Republicans to Putin: We’re Done with Ukraine
J.D. Vance and the GOP convention’s unmistakable isolationism.
THE OPENING NIGHT OF THE 2024 Republican National Convention sent a clear signal: The balance of power within the GOP has shifted. This is now an isolationist party. And if Republicans win this year’s presidential election, the first victim of this retreat from the world will be Ukraine.
The party’s base was already moving in this direction. In recent polls, most Republicans—unlike most Democrats and independents—have consistently said that the United States is giving too much support to Ukraine. The gap between the parties is enormous, with Republicans about 40 points less supportive than Democrats.
A few hours before the primetime speeches began on Monday, Donald Trump announced his running mate: Senator J.D. Vance. Trump is already well known as a Putin sympathizer and opponent of aid to Ukraine; his selection of Vance reinforces that disposition. Vance was by far the most anti-Ukraine candidate on Trump’s vice-presidential short list. As a senator, he has fought against aid to Ukraine and has made clear that he isn’t particularly interested in defending Europe. Two years ago, shortly after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Vance shrugged, “I don’t really care what happens to Ukraine one way or the other.”
The convention’s organizers gave a coveted evening speaking slot to Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Ukraine’s fiercest opponent in the House. Greene doesn’t just oppose aid to Ukraine; she also parrots Russian smears against its government. In her prepared remarks, Greene denounced “globalists” and protested that “the Democrats spent over $175 billion of your tax dollars to secure Ukraine’s borders.” The delegates—not waiting for her next line, about how the money wasn’t being spent on a wall to seal the Mexican border—immediately began to boo.
In his own primetime address, tech investor and CEO David Sacks went further. He blamed President Biden for Russia’s invasion.
He provoked—yes, provoked—the Russians to invade Ukraine with talk of NATO expansion. Afterward, he rejected every opportunity for peace in Ukraine, including a deal to end the war just two months after it broke out. . . .
Hundreds of billions of our taxpayer dollars have gone up in smoke. President Biden sold us this new forever war by promising it would weaken Russia and strengthen America. Well, how does that look today? Russia’s military is bigger than before, while our own stockpiles are dangerously depleted. Every day, there are new calls for escalation, and the world looks on in horror as Joe Biden’s demented policy takes us to the brink of World War III.
This speech—presumably cleared for delivery by the convention’s organizers—explicitly shifted blame from Putin to America. In effect, it excused Putin by faulting Biden for every stage of the crisis: for causing the invasion, for risking escalation, and for failing to agree to Putin’s conditions for ending the war. It’s particularly rich that Sacks said we should give up on Ukraine because our military stockpiles are depleted—after Trump, Vance, Greene, and other Republicans opposed Ukraine-aid legislation to replenish those stockpiles.
Sacks also boasted that Trump, unlike Biden, would be
a president who understands that you build the most powerful military in the world to keep America safe, not to play the world’s policeman; a president who is willing to talk to adversaries as well as friends, because that is the only way to make peace; a president who will stand up to the warmongers instead of empowering them.
“A president who is willing to talk to adversaries” was an obvious allusion to Putin. He’s the only U.S. adversary—particularly in a context where peace might have to be discussed—with whom Trump, unlike Biden, is known to be friendly.
Half an hour after that speech, Trump arrived at the convention. As the crowd cheered, he stood in a row of VIPs in front of his family. To Trump’s left stood Vance. To his right stood Rep. Byron Donalds, a consistent opponent of aid to Ukraine. And next to Donalds, basking in Trump’s glow and the delegates’ adoration, stood the most avidly pro-Putin, anti-Ukraine propagandist in right-wing media: Tucker Carlson.
This is the Republican party in 2024. Two years after Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, as Russia continues to kill civilians, seize land, and threaten Europe, the GOP has opened its convention with an emphatic message. To American isolationists—and to the Kremlin—the signal is: We are your party.