Boasting “this is going to be great television,” President Donald Trump congratulated himself for having ambushed and humiliated Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Or so he thought.
In truth — a quality that never bothers Trump — he humiliated and disgraced our nation as well as himself. No other American leader ever did anything remotely so destructive to our national interest.
The obviously premeditated abuse was so startling as to revive the uncorroborated allegation that this American president is a controlled Russian agent. It’s all over social media again. The Kremlin’s gleeful reaction to the thuggery in the Oval Office does nothing to dispel it.
Serving Russia’s interests
But it doesn’t require a conspiracy theory to realize that, whatever the reason, Trump is plainly serving Russia’s interests.
“Donald Trump believes in one thing. He believes that might makes right,” conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks told PBS, hours after Trump’s tirade: “ … he and Vladimir Putin together are trying to create a world that’s safe for gangsters, where ruthless people can thrive. And we saw the product of that effort today in the Oval Office.
“It’s a moral injury,” added Brooks, “to see the country you love behave in this way.”
That is how it should be regarded by every American who has a conscience.
Trump, who has none, doesn’t even try to disguise his respect for authoritarianism wherever else he sees it, whether in Putin’s murderous tyranny or the gloved fists of Hungary’s Viktor Orbán and Turkey’s Recep Erdogan.
In his first term, he spoke with envy of the obedience he thought Hitler had from Germany’s generals, some of whom had in fact tried to kill the Führer.
Totally transactional
When Trump speaks of the world’s democratic leaders, on the other hand, it’s often with contempt and rarely with respect. It’s akin to his inability to understand why soldiers would put themselves in harm’s way. He can’t understand that there are people who do what’s right simply because it’s right.
The Oval Office ambush on Feb. 28 wasn’t a one-off event for Russia’s benefit.
Trump followed up by suspending more than $1 billion in arms and ammunition that was already in the pipeline to Ukraine. He had already idled our defenses against Putin’s cyberwarfare and his defense secretary unilaterally disabled U.S. cyberoperations against the Kremlin. On Day One, he suspended enforcement of the Foreign Agents Registration Act, which had been used to prosecute Russian agents.
Since his election, Trump’s statements slandering Ukraine as the aggressor in the war of Putin’s aggression have echoed Kremlin propaganda almost precisely.
The same is true of Vice President JD Vance and Elon Musk shilling for Europe’s far-right parties — Russia favors them too.
A tragic betrayal
The trap that Trump laid in the Oval Office was an offer Zelenskyy had to refuse. It would have betrayed his country for him to sign away Ukraine’s minerals without any guarantee of further U.S. support against Russia’s aggression.
All the chatter about ingratitude was eyewash for a tragic betrayal.
What we have given Ukraine and what we have invested in NATO, at no cost in U.S. lives, has been as much in our national interest as in Europe’s. It has been fundamental U.S. policy since World War II that defending democracy at a distance is safer than having to defend it on our shores. An international commitment to democracy is better for everyone and everything, from the benefits of fair trade to the advantages of military deterrence.
Trump is right on one point: Europe could spend more in its own defense. But that is not an argument for abandoning Ukraine and abetting Putin’s scheme to restore what President Ronald Reagan called an “evil empire.”
The U.S. cannot afford Trump’s cynical policy.
It’s so cynical, in fact, that it brings to mind how World War II came about.
Knowing our history
Britain and France foolishly sought to avert war by conceding Hitler the German-speaking part of Czechoslovakia, which wasn’t consulted. Hitler soon took the rest.
Encouraged by the surrender at Munich, Hitler next went after Poland. A week before his planned invasion, he secured a nonaggression pact with Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin that he thought would also keep Britain and France out of the fight.
There was a secret side deal, a devil’s bargain to partition Poland between Germany and Russia and to establish zones of influence — dictatorships — where the Soviets would have a free hand in eastern Europe and Hitler could rule the west.
Now, there seems to be an understanding between Trump and Putin that Russia can do what it likes with Ukraine or any other nation that stands in the way of rebuilding the Soviets’ evil empire.
That would be the end of the world as we ought to know it.
The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Opinion Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Opinion Editor Dan Sweeney, editorial writers Pat Beall and Martin Dyckman, and Executive Editor Gretchen Day-Bryant. To contact us, email at letters@sun-sentinel.com.