Republicans Follow Trump in Selling Out Ukraine
Ten distortions from GOP politicians who should know better about Russia, Putin, and NATO.
IN LESS THAN A DECADE, the GOP has transformed itself from a party of global leadership to a party of appeasement. It threatens Panama, Canada, and Greenland but sucks up to Vladimir Putin. Donald Trump led this transformation, but others in the party are completing it. They’ve joined him in a monstrous betrayal of Ukraine, our European allies, and the cause of freedom.
This weekend, Trump’s henchmen in the administration and Congress fanned out on the Sunday shows to promote the new Republican position on Ukraine. It’s a stew of cowardice, treachery, and deceit. Here are its core tenets.
1. We don’t blame Russia.
Trump’s officials are united in a code of silence: They refuse to say anything bad about Putin, no matter how obviously true. When Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth was asked on Fox News Sunday about the administration’s “reticence to say who invaded whom” in the Russia-Ukraine war, he responded by refusing to say who invaded whom. “Does all the finger-pointing and pearl-clutching make peace more likely?” he huffed. “Saying ‘You’re good,’ ‘You’re bad,’ ‘You’re a dictator,’ ‘You’re not a dictator,’ ‘You invaded,’ ‘You didn’t’—it’s not useful. It’s not productive.”
Pearl-clutching? Acknowledging an invasion that has killed roughly a million people is pearl-clutching?
The interviewer, Shannon Bream, tried again. “Fair to say Russia attacked unprovoked into Ukraine?” she asked. But Hegseth wouldn’t say it. “Fair to say it’s a very complicated situation,” he shot back.
2. We retract our previous criticisms of Russia.
Republicans who denounced the invasion in 2022 are now eating their words. Hegseth is one of them. “You have said previously that Putin is a maniac,” Bream reminded him. “You’ve called him a war criminal.”
Hegseth shrank from the reminder. “What I said as a private citizen has no bearing on what as secretary of defense my job is,” he said.
On Meet the Press, Kristen Welker challenged Republican Senator Markwayne Mullin: “You yourself said when Russia invaded Ukraine three years ago, ‘I strongly condemn the unjustified and unprovoked attack on Ukraine.’ . . . Do you still believe this was an unjustified and unprovoked attack on Ukraine by Russia?”
Mullin revised his position. “What we believe is this war should have never taken place,” he told Welker.
3. Russia was provoked.
Earlier this month, Steve Witkoff, Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East, met with Putin to begin discussions on ending the war. On Sunday, CNN’s Jake Tapper asked Witkoff about concerns—based on Trump’s recent lies about Ukraine—that the U.S. government “doesn’t seem to understand who actually launched this war.”
Witkoff’s answer, like Hegseth’s, showed that the concern was well founded. The war “was provoked,” he told Tapper, shifting blame from Putin to NATO and Ukraine. “There were all kinds of conversations back then about Ukraine joining NATO. . . . It basically became a threat to the Russians.”
This is Russia’s story about how the war started, and it’s false. But it’s now being parroted by the U.S. government.
4. Ukraine should have appeased Russia.
Welker asked Mullin whether “Putin is responsible for starting the war.” Rather than concede this, Mullin pinned the responsibility on Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky. “We gave Zelensky multiple warnings that there needed to be negotiations before the war even started,” said Mullin. But Zelensky failed to give Putin what he wanted, as evidenced by the invasion. So, by this perverse logic, Zelensky has no one to blame but himself.
5. We need a “positive relationship” with Putin.
In his interview with Witkoff, Tapper pointed out that Trump has adopted Putin’s talking points. But Witkoff argued that this was good because “the only way you are going to end the carnage is if you have a relationship with the leaders of both countries.” Witkoff went on to boast that his meeting with Putin went well because Trump “enjoyed a positive relationship with President Putin from his first term.”
This idea—that the best way to manage a murderous bully is to assuage him—is the kind of rosy nonsense conservatives used to mock.
6. Trump promised to end the war.
“Trump is going to be able to end the war,” Mullin boasted on Meet the Press. “He said he was going to do it when he was on the campaign trail, and he’s kept his promises.”
National Security Advisor Michael Waltz made the same case to Maria Bartiromo on Sunday Morning Futures. The alternative to Trump’s approach was to “perpetuate more war,” Waltz warned with disdain. “That’s not what President Trump campaigned on or intends to do.”
