Hey, Trump. Putin is playing you for a loser
All we heard from you over the Independence Day weekend, Mr. President, is how you are a winner, winner, winner.
Here you have my admiration for accomplishing so much of what you promised, such as restoring the border. Or the passage off the one Big, Beautiful Bill (even though I’m waiting to see how much pork is in it). The direct assault on Iran’s nuclear ambitions.
But your dealings with Russian President Vladimir Putin have been an embarrassing bust. Do you actually think that you can reason with a man who is blindly compelled above all reason to restore Russia to what it was as the Soviet Union or even under the czars?
Putin openly proclaims that he’ll end his assault on Ukraine when he annexes it, as it was before, a vassal state. Putin openly violates the end-of-the-Cold-War treaty that ensured that Ukraine would be a sovereign state in return for giving to Russia the large number of nuclear weapons that had been installed there by the Soviet Union.
Mr. President, you celebrated America’s successful struggle for independence from a foreign autocrat—British King George III. The grand and historic sacrifices of freedom-loving Americans.
But here’s the thing, as much as you heaped self-praise upon yourself for your commitment to liberty, you failed to appreciate the obvious comparisons of how Ukraine is engaged in the same struggle.
It’s as if you are willing to thrown that nation to the dogs for fighting for the same thing. You’ve decided to “temporarily” block sending more arms to Ukraine. As if we’d run out ourselves. Or that we need to save them to repel China from invading Taiwan. Weak arguments, those. (Need I remind you that manufacturing more weapons means from jobs for Americans?) If we give up on Ukraine, we certainly will have to get engaged in Taiwan.
Mr. President, you need reminding that we won our freedom because the French fleet showed up. Without its help George Washington would not have won the decisive, war-ending battle of Yorktown.
Likewise, without our help, Ukraine will be gobbled up by a vicious autocrat.
Oh sure, the isolationists in your base don’t care, as if we’ve got no dog in this fight. Wrong. Giving Putin the green light to achieve as little as keeping the Ukrainian territory it has already won challenges our national security. “Go ahead, Vlad, take whatever else you want. We’re glad that you can restore Russia to the once powerful and dangerous challenge to western security that it once was.”
For your first campaign for president and repeatedly through your terms, you have given Putin special consideration. Your respect his power. Blah, blah, blah. No wonder Democrats so easily hung that false “Russia, Russia, Russia” tag on you.
Why do you do you treat differently, if not better than some of our allies? Are you frightened? Do you naively think that the mere force of your aggressive personality can talk him out of his madness?
Even your most loyal newspaper, The New York Post, is sending you the same message in “Vlad gave his answer to peace, Mr. President: We must re-arm Ukraine.” In an editorial, the paper pointed out that Russia…
is a dying terrorist state. Putin is willing to spend the blood of his people in a last grasp for empire.
If we let him succeed, if we help him succeed, it won’t just threaten Europe. It will tell China that our alliances are fickle, our patience short.
On this single issue, Mr. President, are you casting your lot with Joe Biden’s happy talk or Barack Obama’s false red line? On this, Mr. President, get a spine.