Former US President Donald Trump's half-hearted condemnation of Russia's crime against humanity in Ukraine shows once again where his loyalties lie: basically, with Trump (uber alles).
Trump, as a would-be autocrat, has
consistently placed his loyalty to other authoritarians over American allegiance
to the nation’s traditional allies. Throughout his disastrous presidency, he
systematically undermined strategic American foreign policy, attacked America’s
allies in Europe, blackmailed and belittled the country’s friends in NATO, withdrew
American support for major international accords—such as the Paris Climate
Accords and the US-sponsored Iran Nuclear Agreement—and publicly proclaimed his
belief of Vladimir Putin over America’s own intelligence community, which he
continually accused of being his enemy.
In his latest tirade, Trump only
tangentially mentioned the tragic aggression being waged by Putin against the sovereign
nation of Ukraine as an excuse to once again rail against the US Congress and
to score new points with the Russian dictator. At a time when the rest of world
leaders and former world leaders are, practically to a man and woman, condemning
Putin as a war criminal and a threat to the integrity of Europe and to world
security, Trump chose the occasion to characterize American Congress members as
"the biggest lying scum" on earth, and "truly evil people"—singling
out House Majority Leader Adam Schiff as the worst of all—while describing
Putin as "smart" and "savvy", even though pronouncing himself
against Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
Actions speak louder than words, of
course—especially when it comes to Trump’s actions and words. You might recall
that when Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky sought US aid from the Trump
regime to help him prepare the country for an already looming Russian threat of
invasion, Trump could think of nothing better to do than to try and extort
Ukraine by withholding that military aid as a means of twisting Zelensky's arm
into digging up dirt on Joe Biden's businessman son. In other words, Trump used
US foreign policy and American taxpayers’ money as leverage to get Ukraine’s
leader to give him a hand with his dirty political campaign in the run-up to
his bid for a second term.
If there is one major take away from
Donald Trump’s political campaigns and presidency, it is that, in his world, advantages
and disadvantages are all personal and nothing he has ever done was for
the good of the US or its allies. On the contrary, the failed, twice-impeached,
insurrectionist former president severely damaged America’s reputation
worldwide and left in his wake a divided US in which democracy remains at
imminent risk.
In Trump's world, the Ukraine invasion
is the fault of the US and its allies for being "soft on Russia"—if Washington
is being “soft” on Russia, then Trump’s relationship with Vladimir Putin can
only be viewed as “carnal”— and for showing weakness in the Afghanistan
pullout. Yet it was Trump who wanted to bring all Americans home from the Middle
East and leave the region to its own devices, in an immediate pullout that his
aides eventually convinced him would be disastrous. And it was Trump who abruptly
withdrew the US from Syria and left America's Kurdish allies, who were instrumental
in fighting ISIS, to their fate at the hands of Turkish dictator Erdogan
(another Trump hero). And it was Trump too who never had a harsh word for Putin
throughout his presidency and who preferred to believe the Russian dictator
over six of America's own intelligence-gathering agencies regarding Russian
intelligence interference in American domestic affairs—obviously because that
interference was to his distinct advantage in his first election campaign.
Although no longer in office, and
self-exiled in the banana republic of Mar-a-Lago, the ex-president continues to
issue pronouncements that show clearly that he has never had a thought that
wasn’t self-serving, vitriolic, provocative and wrong-minded, In short, Trump just
can't seem to help continuing to demonstrate why he was never fit to be
president in the first place, and why he certainly never again should be
permitted to run for any public office.
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