A real and just end to the war would be a relief. But promising unconditionally to end the war, when Russia decides the terms on which it would end, gives Putin total control. By refusing to halt his onslaught until he gets what he wants, he can force Trump to do his bidding.
7. We’re tough on Ukraine.
Trump has been threatening Ukraine for days. On Sunday, Witkoff pursued those threats. The envoy warned that Zelensky had better sign an agreement, drafted by the Trump administration, that would give the United States half of Ukraine’s income from minerals, oil, and other industries. “I expect to see a deal signed this week,” Witkoff told Tapper. “You saw President Zelensky waver in his commitment towards that a week ago. The president sent a message to him. He’s not wavering anymore.”
Tapper asked the logical follow-up question: Since Trump has been demanding concessions from Ukraine, “What concessions will Russia have to make?” To that, Witkoff offered no answer. “Each side is going to make concessions,” he blathered.
In other words, we’ll squeeze Ukraine because we can. But we won’t risk antagonizing Russia.
8. We’ll give Ukraine no commitments.
On Sunday Morning Futures, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent was asked whether, in exchange for its financial demands, the United States was offering Ukraine security guarantees. Bessent replied that the American proposal didn’t include a “military guarantee,” but it did include an “implicit guarantee.” The “implicit guarantee,” he explained, was that “the bigger [the] interest that the U.S. has in the future of Ukrainian economy doing well, the more security it creates for the Ukrainian people.”
What a joke. “Implicit guarantee” is an oxymoron. Trump wanted Zelensky to sign a document guaranteeing certain income to the United States. The whole point of putting that in the document was to make it explicit. If Trump won’t make American security commitments similarly explicit, he’s refusing to offer a guarantee.
What Bessent offers instead is the vague notion that America might be interested in helping Ukraine if there’s money to be made. That’s a conditional statement of self-interest—essentially, the opposite of a commitment—and Putin knows it.
9. We might leave NATO.
Welker asked Mullin, “Do you think the United States should stay in NATO?”
“NATO has not always been playing in—in our best interest,” he replied. He depicted the alliance as a menace: “We see NATO and we see [the] U.N. sometimes weaponizing against the United States.” He concluded that if NATO membership was “not in Americans’ foreign policy best interest, then we need to look at a different approach.”
Reminder: NATO was founded in 1949 because countries that could be targeted by Russia are stronger when they band together. Disbanding NATO makes it easier for Putin to pick them off.
10. We’ve achieved peace talks.
In the old days, liberals often touted peace talks not just as a path to solving problems, but as a triumph in their own right. Conservatives, on the other hand, scoffed that dictators used such talks as cover while waging war or directing terrorism.
Now the roles are reversed: The Trump administration brags that Putin, previously a pariah, is considering peace talks—and that this, per se, somehow counts as an achievement.
“Joe Biden was never able to bring Russia to the table for actual peace talks,” Hegseth sneered on Fox News Sunday. “Only Donald Trump—he’s the only man in the world that would be able to do that.”
The truth is exactly the opposite: To lure Putin to the table, all Trump had to do—and all he did—was surrender. He signaled that the United States was willing to end the war on Russia’s terms.
To conceal this surrender, Trump’s henchmen have dressed it up in macho language. Hegseth claims that to get peace, “You’ve got to stare down the Russians and Vladimir Putin and who they’ve chosen to negotiate—and have earnest conversations about difficult things.”
Stare down the Russians? Having “earnest conversations” counts as staring them down?
On Sunday Morning Futures, Bartiromo asked Waltz: “Can you acknowledge that Russia is the aggressor here?” Waltz ducked the question. Instead, he replied: “Who would you rather have and go toe to toe with the likes of Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong-un, Xi, or anyone else: Joe Biden or Donald Trump? He’s the deal-maker in chief. . . . It’s only because of his strength that we’re even in this position.”
Toe to toe? Begging Putin for a meeting to discuss his terms for ending the war is “toe to toe”?
Let’s drop the macho act. The position we’re in with Putin isn’t toe to toe. It’s tongue to toe. The toes are his, and the tongues belong to Trump, Hegseth, Waltz, Witkoff, Bessent, JD Vance, and the rest of this bootlicking administration. They’re appeasing Putin, abandoning Ukraine and our allies, and reducing American foreign policy to pure extortion. It’s a betrayal this country will never live down.