South Florida Sun-Sentinel (Sunday)
Trump pitches an alternate reality
Claims wars in Gaza, Ukraine, inflation all due to 2020 election
Aside from falsely insisting that he did not lose the
2020 election, former President Donald Trump has peddled a related set of theories centered on one question: What would the world have looked like had he stayed in office?
Trump, in rallies and interviews, has repeatedly asserted — more than a dozen times since December, by one rough count — that three distinct events, in the United States and abroad, are a product of the
2020 election. “There wouldn’t have been an attack on Israel. There wouldn’t have been an attack on Ukraine. And we wouldn’t have had any inflation,” he declared during a rally in January in Las Vegas. The next month in South Carolina, he baselessly claimed that Democrats had admitted as much.
Politicians routinely entertain what-ifs, which are impossible to prove or rebut with certainty. But Trump’s suppositions underscore the ways in which he often airs questionable claims without explanation and which might not be supported by the broader context.
Here’s a closer look at his assertions.
War in Ukraine
“I will have the horrible war between Russia and Ukraine settled before I even take office. Got to be settled. It never would have happened. And even the Democrats admit that if Trump were president, that would have — Putin would have listened to me 100%,” Trump said during a January rally in New Hampshire.
Trump’s notion that he could have simply dissuaded
President Vladimir Putin of Russia from invading Ukraine is not necessarily borne out by history.
The conditions precipitating the decision by Putin to invade Ukraine in February 2022 date back many years. Putin has maintained that Ukraine is fundamentally part of Russia, ignoring evidence to the contrary — including the views of most Ukrainians. And he has long taken issue with the expansion of NATO, including the addition of former Soviet republics, as well as the prospect of Ukraine one day joining.
Asked to elaborate on Trump’s argument, his campaign simply referred to a 2022 poll in which 62% of respondents answered “no” when asked whether they believed that Putin would move against Ukraine if Trump were president.
Still, experts do not see a realistic scenario in which
Trump would have stopped Putin from advancing on Ukraine.
“There was no appreciable shift in Russian policy because Trump was making nice to Putin,” said Charles Kupchan, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.
Israel-Hamas war
“The horrifying attack on Israel would never have happened. They wouldn’t even have thought of doing such a thing if President Trump was behind the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office,” Trump said during a rally this month in Virginia.
There is no clear Trumpera policy that would have prevented Hamas from carrying out its Oct. 7 attack on Israel, experts say. His campaign did not elaborate on his theory, and apart from his effort to blame his successor, he has said very little about the conflict.
At best, Trump can contend that there was a sense of calm in the Middle East during his presidency, but that argument has its flaws.
“What we can say that might support Trump’s claim is that we did not see significant conflict between Israel and Hamas during his time in office,” said Jonathan Schanzer, senior vice president for research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, an organization that has been critical of Hamas. He added that the unpredictability of Trump’s foreign policy could have theoretically worked to deter adversaries in the Middle East from stoking conflict.
But, Schanzer said, that calm was deceiving: Hamas built up its military infrastructure during that time.
Others are more adamant that Trump’s argument lacks merit.
“In the case of the Hamas attack, there is nothing that his administration could or would have done differently from the Biden administration,” said Natan Sachs, the director of the Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution.
He noted that the Trump administration facilitated the Abraham Accords, under which Israel normalized relations with several Arab countries. “But the downside of the Abraham Accords was also the marginalization of the Palestinian issue,” Sachs said.
Inflation
“When you think of it, inflation wouldn’t have happened,” Trump said at a rally this month in Georgia.
Trump’s claim ignores the reality that the coronavirus pandemic undoubtedly helped drive up prices — meaning inflation was all but inevitable regardless of who won the 2020 election — and he has not explained in detail how he would have averted inflation. The surge began in early 2021 and peaked in mid-2022.
“The pandemic of 20202022 caused massive disruption to supply chains around the world and made it harder to produce and ship goods for an extended period of time,” said Tarek Hassan, an economics professor at Boston University. “This led to what we call cost-push inflation in all major economies, with the prices of goods jumping up as a result. Neither the outgoing President Trump in
2020 nor President Biden had much influence on this outcome.”
Trump has suggested that, if elected this year, he would lower inflation, although economists say some of his proposals — including tariffs on imported goods and his calls for enormous deportations — could potentially have the opposite effect.