President Joe Biden is presiding over a Russian invasion of Ukraine, but Democrats say former President Donald Trump shoulders significant blame.
Democrats claim Trump emboldened Russian President Vladimir Putin throughout his term and point to his use of adjectives like “savvy,” “genius,” and “smart” to describe the Moscow strongman’s recent activity.
“This is genius. Putin declares a big portion of the Ukraine — of Ukraine — Putin declares it as independent. Oh, that’s wonderful,” Trump said when asked about the news on the Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show on Tuesday. “I said, ‘How smart is that?’ And he’s going to go in and be a peacekeeper.”
Republicans counter that these Trump comments are a mix of sarcasm and criticism and that Biden seems overmatched in his battle of wits with Putin. Trump has steadfastly maintained that if he were still in office, the Russian onslaught against Ukraine would not occur.
Trump told Fox News’s Laura Ingraham on Wednesday night that Putin acted because he sensed “weakness” in the Biden administration. After again casting doubt on the 2020 election results, he added “this would not have happened during my administration.”
At a Mar-a-Lago fundraiser that same night, Trump again made comments that supporters saw as criticizing the inadequacy of Biden’s sanctions response and that Democrats viewed as more fulsome Putin praise.
“I mean, he’s taking over a country for $2 worth of sanctions,” he told the room full of Republicans. “I’d say that’s pretty smart. He’s taking over a country, literally a vast, vast location, a great piece of land with a lot of people, and just walking right in.”
“There’s only been one president in recent history who coddled, excused, and cozied up to Vladimir Putin — Donald Trump,” Ammar Moussa, a spokesman for the Democratic National Committee, told the Washington Examiner. “And let’s not forget, the overwhelming majority of the Republican Party enabled Trump for four years as he sold out Ukraine, undermined our allies, and embarrassed us on the global stage.”
Moussa claimed that Biden, on the other hand, “has united our allies to stand up to Putin and enforce unprecedented sanctions to hold Russia accountable for launching an unprovoked and unjustified war.” Democrats said no other former president is talking about the Russia-Ukraine situation like Trump.
Former President Bill Clinton referred to the invasion as a “brazen attack,” former President George W. Bush claimed it was the “gravest security crisis on the European continent since World War II,” and former President Barack Obama described the military incursion as a clear “violation of international law.”
A handful of Democratic officials noted to the Washington Examiner the slew of controversies involving Russia during Trump’s 2016 campaign and term in office. Special counsel Robert Mueller did not conclude there was evidence of any election-related criminal conspiracy. Special counsel John Durham is now investigating the origins of those investigations.
One of those Democratic officials specifically pointed to Trump’s attempts to withhold military aid to Ukraine in 2017, which triggered his first impeachment, although the Trump administration did eventually ink the sale of Javelin missiles to the country, which Ukrainian defense forces have utilized to destroy dozens of Russian tanks and helicopters in recent days.
Trump’s stewardship of the Syrian civil war also put him in direct conflict with Putin. In early 2018, U.S. forces killed as many as 200 Russian operators fighting in support of the Assad regime, and he heartily criticized Putin and Russia for being “associated with the mass murder of innocent men, women, and children” in a nationally televised speech in April of that same year.
“The nations of the world can be judged by the friends they keep. No nation can succeed in the long run by promoting rogue states, brutal tyrants, and murderous dictators,” Trump said at the time. “In 2013, President Putin and his government promised the world that they would guarantee the elimination of Syria’s chemical weapons. Assad’s recent attack — and today’s response — are the direct result of Russia’s failure to keep that promise.”
Perhaps most important, Trump put in place heavy sanctions on Russia in 2019 related to the construction of the Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline. The move not only squeezed Russia but also Germany, which receives roughly one-third of its energy from Russia. The Biden administration eventually rolled those sanctions back in efforts to reestablish working relationships with European allies. The United States and NATO have since re-blocked work on the pipeline in response to Russia’s invasion.
Senior Republican officials scoffed at the idea that Trump was at all to blame for this week’s events.
“This is just another bulls*** attempt by the mainstream media to push the debunked ‘Russia, Russia, Russia’ narrative,” one such official told the Washington Examiner. “Remind me again: Was it Donald Trump or Joe Biden who lifted sanctions on Nord Stream? Was it Donald Trump or Joe Biden who forced our NATO allies to make good on their defense commitments? Was it Donald Trump or Joe Biden who’s blundered through every foreign policy decision he’s ever been tasked with making?”
“Does anyone actually think it’s a coincidence that Putin moved on Crimea and Ukraine under Democratic administrations?” a second official posed in a statement. “Were President Trump still in office, Putin would be too scared to attempt any of this nonsense, and suggesting otherwise is simply laughable.”
*story by The Washington Examiner
