Before Election Day 2024, Donald Trump took a variety of unsubtle steps in Russia’s direction, suggesting that Ukraine bore responsibility for Russia’s invasion, while repeating rhetoric that appeared designed to please Vladimir Putin.
Nearly four months later, however, the Republican’s posture is vastly worse.
On Tuesday, the American president broke new ground by declaring that Ukraine “started” the war that Putin started. As part of the same set of comments, Trump also publicly mocked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s approval rating and suggested that Ukraine did not deserve “a seat at the table” as diplomatic talks get underway about Ukraine’s future.
As the comments sparked international reverberations, Trump decided it’d be smart to go even further a day later, using his social media platform to accuse Zelenskyy — but not Putin — of being a “dictator.”
All of this rhetoric positioned the American president as an effective mouthpiece for Kremlin-backed talking points, and it came just days after the Republican publicly vouched for Putin’s interest in peace, declared that he expects Russia to keep at least some of the land Putin took from Ukraine by force, said he wants to welcome Russia back into the G7.
As Wednesday came to an end, and much of the world tried to come to terms with the fact that the White House had effectively switched sides, aligning the United States with our adversary and against our ally, Trump leaned into his offensive again. NBC News reported on comments the Republican made at the Future Investment Initiative Institute’s PRIORITY Summit in Miami Beach, Florida.
“President Zelenskyy talked the United States of America into spending $350 billion to go into a war that basically couldn’t be won,” Trump said. “The only thing he was really good at was playing Joe Biden like a fiddle. He played him like a fiddle.” Trump repeated his characterization of Zelenskyy as a “dictator” and asserted without clear evidence that Zelenskyy is refusing to hold an election because he is losing the support of his citizens.
The American president delivered the unscripted remarks with the confidence of a man who didn’t appear to care at all about the geopolitical or electoral consequences.
It’s worth emphasizing, of course, that Trump’s rhetoric isn’t just dangerously bizarre, it’s also wildly at odds with reality. The American president’s anti-Ukraine lies have also drawn international rebukes from traditional U.S. allies, and even some congressional Republicans have carefully expressed disagreement with Trump’s radical nonsense.
There’s even reason to believe the White House is not on board with the broad American mainstream. The latest national poll from Quinnipiac University asked respondents, “Do you think the United States should trust Russian President Vladimir Putin, or not?” At a point in our history in which the public is deeply divided on many issues, 81% of Americans don’t agree on much, but in this survey, 81% of people said the United States should not trust Russia’s authoritarian leader. (Click the link for more information on the poll’s methodology and margin of error.)
And yet, there was Trump in the Oval Office last week, telling reporters on camera that he trusts Putin.
I won’t pretend to know what the Republican president understands, but at some level, it stands to reason that he’s aware of the backlash, here and abroad, that he’s created by cozying up to Putin — again.
But he’s doing it anyway. Presidents only get so much political capital, and for reasons Trump has never made any meaningful effort to explain, he’s decided to invest his finite political capital into supporting the authoritarian regime in Moscow.
Maybe someday, the White House can explain why.
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