Trump ambush of Zelensky and the Republican love for Vladimir Putin

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Donald Trump Volodymyr Zelenskyy JD Vance Vladimir Putin Russia Ukraine

Trump ambush of Zelensky and the Republican love for Vladimir Putin

Following the ambush of Volodymyr Zelenskyy by Donald Trump and J.D. Vance this past weekend, the debate for and against American support for Ukraine against Vladimir Putin’s invasion of the sovereign nation continues to be in the news. Leading the way in many of these discussions are members of the Trumpist Republican Party who support Trump’s attack while simultaneously declaring their love of Mother Russia.

While some Washington politicians and Con Inc. (the new moniker used to describe the faux conservative media) are expressing “shock” over the hostile meeting, this meeting simply validated Trump’s love affair with Putin and showed depths of capitulation Trumpist Republicans are willing to go to prove their loyalty to their mango messiah.

The assault on Zelenskyy by Trump and Vance should come as no surprise because it has been building for a long time, going all the way back to Trump’s presidential run in 2016.

When the Republican Party Platform was being hammered out in the summer of 2016, Trump pretended to maintain a hands-off approach to what would eventually be called the “most conservative platform in Republican party history.” However, Trump was involved when the Party removed a promise to increase sanctions against Russia for its military aggression against Ukraine. Additionally, the platform changed a provision to provide aid to Ukraine (including weapons for the Ukrainian military to fight Russian aggressors) into a vaguely worded promise to provide “appropriate assistance.”

NATO had already made a commitment to support Ukraine, so Trump’s effort to weaken that support raised a few eyebrows, that is until it was revealed by Donald Trump Jr. at a 2008 real estate conference that “Russians [made] up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of [Trump’s] assets,” before concluding that “we see a lot of money pouring in from Russia.”

Gee, I wonder if that’s why Trump never provided his tax returns.

The cozy relationship with Russia went beyond Trump himself. Then-campaign manager, Paul Manafort, had been working for pro-Russian politicians in Ukraine for over ten years at the time (a situation that resulted in Manafort’s resignation and eventual imprisonment before being pardoned by Trump near the end of his first term), and Trump’s then-foreign policy advisor on Russia and Europe was Carter Page, a man whose entire career had revolved around investments in Russia.

Trump openly praised Putin in 2016 for his leadership, and he defended the Russian leader against accusations that he had murdered journalists who didn’t agree with him because, according to Trump, America “does plenty of killing also.” And in one of his first appointments as president, Trump made pro-Russia businessman and friend of Vladimir Putin, Rex Tillerson, his Secretary of State.

In late 2019, Trump was impeached for withholding nearly $400 million in congressionally approved military for Ukraine in order to pressure Zelenskyy into launching an inquiry into his 2020 Democrat rival Joe Biden and Biden’s son. In a lame attempt to change the narrative, Trump and the Republican Party repeated the lie that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 elections — a lie that became a common talking point for defenders of Trump.

However, a U.S. Intelligence report showed that Republican accusations of Ukraine’s 2016 election interference were actually part of a Russian propaganda campaign designed to take the heat off their pro-Trump election interference. With Republicans desperate to avoid a blue tsunami in 2020, they became willing participants in spreading Putin’s big lie.

In a lame attempt to change the narrative away from impeachment, Trumpists and faux conservatives in the media also became willing shills for Putin. After calling concern over Russia an “obsession” of the Left, Tucker Carlson declared that Putin didn’t hate America as much as the media did. A few days prior to that broadcast, Carlson defended Trump against impeachment by openly rooting for Putin to defeat Zelenskyy, although he later claimed to be joking after taking some heat for it.

In the years between Trump’s first and second term, the love affair he and the Republican Party were having with Vladimir Putin continued. And by the time things began gearing up for the 2024 election, being pro-Russia and anti-Ukraine had become the measuring stick of loyalty to Trump and his nationalist takeover of the Republican Party.

Following Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Trump called Putin a “genius” for going after Zelenskyy — which is saying something coming from the guy who once declared himself to be “a very stable genius” — and he repeated his claim that the 2020 election was stolen and that if he had remained president, Putin would never have attempted the invasion in the first place (via TheHill.com):

“I went in yesterday, and there was a television screen, and I said, ‘This is genius,'” he said. “Putin declares a big portion of the Ukraine — of Ukraine — Putin declares it as independent. Oh, that’s wonderful.”

“I said, ‘How smart is that?’ He’s going to go in and be a peacekeeper,” added Trump, who regularly praised and sought close ties with Putin during his time in office. “That’s the strongest peace force. We could use that on our southern border. That’s the strongest peace force I’ve ever seen. There were more army tanks than I’ve ever seen. They’re going to keep peace, all right.” (Emphasis mine)

Like any cult leader, Trump relied heavily on his army of Kool-Aid-drinking “conservative” followers to parrot his pro-Russia/anti-Ukraine talking points. For example, Candace Owens blasted the U.S. response to the invasion in a series of tweets, saying Americans should read a transcript of Putin’s address to the UN Security Council “to know what’s *actually* going on,” and she added that potential NATO membership for Ukraine serves as a threat to Russia and [that] means “WE are at fault.”

Following the invasion, Tucker Carlson urged Americans to ask themselves, “Why do I hate Putin?” He later wondered why it would be “disloyal” for “conservative” Americans to side with Russia over Ukraine.

Historically, GOP has been an acronym for Grand Old Party, and as visitors to my website know, it also stands for Gutless On Principles. However, Washington Post columnist Max Boot came up with a much more frightening but accurate acronym to describe the Republican Party’s devolution from conservatism to nationalism: “Gang of Putin.”

In his December 2019 column for RawStory.com, Boot explained:

“Of all the changes that have occurred in our politics since the rise of Donald Trump, the most gut-wrenching for me personally is to see the Republican Party transformed into the Kremlin’s ‘useful idiots.’ As a young refugee from the Soviet Union growing up in Southern California in the 1980s, I was attracted to the GOP because it was the party of moral clarity — the party willing to stand up to the ‘evil empire.’ How far we have come — in the wrong direction. (Emphasis mine)

There was a day when Ronald Reagan was praised for referring to the U.S.S.R. as an “evil empire.” Today however, “conservatives” praise Donald Trump for his love of all things Putin.

Things sure have changed.

 

David Leach is the owner of the Strident Conservative and the author of The New Axis of Evil: Exposing the Bipartisan War on Liberty. He holds people of every political stripe accountable for their failure to uphold conservative values, and he promotes those values instead of political parties.

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