Trump undermines democracy by embracing Russian tyrant Putin
The mercurial President Donald Trump has so far broken nearly every promise he made during his campaign. But that's not as bad as embracing Russia tyrant Vladimir Putin harming freedom
By Ray Hanania
FREE/Politics, Trump, Putin, Russia/Monday Feb. 24, 2025
The most disturbing image I have ever seen is our President, Donald Trump, embracing like a friend, Vladimir Putin, the tyrant who has murdered his political foes and is wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for war crimes.
Instead of standing up for freedom and democracy, the core values of America, Trump threw Ukraine under the bus, openly lying that Ukraine started the war with Russia.
I wasn’t alive when British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain urged the world to give Adolph Hitler and the Nazis a break in 1938. But I can understand how bad that was after seeing Trump offer the same kind of weak appeasement to Putin.
Trump is pursuing international policies to benefit himself, and his plans to build new hotels in Moscow and St. Petersburg.
To suck up to Putin, Trump lied and blamed the Ukraine for starting the war. In fact, anyone with a brain knows Russia started the war on Feb. 23, 2022, when he ordered his troops to invade Ukraine. Remember how Putin bragged that the war wouldn’t last more than three days?
It's been more than three years, of course.
I do place much of the blame on former President Joe Biden whose weak leadership encouraged Putin to invade. Putin knew Biden wouldn’t do anything. In fact. Biden did little than provide money to Ukraine until this past year when we lifted restrictions on how Ukraine could respond to Russia by invading and bombing Russian cities and military bases. That should have been allowed on Day One of the war.
Estimates are that Russia’s unprovoked war has resulted in the murder of nearly 100,000 Ukrainians, caused hundreds of billions in structural damage to homes, apartments, businesses, schools, and religious buildings.
Trump is also attacking our NATO allies who are at the forefront of protecting Democracy from the Communist hordes in Putin’s new Soviet Union.
He is betraying America’s commitment to freedom and democracy and weakening our nation. What he is doing is far worse than what Biden did, and it may constitute another violation of our Constitution.
Trump has already been convicted of 34 Felony counts, an embarrassing achievement on any presidential resume.
America hasn’t been giving Ukraine money to spend as they see fit. It is to fight a war to prevent the Communists from taking over the West. The Ukrainians have been fighting that war for us, and we have an obligation to support them, not to appease a tyrant like Putin for selfish economic reasons.
Imagine if FDR had listened to the extremists who wanted to stay out of World War II, what kind of world would we have today? It would have been dominated by the Nazis and radical Japanese government.
This egregious policy that betrays the trust of the American people is just another notch on his belt of failures. Trump vowed he would reduce costs and prices on the first day he would take office. That hasn’t happened. In fact, costs continue to rise in part because of Biden’s failures and Trump;s continued failures. Trump promised to so much and yet he has delivered, 30 days into his administration, very little except more conflict, uncertainty and international scorn.
Those Democrats who are smiling, and enjoying all this are the real hypocrites. It was the Democrats who betrayed America. When he was elected, Biden vowed to bring America together and bridge the ugly political polarization that divided our nation during Trump’s first term in office.
Instead, Democrats did exactly what Trump did and fed the polarization, the name-calling, and the one-sided partisan politics.
This country is in real trouble because of the failed leadership of both parties, which I why I proudly voted for Dr. Jill Stein, the only candidate who was concerned about applying the International Rule of Law fairly and equally across the board. She could have brought the nation together. But she was attacked by anti-Semites on the Right and arrogance on the Left.
Both parties are to blame. No one is an angel in this mess.
America is in trouble and we need a new leader who can bring the country together, and confront the deteriorating economic situation and our wounded and worsening international relations.
The real problem isn’t that Trump is president. It’s that both sides, Democrats and Republicans are exploiting the others’ extremism in the false hopes of strengthening themselves. It’s selfish politics. No one today seems to care about America as a whole and the needs of the American people.
That’s a real shame.
I lived at a time when Americans feared Sputnik, Nuclear War and built bomb shelters under their homes. It’s tragic that we are turning back time to that frightening era.
I wish the world thought about this comment. "Imagine if FDR had listened to the extremists who wanted to stay out of World War II. What kind of world would we have today? The Nazis and radical Japanese government would have dominated it."
Ray, I like your and Peter Beinhart's thoughtful articles on substack.
It's so good to read opinions like this that are exactly what the truth is without doubt, I believe the majority of humanity knows this too as there are also people that don't understand this truth,..let's hope for the best as these greedy dictators at the last decade or so of their lives won't benefit from their greed being too busy causing grief.