This Isn’t Four-Dimensional Chess. Trump’s Helping Russia.
President Trump’s recent moves with respect to Ukraine may seem bewildering. But they’re not. He’s partial to the country’s invader.
Great things are ahead, Donald Trump is pretty sure! Although, look, he’s not going to promise us the moon, by—for example—guaranteeing there won’t be a recession this year.
“I hate to predict things like that,” he told Fox News’s Maria Bartiromo in an interview Sunday. “There is a period of transition, because what we’re doing is very big. We’re bringing wealth back to America. That’s a big thing.”
Nothing like the biggest single-month drop in consumer confidence since the COVID variant summer of 2021 to make even a braggart like Trump hedge a bit. Happy Monday.
Making the World Safe for Autocracy
by William Kristol
The betrayal of Ukraine continues apace.
On Friday, President Donald Trump stopped sharing American intelligence with Ukraine, and Russia responded by immediately stepping up its strikes on civilian Ukrainian targets.
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk explained the situation succinctly: “This is what happens when someone appeases barbarians. More bombs, more aggression, more victims.”
But Tusk was being diplomatic. He was maintaining the pretense that Trump was merely foolishly or wishfully appeasing Putin. Trump isn’t acting foolishly or wishfully. He wants to help Putin.
Indeed, the distinguished military historian Phillips P. O’Brien wrote on Saturday:
What we have seen over the last few days is so extreme that it deserves to be said out loud and acknowledged as soon as possible. The United States has not just abandoned Ukraine, the United States is now actively helping Vladimir Putin and the Russian state kill Ukrainians to try and force Ukraine to accept a bad peace deal that very well might spell the end of their country. At the same time, the USA is now bending over backwards to help protect the Russian military.
O’Brien provides evidence for these charges, which you can and should read if you have the stomach for it. And since O’Brien’s newsletter, we’ve had reports that Trump won’t restore military aid with Ukraine even if there’s a deal on mineral resources, and that the Trump administration wants to depose Volodymyr Zelensky as president.
As the New Yorker’s Susan Glasser remarks: “Trump’s demands right now are Putin’s demands.”
By Sunday night, Trump was telling reporters that the administration had “just about” lifted the pause on Ukraine intel sharing. But the details of the lift were left unclear. Indeed, the alleged willingness to lift the pause seems to be laying the groundwork for failing to do so, or for putting the pause on again, when Zelensky fails to make sufficient concessions for “peace.”
Those looking for optimism continue to try to advance the proposition that Trump is merely stepping back a bit in Europe to focus on the China threat. But there are reports that China, Russia, and Iran are now engaged in new naval exercises near Iran’s Chabahar port. This is only one of many instances of the autocracies of Europe and Asia working together.
And the fact is that Trump wants to cut deals with all the autocrats—with Russia, China, Iran, and for that matter North Korea. Those are the leaders with whom he wants to work to make the world safe for autocracy.
Not all Republicans are on board this agenda. The Reaganite pulse in the GOP still beats, if faintly. And so one reads about Hill Republicans having concerns about Trump’s policy. But as Adam Kinzinger mordantly remarked about his former colleagues: “If only they had votes in say, a legislative body, to do something about it. But no, they can only be ‘concerned.’”
Three House Republicans. Four GOP senators. That’s what it might take to stop or impede Trump’s sellout of Ukraine. They could vow not to support Trump’s agenda, and to vote with the Democrats if necessary, as long as the betrayal of Ukraine continues. They could start with the government funding bill that must pass by the end of this week.
But no, Hill Republicans are still bending the knee to Trump.
And so a Republican who’s been staunchly pro-Ukraine like GOP Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick feels he has to pretend that cutting off intelligence sharing with Ukraine is “an escalate to de-escalate tactic by the administration to bring these parties to the table.”
An escalate to de-escalate tactic.
The mental gymnastics of Republicans who know better, but who do not want to confront Trump, never cease to amaze.
It’s all sickening. It’s sickening to see the betrayal of Ukraine, because one thinks of what will happen to the Ukrainian people.
But it’s also sickening to see the betrayal of Ukraine because of what it will say about what’s happening to us.
As a French friend of America, Bernard-Henri Levy, wrote in the Wall Street Journal last week:
I don’t know if the Americans will grasp that in Mr. Zelensky’s dignity lies their “city upon a hill” creed and that American leaders, from the Founding Fathers all the way to Kennedy and Reagan, would have been proud of a deep bond with this leader.
I don’t know, really, if any of this will be properly understood after that incident, display, fiasco, debacle, monstrosity—call it what you will—in the Oval Office.
