason with a bad result, any different strategy is almost more intelligent. Zelensky had no good options in the White House. He entered an ambush with a president who sympathizes with the dictator who wants to seize the territory of Ukraine. All those who have spent years warning of Trump’s inconvenient affinity for Putin had exactly this kind of disastrous result in mind.
