The Ukraine Untruths of Disingenuous DeSantis
His recent remarks about the war have been cynical and deceptive.
Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, bills himself as an enforcer. Speaking in Iowa last Friday as he prepared to run for president, DeSantis bragged about capturing Haitian migrants and sending the National Guard to control āBLM riots.ā
āThereās a new sheriff in town,ā he told an audience in Des Moines. He boasted that Sheriff DeSantis was finally taking on one of Americaās worst villains: the Walt Disney Company. He proudly informed the crowd that he was āstaring down the mouseā and ādelivering them the biggest defeatā Disney had suffered in Florida.
Thatās DeSantisās idea of courage: rounding up boat people and stripping tax breaks from Mickey Mouse. But when a real menace emergesāhundreds of thousands of Russian troops invading Ukraine and slaughtering civiliansāDeSantis chickens out. He preaches appeasement and blames America.
Like many other Republicans, DeSantis pretends that helping Ukraine is an unbearable burden. In a statement issued to Tucker Carlson and posted to Twitter on Monday, DeSantis complained that President Joe Bidenās aid to Ukraine ādistracts from our countryās most pressing challenges.ā DeSantis posed a false choice between American and Ukrainian security: āWe cannot prioritize intervention in an escalating foreign war over the defense of our own homeland.ā
But DeSantis goes much further. In his statement to Carlson and in a Fox & Friends interview on Feb. 20, he has adopted a series of cynical, deceptive, anti-American talking points.
1. Itās just a border dispute. āI donāt think itās in our interest to be getting into a proxy war . . . over things like the border lands,ā DeSantis said on the Fox morning show last month. Likewise, in his more recent statement, he said America should avoid getting āfurther entangled in a territorial dispute between Ukraine and Russia.ā
Border lands? Territorial dispute?
This is rubbish. The war is an unprovoked invasion and occupation of Ukraine. When DeSantis calls the occupied territory āborder landsā and frames the invasion as a ādispute,ā heās deceiving Americans about whoās right and whoās wrong in Ukraine, both factually and morally. Heās peddling relativist garbage of the sort that conservatives used to despise.
2. America is fueling the war. In his statement, DeSantis accused Biden of āvirtual āblank checkā funding of this conflict.ā The key phrase here isnāt āblank checkā; people of good will can debate how much we should spend. No, the key phrase is āfunding of this conflict.ā Thatās a clever misrepresentation designed to shift blame from Russia to America.
Vladimir Putinās government is funding and perpetuating this war. If Russia were to withdraw, the war would end immediately. What the United States and its allies are funding is Ukraineās defense. And the goal of that aid isnāt to perpetuate the conflict; itās to end the conflict by driving the Russians out.
Putin wants Americans to blame their own country for the warās persistence. He wants us to cut off aid to Ukraine, thereby allowing him to carry on his side of the war unimpeded and eventually conquer Ukraine. And DeSantis is helping him.
3. Peace is paramount, so intervention is bad. āWithout question, peace should be the objective,ā DeSantis declared in his statement. On this basis, he called for limiting American aid, and he went on to criticize āthe DC foreign policy interventionists.ā
Itās true that we should pursue peace and be wary of excessive intervention. But when DeSantis calls peace the objectiveāand when he contrasts this with American funding of the āconflictāāhe implies that we should focus on seeking a peace deal satisfactory to Russia.
Weāve been down this road before. When Putin seized Crimea in 2014, we peacefully accepted it. The result was a further, bigger, much bloodier invasion of Ukraine. Thatās the problem with pacifism: Sometimes, to get real peace, you have to defeat aggressors. Conservatives used to understand this.
4. Russia isnāt dangerous. In a 2012 presidential debate, Barack Obama mocked Mitt Romney for portraying Russia as our biggest geopolitical threat. Romney retorted: āIām not going to wear rose-colored glasses when it comes to Russia or Mr. Putin.ā
Eleven years later, after two more Russian invasions of Ukraine, DeSantis is putting on the rose-colored glasses and taking Obamaās side of that debate. āRussia going into NATO countriesā and āsteamrollingā them āhas not even come close to happening,ā DeSantis scoffed in his Fox interview. āTheyāve shown themselves to be a third-rate military power.ā
DeSantis ignores the salient factor: Russia is failing in large part because weāre funding Ukraineās valiant defense. And Putin, by continuing to wage war a year later, is proving that his militaryās poor performance wonāt stop him from trying to conquer his neighbors.
5. Donāt mess with China. In his interview, DeSantis bemoaned the ānational humiliation of having China fly a spy balloon clear across the continental United States.ā But 40 seconds later, he warned that in the face of possible Chinese weapons shipments to Russia, the United States should avoid getting caught up in āa proxy war with China getting involvedā in Ukraine. The DeSantis policy seems to be: Shoot Chinaās balloons, but run away from its artillery and drones.
6. Donāt antagonize Russia. DeSantis doesnāt just oppose further American involvement in the war. He also seems to oppose our sanctions. According to his statement, āThe Biden administrationās policies have driven Russia into a de facto alliance with China. Because China has not and will not abide by the embargo, Russia has increased its foreign revenues while China benefits from cheaper fuel.ā
Essentially, DeSantis is suggesting that instead of pressing China to join us in isolating Russia, we should accept Chinaās defiance of the sanctions and let Russia resume selling its oil around the world. And we should blame Bidenās belligerence for driving Putin into Chinaās arms.
If a Democratic president were to say these thingsādismissing Russia as a threat, cowering before China, preaching moral equivalence, and blaming America for Russiaās warāevery Republican presidential candidate would denounce that president as a gutless, soulless, Putin-loving traitor. And Ron DeSantis would be at the front of that pack of accusers.
Instead, a Democratic president is standing up to Putin. And heās facing a Republican who would rather attack Mickey Mouse.