It’s proper to blame President Trump for the “incident, display, fiasco, debacle, monstrosity” in the Oval Office. But Trump’s our president. It’s our Oval Office. If Americans in both parties don’t do their utmost to check and overturn the president’s actions, we will all have been part of the betrayal of Ukraine. We will all have been part of a betrayal of America.
Quick Hits
EVERYBODY HATES AMY: It’s the first and last commandment of Trumpism: Thou shalt always bend the knee. There is no room for healthy separation of powers or disagreement, reasonable or otherwise. Crossing Trump is always and forever a purgeable offense. Which is why Trumpworld’s brightest lights spent the last few days raging against Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who provided the pivotal fifth Supreme Court vote last week upholding a decision to compel the federal government to release about $2 billion owed to federal contractors for services already rendered.
Conspiracy theorist and Pete Hegseth confidant Jack Posobiec spent days dressing the justice down, calling her a “pro-life liberal” who probably “knows all the words to the Hamilton musical.”
“Barrett’s vote didn’t just defy Trump, who gave her the robe,” Posobiec fumed in a blog post. “It propped up a globalist system conservatives have long despised.”
Others were uglier. Laura Loomer posted a picture of Barrett’s family—including her two adopted black children—and proclaimed her “a DEI appointee.” Others called her “ungrateful as Zelensky,” “either compromised, a fraud, or suffering from severe TDS,” or, because she’s a woman, “likely to vote with the other women whenever an emotional issue comes before the Court.”
At the 6-3 conservative court, Trump has a home-field advantage few other presidents have been lucky enough to enjoy. For his most rabid fans, that isn’t enough: Any judicial check on him—no matter how measured or marginal—calls for pitchforks and torches.
Trump, shrewdly, gets what his fans don’t: Her vote matters. Asked about the criticism Barrett is getting last night, the president replied: “She’s a very good woman. She’s very smart, and I don’t know about people attacking her, I really don’t know.”
WHAT A RELIEF: “ELON AND MARCO HAVE A GREAT RELATIONSHIP,” Donald Trump bellowed on Saturday. “ANY STATEMENT OTHER THAN THAT IS FAKE NEWS!!!”
DID YOU GET THAT, CITIZEN? MUSK AND RUBIO ARE NOT STRUGGLING FOR POWER IN THE NEW ADMINISTRATION! MUSK DID NOT SNIDELY TELL RUBIO, AS THE NEW YORK TIMES REPORTED LAST WEEK, THAT HE WAS MERELY “GOOD ON TV,” AND RUBIO DID NOT ACCUSE MUSK OF WHISPERING GRÍMA WORMTONGUE-STYLE LIES IN TRUMP’S EAR ABOUT HIS LEVEL OF DEVOTION TO THE TRUMP AGENDA.
EVERYTHING IS VERY COOL AND VERY NORMAL, OUR LEADERS ARE ALL BEST FRIENDS, AND THEY ARE PROBABLY JUST SECONDS AWAY FROM MAKING AMERICA GREAT AGAIN.
MORE FROM MARCO: Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced this morning—at the fresh hour of 4:55 a.m. EDT—that the formal review of USAID programs had been ostensibly completed and that the powers that be had determined that 83 percent of the programs would be cancelled. The post was odd for a variety of reasons, not least of which was that it came from Rubio’s personal account.
State officials had actually been notified last week that agencies and partners had until March 12 (i.e., Wednesday) to submit forms to the Office of Foreign Assistance for the foreign aid review process. USAID was operating on that timeline, though through a parallel review track. “The Office of Foreign Assistance (F) will coordinate Department of State responses to OMB,” read the email reviewed by The Bulwark.
A source familiar with the matter said the forms that they were being asked to submit involved numerous questions that had to be filled out for “every single partner.” Some people were simultaneously working through official channels to get previously canceled USAID awards un-terminated as of Friday.
But two days before the March 12 deadline, Rubio announced the review was over: 5,200 contracts were cancelled, and “in consultation with Congress,” he wrote, the administration intends “for the remaining 18% of programs we are keeping (approximately 1000) to now be administered more effectively under the State Department.”
For good measure, Rubio thanked Elon Musks’ DOGE for their help. The two definitely aren’t feuding. Who would believe that? —Sam Stein
Cheap Shots
Marco Rubio, you deserve all the snark and lies and humiliation that comes your way, you immoral sellout.
I hope the far right’s intimidation tactics against Barrett will stiffen her resolve instead of making her a Lindsey Graham like figure.