Donald Trump prefers Putin (not our ally) to Europe (our allies)
Later this week in Germany, the vice president of the United States and the U.S. secretary of state will try to convince defense ministers and national security leaders from all over Europe that no, the United States of America has not lost its everloving mind.
Good luck with that. Twenty-four hours after an urgent NATO meeting in Brussels, Kamala Harris and Anthony Blinken will try to mitigate the hot dread encircling the continent at the annual Munich Security Conference this Friday. Their topic: Pay No Attention To That Bloviating Imbecile Who Could End Up With The Nuclear Codes.
Europe’s hot dread
Unfortunately, it appears Europe has already sussed out the import of Donald Trump’s irrational posturing at last Saturday’s campaign event in Conway, South Carolina. “Everyone should watch the video of Donald Trump,” said the German Parliament’s Norbert Rottgen on X, “to understand that Europe may soon have no choice but to defend itself.”
The truth is that Trump said nothing he hasn’t belched before, and nothing he couldn’t readily conform to his go-to rhetorical crutch, also known as making things up on the spot.
The presumptive Republican nominee for president (seriously, of the United States) microwaved an anecdote that put him in a conversation with a fellow NATO partner, “the president of a big country,” that was behind in its defense payments.
“Well, sir,” he said (in Trump fantasies, everyone calls him sir, which I guess is better than “mein fuhrer”), “if we don’t pay, and we’re attacked by Russia — will you protect us?’”
Trump said he told the leader he would not protect his country. “In fact, I would encourage them to do whatever the hell they want. You gotta pay.”
Nothing to see here, just a presidential candidate carrying around 91 felony counts saying he’s willing to throw away 75 years of critical geopolitical alliances because Albania is behind in its defense payments.
For everything that’s wrong and spectacularly stupid about that, perhaps the most galling part is Trump’s kicker: “You gotta pay.”
When does Trump have to pay? He doesn’t pay his lawyers (sorry Rudy), doesn’t pay his contractors, doesn’t pay his taxes, doesn’t pay his legal fees because he’s got MAGA suckers sending him cash to cover those, and he only pays the porn stars who’ve been suing him when he’s convinced it’s a legit campaign expense.
Hundreds of people have paid with their freedom, gone to prison, for Trump’s purposes. When does Trump pay?
Trump wants to be Putin
Only when Putin calls does Trump pay with dogged subservience. Long before the weekend, Trump was an aspiring Russian lickspittle. Even before he was in politics, Trump knew what he wanted to be.
“He’s done an amazing job of taking the mantle, and he’s taken it away from the president (Obama),” Trump said of Putin to Fox in 2014. “You look what he’s doing (in Crimea), so smart! When you see the riots in the country because they’re hurting and the Russians (are), ‘Ok, we’ll go and take it over.’”
Putin was “going step by step by step” and deserved credit for that. “Interestingly,” he continued, “with the Miss Universe pageant, we just left Moscow. He could not have been nicer. He was so nice, and so everything.” Everything Trump wants to be. And that was eight years before Putin invaded Ukraine, destabilizing the last democratic bulwark against Russian aggression in Europe and perhaps beyond.
Today, with the Republican nutball conference poised to scuttle any continuing military aid to Ukraine because it might upset their puppetmaster, Putin will again begin to salivate at the prospect of a Trump presidency that will begin with the U.S. telling 30 other NATO countries they’re on their own.
Since 1949, Article 5 of the NATO treaty requires all member countries to come to the aid of any member that is attacked. The only time Article 5 was invoked was when America was attacked on 9/ 11. NATO coalition forces fought alongside Americans in Afghanistan. Nobody asked who was “delinquent.” They paid with nearly 4,000 lives.
And Putin’s watching
Trump’s reckless intimation that NATO allies need not defend each other puts thousands of U.S. and European soldiers at risk, now and at the moment when Putin accepts his “encouragement.”
“NATO is watching, our allies are watching, Vladimir Putin is watching, the Chinese are watching what Donald Trump is saying,” said conservative commentator Charlie Sykes the other day on cable. “This comes in the middle of his campaign to basically kneecap the aid to Ukraine right now. People ought to take this very very seriously because it feels like we are sleepwalking into a global catastrophe.”
Oh is that all?