Putin's Parrot

President Trump says Ukraine started the Russia/Ukraine war.

Prior to January 6, perhaps the darkest day of the first Trump administration was when our president stood on stage at the Helsinki summit with Russian president Vladimir Putin, and publicly sided with him over U.S. intelligence agencies.

In response to a press question about Russia’s interference in our 2016 election, as concluded by Trump’s own FBI and other federal agencies, Trump answered, “President Putin says it's not Russia. I don't see any reason why it would be.”

He continued: “I have great confidence in my intelligence people, but I will tell you that President Putin was extremely strong and powerful in his denial today.”

A lot has been written about that moment. It was an absolute disgrace for our country — an undermining of U.S. credibility on the world stage, in deference to a murderous tyrant and rival of the United States.

If you think that framing is too harsh, or possibly an example of “TDS”, you might want to consider what even some of Trump’s most loyal media-sycophants were saying about it at the time.

"It was probably the low point of the presidency so far," lamented Fox Business Network’s Maria Bartiromo.

"Hint: Don’t use 'strong and powerful' to describe Putin’s denial re. election meddling," Fox News's Laura Ingraham tweeted. "Use words 'predictable and damaging to US-Russian relations' to describe Russian meddling."

Former Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich, tweeted, "President Trump must clarify his statements in Helsinki on our intelligence system and Putin. It is the most serious mistake of his presidency and must be corrected—immediately."

Of course, it wasn’t corrected — not in any meaningful way. Trump, according to members of his own administration, didn’t even understand what was so bad about what he had said.

We’ve known about Trump’s bizarre affection for Putin for a long time. Helsinki wasn’t the first time he’d parroted Russian propaganda, and it wouldn’t be the last. But it was perhaps unarguably the worst, most consequential example of it… until this week.

It’s become pretty clear that President Trump wants to abandon Ukraine — to preside over a negotiated surrender to Russia. He’s been telegraphing the move for some time, though, in all fairness, he had been offering enough nuance in his rhetoric to keep a grain of hope alive for the war-torn nation (and its allies and supporters).

But that hope took a tremendous beating on Tuesday when Trump declared, in no uncertain terms, that it was Ukraine — not Russia — that started the war.

Commenting on his decision to leave Ukraine out of U.S. negotiations with Russia over the war, Trump said of Ukraine and its president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy:

Today I heard, ‘Oh, well, we weren’t invited.’ Well, you’ve been there for three years. You should have ended it—three years. You should have never been there. You should have never started it. You should have made a deal.

“You should have never started it.”

Vladmir Putin couldn’t have asked for a more useful idiot on this matter. This has literally been one of Putin’s talking points since the beginning of the invasion, now echoed by a U.S. president (along with other preferred Russian narratives in the same press conference).

It, of course, requires a special level of depravity to claim that Ukraine started the war by not surrendering to a genocidal attack on its sovereignty — by not politely succumbing, in a timely manner, to mass murder, rape, and their children being kidnapped.

Like Israel, Ukraine’s big crime is that they’ve had the gall to exist as a people — as an independent state. To blame Ukraine for what Russia has done is like blaming Israel for October 7.

Putin started this war. He could have peacefully ended it at any time over the last three years. He’s to blame for all of this. He’s the bad guy.

The United States is of course under no obligation to continue funding Ukraine’s defense efforts. Personally, as I’ve written many times, I think our support (which comes at a tiny fraction of our federal budget) is hugely important. But Trump is well within his rights to cut off that aid.

He can, as Commentary’s John Podhoretz describes it, “make the Ukrainians suffer for their disobedience in refusing to walk quietly to the gallows while thanking him as they are hanged in the worldwide public square.”

If that’s what Trump is committed to doing, and he can’t be reasoned out of it, he should just go ahead and pull the trigger: end our support, claim it’s in the interest of the peace, turn a blind eye to whatever happens next, and accept the shame that comes with it.

But don’t portray the victim of unspeakable, genocidal horrors as the aggressor. Don’t spew an evil regime’s propaganda to rationalize your capitulation.

For once, own it.