Commentary by Stephen Macaulay
One of the characteristics that made America great is the willingness of its people to stand up for the little guy, regardless of the sacrifice. Americans didn’t let bullies push the weaker parties around. What was in it for us? The knowledge that the right thing — not the easy thing, not the popular thing, not the transactional thing — was being done because that is what we believed in: the right thing.
You may note the use of the past tense here.
That’s because of this exchange between Donald Trump and Dasha Burns of Politico:
Burns: On Sunday, your son, Donald Trump Jr., responded to a reporter’s question about whether you will walk away from Ukraine, and your son said, I think he may. Is that correct?
Trump: No, it’s not correct. But it’s not exactly wrong. We have to ... you know, they have to play ball. If they, uh ... if they don’t read agreements, potential agreements, you know, it’s, uh, not easy with Russia ’cause Russia has the upper ... upper hand. And they always did. They’re much bigger. They’re much stronger in that sense. I give Ukraine a lot of ... a lot of ... I give the people of Ukraine and the military of Ukraine tremendous credit for the, you know, bravery and for the fighting and all of that. But you know, at some point, size will win, generally. And this is a massive size, uh ... you ... when you take a look at the numbers, I mean, the numbers are just crazy.
Here we go again, with Trump and the game metaphor for the war in Ukraine. When he and JD Vance, with a tremendous lack of civility and decorum, attacked Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy in an Oval Office meeting back in February, there was this:
Trump: "You should be thankful. You don't have the cards. With us, you have the cards, but without us, you don't have any cards."
Back when America was great, there was no demand that anyone express thankfulness for our help. Doing the right thing was reward onto itself.
Zelenskyy, whose country was being relentlessly attacked by Russia, whose people were dying, said, “I’m not playing cards.”
He was — and he is — trying to save his country from an aggressor.
(Look: Zelenskyy could be a total prick. But there are some 36 million Ukrainians under attack, not because Zelenskyy is or isn’t a prick, but because Vladimir Putin wants to take their land. So shouldn’t our leaders be the bigger people and exhibit nobility, not pettiness?)
Trump’s reference to “if they don’t read agreements, potential agreements, you know, it’s, uh, not easy with Russia ’cause Russia has the upper ... upper hand” goes to an unsubstantiated claim that Zelenskyy hasn’t read a US peace proposal. In other words, he can blame things on Zelenskyy. (One wonders whether Trump has actually read the plan given his propensity to watch TV, day and night.)
“But you know, at some point, size will win, generally. And this is a massive size, uh ... you ... when you take a look at the numbers, I mean, the numbers are just crazy.”
There it is: The admission that Russia will beat Ukraine into submission because the US won’t help as it once would have.
Trump talks about numbers. So how about these: US defense spending is on the order of $850 billion per year. Russia’s spending is about $120 billion.
The US has 13,000 military aircraft. Russia has 4,300.
Armored vehicles? 360,000 for the US, 161,000 for Russia.
This is not to suggest that the US should go to war with Russia, but that the US could, if Donald Trump believed in the ethos that helped make America great, stand up to Putin and point back over his shoulder at the massive military might that the US has, Putin would undoubtedly rethink his approach. But as things stand, Trump’s actions show that he’s more inclined to let the aggressor take the spoils.
And what do we do instead with our military prowess? The Trump administration seems to think that using high-tech munitions on small go-fast boats in the Caribbean proves our strength.
During the Q&A about Ukraine and Russia, during which he claimed to have ended eight wars (How’d he do? Armenia and Azerbaijan have no ratified treaty and are still going at it; Israel and Hamas haven’t laid down arms; Cambodia and Thailand are fighting; Egypt and Ethiopia weren’t even at war), he suddenly, but predictably, said this:
“You know, think of it, if our election wasn’t rigged ... there was a rigged election. Now everyone knows it. It’s gonna come out over the next couple of months, too, loud and clear ’cause we have all the information and everything. But if the election wasn’t rigged in Stalin*, uh, you wouldn’t even be talking about Ukraine right now.”
Yes, if he’d been president instead of Biden there would have been no war is his claim — which he repeats over and over again, but you don’t hear him repeat his earlier claim about bringing the war to an end in a day.
It is impossible to prove that Russia wouldn’t have attacked Ukraine had Trump been president in 2022.
It is simple to prove that Trump didn’t end the war on his first day in office.
And long after his last day in office his treatment of the Ukrainian people will be remembered.
==
*This quote is from the official Politico transcript. It isn’t clear why the most vicious dictator of the 20th century is brought up in relation to the 2020 US presidential election.