“[T]here’s a lot of talk about Biden’s son, that Biden stopped the prosecution, and a lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you can do with the Attorney General would be great. Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution so if you can look into it… It sounds horrible to me.”
President Donald Trump in a call to Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian president, on July 25, 2019.
“Yesterday, reporters asked me if I thought President Putin was smart. I said, of course, he’s smart….
Yes, he’s smart. The NATO nations and indeed the world as he looks over what’s happening strategically,
with no repercussions or threats whatsoever. They’re not so smart. They’re looking like the opposite of smart…
The problem is not that Putin is smart . . . it's that our leaders are dumb."
Donald Trump at #CPAC February 27, 2022.
Like it or not, the words of the President of the United States, while in office acting in his official capacity, are usually and properly construed as the voice of the nation itself. The first quote noted above, an excerpt from a call between two presidents (Trump for the United States and Zelensky for Ukraine) took place more than a year before the 2020 American presidential election. Trump was already attempting to discredit possible Democratic rivals for the office. His lead henchman in this effort was his personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, often bolstered by Trump’s use of individuals he appointed to high federal office for his personal agenda.
At the time, Russia was deploying its notorious “little green men,” Russian soldiers in unmarked uniforms fighting purportedly as Russian-speaking Ukrainians, in the easternmost provinces of Ukraine. Zelensky desperately needed $391 million of combined humanitarian and military aid approved by the US Congress to sustain resisting that clandestine Russian effort. Delivery of that aid was subject to implementation by the US military and the Executive Branch. When Zelensky did not jump at Trump’s telephonic request to find dirt on the Bidens, Trump simply froze that shipment to Ukraine. Ukraine needed that shipment immediately, but…
Decried for using his office and his diplomatic power to foster personal gains without any direct benefit to the United States, Trump was impeached over that call. Evading conviction by the lockstep vote of a majority of Republicans in the Senate, deeply fearful of losing that dedicated Trump base essential to sustain their electability, the former President was saved from what might have generated a genuine conviction under a less polarized and more constitutionally responsible Senate. It was to be only Trump’s first impeachment.
When you combine Trump’s almost sycophantic fawning all over Vladimir Putin every time they met or spoke with Putin’s wink-wink election interference in the 2016 election focused on discrediting Trump’s opponent, a fact established by every federal intelligence agency, you begin to see a pattern that would ultimately embolden Putin, imbue him with a belief that the United States was unconcerned with his expansionist vision for Russia, to invade Ukraine. Aside from the weakening polarization efforts in his divide and conquer strategy to maintain person power – efforts that led both China and Russia to believe that the United States was seriously unraveling – Trump’s outright efforts to isolate the United States further sustained these autocrats’ belief that they had little to fear from an American paper tiger.
Indeed, Trump’s proclivity to cozy up to dictators, withdraw from treaty commitments and pursue a go-it-alone “America First” policy that alienated most of our nation’s traditional allies, even Trump’s unabashed antipathy for NATO itself, further added to the Russian belief that neither the United States nor the highly US-dependent NATO alliance would be serious barriers to Putin’s ambitions. Certainly, the whimpering and minimal Western “sanctions” resulting from Putin’s 2014 annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea substantiated that this laissez-faire attitude was also shared by Democrats.
Throw in a very elderly Joe Biden, famous for slips of the tongue often attributed to the effects of age, governing a deeply divided nation – as Trump continued to voice that he was the victim of a fraudulent election without any meaningful proof – and Putin’s self-confidence could only grow. Biden’s awkward withdrawal from Afghanistan only reinforced Putin’s negative image of the new American President. Democrats and Republicans!
Putin’s view of NATO and the United States found more reasons to write us off. Writing for the March 21st Los Angeles Times, Tracy Wilkerson and Sarah D. Wire, add these thoughts to Putin’s smoldering fire: “Numerous experts and current and former officials say Putin was emboldened by the Trump years. The former KGB officer turned president ably manipulated Trump into publicly backing his denials of having interfered — to Trump’s benefit — in U.S. elections. And, according to former aides, Putin convinced Trump to accept his claim that Ukraine was part of Russia.
“It is impossible to know all of Putin’s thinking as he launched the ferocious war that has already claimed thousands of Ukrainian and Russian lives and obliterated parts of the fledgling democracy that sought to strengthen ties with the West.
“By most accounts, Putin stewed in grievances for years — the expansion of NATO farther east into his sphere of influence, the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and a post-Cold War world order that marginalized Russia — waiting for an opportunity to build back his vision of a grand Russian superpower empire…
“‘I think Putin saw how Trump viewed Ukraine ... as a pawn,’ Marie Yovanovitch, a former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine who testified against Trump in the impeachment trial, said in a recent TV appearance. Putin saw ‘that we had an administration that was willing to trade our national security for personal and political gain.’
“Fiona Hill, a highly regarded Russia expert who served on Trump’s National Security Council and also testified during the impeachment trial, said the former administration did take steps against Moscow on other issues, expelling diplomats and imposing sanctions. But at a ‘critical period,’ when Ukraine was fighting Russia and needed weapons, Trump had his own political future in mind… It sent ‘a message to Putin that Ukraine is a plaything for him ... and for the United States. And that nobody’s really serious about protecting Ukraine,’ Hill added. ‘And that was ultimately a sign of weakness.’”
As Putin was on the precipice of invading Ukraine, Donald Trump continued in his adulation of the Russian President, calling him a “savvy” “genius.” Putin sensed that the United States was more destabilized than ever. The above second quote simply underscored our weakness and former President Trump’s continued ability to keep America deeply divided. Trump still had escaped any criminal indictment; he was not convicted by the Senate and did not face any challenges to his leadership of the GOP; he still had maintained the powerful support of his base. He was strong. He was untouchable. And Putin knew that with a weak and unraveling United States, now was a good time to take Ukraine.
I’m Peter Dekom, and like it or not, the United States set the stage, provided a greenlight if you will, to Putin’s decision to invade and conquer Ukraine.
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