photo by: Creators Syndicate

Keith Raffel

What’s more irritating than a columnist saying I told you so?

Forgive me, but I just looked over a full-page opinion piece I wrote for the San Francisco Chronicle in December 2016, the month before Trump took office for his first term. The editors headlined it: “I couldn’t write a thriller as strange as a pro-Russia US president.”

It holds up pretty well in light of current events. No, no, it holds up terrifyingly well.

Trump stopped military aid to Ukraine on March 3. He blames the decision on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s refusal to agree to a peace settlement that left Russia occupying Ukrainian territory and that offered no true constraints on future Russian behavior. Via social media, Trump accused Zelenskyy of disrespect and told him to come back only “when he is ready” for such an agreement.

Looking back to my 2016 article, it’s easy to see how the stoppage jibes with Trump’s long-standing pro-Russian, anti-Ukrainian stance. Here are four of the points I mentioned back then:

l In 2007, Trump said on CNN that Russian President Vladimir Putin was “doing a great job in rebuilding the image of Russia and also rebuilding Russia period.”

l During the 2016 presidential campaign, Trump declared he would “be friendly with Putin” and not automatically come to the aid of a NATO ally attacked by Russia.

l At the Republican convention in 2016, the Trump campaign eliminated a plank that called for giving Ukraine military aid to defend against invading Russian troops.

l On Oct. 7, 2016, the U.S. director of national intelligence and the secretary of homeland security said the Russians had hacked servers of the Democratic National Committee “to interfere with the U.S. election process” and tilt it toward Trump.

So, after his election victory in 2016, Trump owed President Putin. The Republican-majority Senate Intelligence Committee found that “the Russian government engaged in an aggressive, multi-faceted effort to influence, or attempt to influence, the outcome of the 2016 presidential election.” Trump rejected the evidence of this Russian interference uncovered by U.S. intelligence agencies and instead expressed his faith in Putin’s “extremely strong and powerful” denial.

In contrast, Trump holds a substantial grudge against President Zelenskyy; David Frum, a former George W. Bush speechwriter, calls it “a highly personal hatred.” In a telephone call with Zelenskyy in July 2019, Trump demanded that the Ukrainian president open a baseless investigation into Joe Biden as a quid pro quo for releasing $400 million in military aid. Zelenskyy did not knuckle under. Instead, Trump’s demand would form the basis of his first impeachment trial where he was accused of engaging in a “scheme or course of conduct for corrupt purposes in pursuit of personal political benefit.” Every Democratic senator and one Republican, Mitt Romney, found him guilty, but the vote fell far short of the two-thirds required to remove Trump from office.

The day after the Trump-Zelenskyy meeting in the White House on Feb. 28, former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, a close Putin ally, said Zelenskyy had received “a brutal dressing down in the Oval Office” and called for an end to American military aid to Ukraine. Two days later, Trump granted the Russian his wish. So, Trump’s latest stoppage can be seen as another thank you to Putin for his past support and another punishment for Zelenskyy’s chutzpah in not yielding to threats.

Trump’s most recent stoppage of arms sales to Ukraine is the most flagrant in a series of pro-Russian initiatives taken in the weeks since his inauguration. Last month in Saudi Arabia, Secretary of State Marco Rubio met for peace talks on the Ukrainian-Russian War with Russian representatives. No Ukrainian representatives were invited. News reports indicate the White House has already asked the State and Treasury Departments to draft options for easing the sanctions placed on Russia after its invasion of Ukraine. Trump’s defense secretary has ordered the Pentagon to stop efforts to counter Russian cyberattacks aimed at influencing American elections, and his attorney general has disbanded a foreign election interference task force.

Back in August 2016, Michael Morell, a career intelligence officer and the former deputy CIA director, said, “In the intelligence business, we would say that Mr. Putin had recruited Mr. Trump as an unwitting agent of the Russian Federation.” In 2024, Nikki Haley, then Trump’s leading rival for the Republican presidential nomination, said that Trump is siding with Putin, “a thug who’s made no bones about the fact that he wants to destroy America.”

Here’s the ending of that article which ran in the Chronicle just before Trump’s first term: “Having won the Cold War, we run the risk now of losing the peace. Trump’s intention to tilt toward Russia was public information before election day. The sad thing is millions of American voters just didn’t care.”

Trump did little to hide his intention to aid and abet Russian aims in his second term either. And again, not enough Americans cared.

— Keith Raffel is a syndicated columnist with Creators.