Our ‘America first’ president put America last in Helsinki
George F. Will
America’s child president had a playdate with a KGB alumnus, who surely enjoyed providing daycare. It was a useful, illuminating event: Now we shall see how many Republicans retain a capacity for embarrassment.
Jeane Kirkpatrick, a Democrat closely associated with such Democratic national security stalwarts as Sen. Henry Jackson and former Sen. and former Vice President Hubert Humphrey, was Ronald Reagan’s ambassador to the United Nations. In her speech to the 1984 Republican National Convention in Dallas, she explained her disaffection from her party: “They always blame America first.” In Helsinki, the president who bandies the phrase “America first” put himself first, as always, and America last, behind Vladimir Putin’s regime.
What, precisely, did Donald Trump say about the diametrically opposed statements concerning Russia and the 2016 U.S. elections by U.S. intelligence agencies (and the Senate Intelligence Committee) and by Putin concerning Russia and the 2016 U.S. elections? Precision is not part of Trump’s repertoire; it is usually difficult to sift meanings from Trump’s word salads. But in Helsinki he was, for him, crystal clear about feeling no allegiance to the intelligence institutions that work at his direction and under leaders he chose.
Consider this from John McCain: “Today’s press conference in Helsinki was one of the most disgraceful performances by an American president in memory.” Or this from Arizona’s other senator, Jeff Flake: “I never thought I would see the day when our American president would stand on the stage with the Russian President and place blame on the United States for Russian aggression.” Blame America only.
Secretary of Defense James Mattis, White House chief of staff John Kelly, Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats and others might believe they must stay lest there be no adult supervision. This is a serious worry, but so is this: Can those people do their jobs for someone who has neither respect nor loyalty for them?
Collusion with Russia is hiding in plain sight. We shall learn from Robert Mueller whether in 2016 there was collusion with Russia by members of the Trump campaign. The world, however, saw in Helsinki something more grave — ongoing collusion between Trump, now in power, and Russia. The collusion is in what Trump says (refusing to back America’s intelligence agencies) and in what evidently went unsaid (such as: You ought to stop disrupting Ukraine, downing civilian airliners, attempting to assassinate people abroad using poisons, and so on, and on).
Americans elected a president who — this is a safe surmise — knew that he had more to fear from making his tax returns public than from keeping them secret. The most innocent inference is that for decades he has depended on an American weakness, susceptibility to the tacky charisma of wealth, which would evaporate when his tax returns revealed that he has always lied about his wealth, too. A more ominous explanation might be that his redundantly demonstrated incompetence as a businessman tumbled him into unsavory financial dependencies on Russians. A still more sinister explanation might be that the Russians have something else, something worse to keep him compliant.