In an unparalleled abandonment of decades of American foreign policy, President Donald Trump has sided with Russian President Vladimir Putin against Ukraine.
Trump says, “Think of it, a modestly successful comedian, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, talked the United States of America into spending $350 billion to go into a war that couldn’t be won, that never had to start, but a war that he, without the U.S. and ‘TRUMP,’ will never be able to settle.”
Then Trump — who claims he has sole interpretation of American law — called Zelenskyy a “dictator.”
Trump was riled by Zelenskyy’s charge that he “lives in this disinformation space” fostered by Moscow. “We have seen this disinformation. We understand that it is coming from Russia,” Zelenskyy said.
How does the president of the United States tell an obvious lie easily shown to be a lie and then convince people his lie is the truth? Trump has declared Ukraine started the war with Russia.
The tragedy is how much Trump resembles Nero fiddling while Rome burns. If democracy perishes in the USA, it will be while Trump flirts with Putin.
Kellyanne Conway may have inadvertently started the parade of “the lie is the truth” with her defense of Trump’s lies. First, she instructed the media to “look at what’s in his heart.” Trump is an unrepentant liar, but Conway insists he is only a liar because he is so transparently truthful.
Political writer Eve Peyser says, “Trump is a liar, but since he doesn’t have a filter, he manages to lie authentically.”
Second, when Trump lied about the size of his first inauguration crowd, Conway invented a new phrase to defend Trump’s lies: “alternative facts.”
“MAGA accepts Trump’s “alternative facts” because they want reality to be what Trump says it is.”
MAGA accepts Trump’s “alternative facts” because they want reality to be what Trump says it is. I truly believe MAGA has inhabited the evangelical ability of naïve belief: “Trump said it. I believe it. That settles it.”
Confusing historical facts with propaganda should be easier to detect when almost everyone witnessing the events is still alive and knows the truth. January 6 has been given a historical revision. Now, Trump revises the history of the Russia-Ukraine War with a series of lies.
Lie No. 1: “Ukraine should have never started it.”
The idea of Ukraine starting the war with Russia exists only in the mind and rhetoric of Trump and his echo chambers like Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
Trump manages to ignore the facts and write a new history of the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Here’s what actually happened. Russia’s army crossed the border on Feb. 24, 2022, in an all-out invasion that Putin sought to justify by falsely saying it was needed to protect Russian-speaking civilians in Eastern Ukraine and prevent the country from joining NATO.
But Russia’s aggression against Ukraine didn’t start then. In 2014, Putin illegally annexed the Crimean Peninsula.
“The danger in Trump’s lie about Ukraine is far greater than all his other lies.”
Trump’s lie about Ukraine starting the war is on a par with his lies about the January 6 insurrectionists being patriots, the 2020 election being stolen, and the Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, eating people’s pets. The danger in Trump’s lie about Ukraine is far greater than all his other lies. According to the Washington Post, Trump has lied more than 31,000 times in his official capacities.
Lies No. 2–4: “You’ve been there for three years. You should have ended it. … You should have never started it. You could have made a deal.”
Here Trump loses his grip on reality. He gets wrong how long Russia has been at war with Ukraine. It’s really 11 years. He gets wrong Ukraine’s ability to stop the war with Russia. He gets wrong who started the war. And he gets wrong that Zelensky could have made a deal.
A deal at what cost? Trump, acting like a cross between a phony real estate developer and a Mafia don, attempts to bully Zelenskyy into giving up $500 billion worth of precious minerals. Trump acts as if he has a right to Ukraine’s natural resources. No surprise because Trump also thinks he has a right to annex Greenland and the Panama Canal, make Canada our 51st state, and turn Gaza into a gambling mecca of the Middle East.
No president ever has been as transactional as Trump. In Trump’s mind, all national alliances and international diplomacy, reduces to buying and selling. He is the smiling con man of the world, claiming, “Man, do I have a deal for you.”
Lie No. 5: “Ukraine should hold elections”
“We have a situation where we haven’t had elections in Ukraine, where we have martial law,” Trump said from Mar-a-Lago, adding in a post on social media: “A dictator without elections, Zelenskyy better move fast or he is not going to have a country left.”
Zelenskyy was elected to a five-year term in 2019, and the next presidential elections had been scheduled for spring 2024. But Ukrainian law prohibits parliamentary or presidential elections during a state of martial law, so Zelenskyy has remained in office. He has said he believes elections will be held in Ukraine after martial law is lifted. The country would need to amend the law if it decided to hold a vote.
Lie No. 6: “The leader in Ukraine, I mean, I hate to say it, but he’s down at 4% approval rating.”
Zelenskyy “retains a fairly high level of public trust” — about 57% — according to a report released by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology.
Speaking in Kyiv, Zelenskyy said the number given by Trump, for which the president cited no sources, was “disinformation” that originated in Russia, and Trump “unfortunately lives in this disinformation space.”
Lie No. 7: “When you see what’s taken place in Ukraine with millions of people killed, including the soldiers, millions of people killed, a big percentage of their cities knocked down to the ground, I don’t know how anybody even lives there.”
No estimates by any reputable analysis place deaths near the millions. Zelenskyy said earlier this month more than 46,000 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed since the start of the full-scale war in February 2022. He also has said “tens of thousands of civilians” have been killed in occupied areas of Ukraine. The most recent data from the Russian Defense Ministry, published in January 2023, pointed to just over 6,000 military deaths, although reports from U.S. and UK officials put that number significantly higher.
“Trump always struggles with basic math, especially counting.”
Trump always struggles with basic math, especially counting. When he made the announcement he was running for president, he said: “This is beyond anybody’s expectations. There’s been no crowd like this.”
At his infamous January 6, 2021, speech, about 6,000 protesters were assembled. Trump said, “We have hundreds of thousands of people here and I just want them to be recognized by the fake news media.”
Meanwhile, responses from members of Trump’s cabinet have bordered on the absurd.
During an interview with Fox News on Sunday, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth refused to say Russia started the war with Ukraine. He averred, “It is fair to say it’s a very complicated situation.”
Asked why people didn’t want to say Russia started the war, Hegseth responded asking whether “finger-pointing and pearl-clutching” would make peace more likely.
“Finger-pointing” and “pearl-clutching” have absolutely nothing to do with Russia starting the war with Ukraine.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio defended Trump’s frustration with Zelensky and claimed the previous administration had “frustrations” with the Ukrainian leader.
“I think President Trump is very upset at President Zelensky and rightfully so. Look, number one, Joe Biden had frustrations with Zelensky. People shouldn’t forget it,” Rubio said in an interview with CBS News.
Rubio, abandoning all sense of American responsibility, reasoned: “It doesn’t directly impact the daily lives of Americans. We care about it because it has implications for our allies and ultimately for the world. There should be some level of gratitude.”
But Trump’s lies impact Republican leaders in dangerous ways. For example, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson has announced the House will not consider a new bill to provide military support to Ukraine. This is a direct political consequence of Trump’s lie.
Speaking the truth: Pence and Chaney
One must look outside the Trump administration and Congress to find he most courageous and honest rebuttals of Trump’s lies: Former Vice President Mike Pence and former Republican Congresswoman Liz Chaney.
Pence speaks for all of us: “Mr. President, Ukraine did not ‘start’ this war. Russia launched an unprovoked and brutal invasion, claiming hundreds of thousands of lives. The road to peace must be built on the truth.”
Cheney’s post matters so much because she speaks truth to power. She plainly states the ignorance and ahistorical BS of Trump and Vance. She delineates exactly what Trump is doing.
She crowns her rebuttal with the finest of culinary topping: Trump has destroyed the conservative vision of President Ronald Reagan.
Rhetorical scholar Craig R. Smith says, “Donald Trump fragmented Reagan’s conservative vision.” The great evil for Reagan was the Soviet Union. One result was the Strategic Defense Initiative. Another was Reagan’s attempts to topple communist governments by aiding “freedom fighters” in Angola, Afghanistan and Nicaragua. Financial aid was provided to enemies of the Soviet Union, including the Mujahideen in Afghanistan.
For Reagan, the Soviet Union became the “evil empire,” and the Strategic Defense Initiative became “Star Wars.” For example, in Berlin in 1987, he insisted: “Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”
Cheney, an astute observer of history, makes sure we know Trump is the antithesis of Reagan: “He is aligning America with the enemies of the very freedom that generations have fought and died to defend.”
She adds: “History will not be kind to those who are helping him, especially those who call themselves Reagan Republicans while they pretend not to see what’s happening.”
Trump clearly wants Putin as his best buddy and our nations as allies. He is disrupting decades of U.S. foreign policy and abandoning NATO, the United Nations and the American role as the servant leader of the world.
Trump is not providing America with dignified international leadership in the face of our enemies; he is consorting with the enemy to make a buck.
Rodney W. Kennedy is a pastor and writer in New York state. He is the author of 11 books, including his latest, Dancing with Metaphors in the Pulpit.
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