Alan Zendell, April 25, 2025

Disingenuous: lacking in frankness, candor, or sincerity; false; hypocritical; insincere. The way Dictionary.com describes it, disingenuous is the perfect word to describe Trump’s approach to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Some people I respect believe we don’t have a dog in that fight. They argue that the time is long past when we should be spending billions of dollars policing Europe and risking our own military there. That’s a point worth debating, but one I strongly disagree with. If failing to stop Hitler in Czechoslovakia and Poland led to World War 2, there’s good reason to fear that failing to contain Putin’s ambitions for Russia might lead to World War 3. That must be our most important consideration, though there are some who believe confronting Putin directly will lead to World War 3.

Whichever of those arguments is correct, it’s clear that Donald Trump’s approach is wrong, and riskier than any of the others. It’s dishonest, and it’s time our other elected representatives said so. Trump, probably inadvertently, gave us a clue yesterday, when he said he wants to be remembered for expanding American territory. Not since Andrew Jackson have we had a president with so little regard for other nations’ sovereignty. Perhaps that explains why Trump sounds so sympathetic to Putin’s ambition to reconstruct the Soviet Union.

Historically, when Ukraine was part of Russia, it represented a large portion of Russia’s industrial capability, food production, and access to warm water ports in the Black Sea. It’s easy to see why Putin wants all that back, but the fact the he believes Russia needs those things doesn’t justify his aggression. Moreover, when the Soviet Union collapsed of its own weight, Ukraine was promised guarantees of its sovereignty in exchange for giving up its stockpile of Russian nuclear missiles. If countries are allowed to break treaties whenever it suits them, and no one stands up to them, the rule of law is worthless.

Trump said, yesterday, that his motivation for wanting to end the war is to stop the killing of 5,000 young soldiers a day. It’s appalling that he values the lives of Russian soldiers attacking a peaceful neighbor equally with those defending their homeland, and more than the thousands of Ukrainian civilians killed by Russian bombs and missiles. I also find it odd that Trump expects us to believe he gives a damn how many soldiers die in Ukraine. This is the same president who killed USAID, placing the lives of millions of innocent children in Africa at risk, the same president who wants to kill FEMA and rely entirely on states for disaster recovery, the same president who is willing to cut Medicaid and Food and Nutrition services to millions of American children who depend on them, the same president who put someone who doesn’t believe in either vaccines or  medical research in charge of funding both, and the same president who prefers to ignore the long-term dangers of climate change and other environmental threats because all those actions together enrich his wealthy donors. Trump is also the only president who called the thousands of Allied troops who died fighting to take Europe back from the Nazis suckers and losers.

Even worse, there remains a significant Congressional majority in favor of supporting Ukraine to the end. If not for Trump’s personal need to dominate world events, and his unique ability to terrify everyone around him, we wouldn’t be having this debate. Let’s call a spade a spade – the time for polite sugar-coating is long past. Putin and Trump are not buddies, despite the fact that Trump’s proposed peace plan would reward Russia by allowing it to retain all the territory they captured, including Crimea. Putin considers Trump a clown, no matter how much Trump wants us to believe he can influence him. Putin has been laughing at Trump, and his ramped up attacks since pretending to be considering Trump’s peace proposal have killed more civilians and destroyed more neighborhoods in Ukraine than in the past six months combined.

The sucker and loser in this picture is Trump. Like everything else he does, Trump’s position on Russia and Ukraine is entirely driven by his narcissism. Suck up to his buddy Vlad who laughs at him behind his back, but show how tough he is by ambushing a Ukrainian president under siege and attempting to publicly humiliate him before the world. That’s Donald Trump in a nutshell. He won’t be impeached because there are enough MAGA people in Congress to keep him in office, no matter that he represents the most dangerous existential threat to America in recent history.

Our founders never counted on the level of cowardice and self-interest that presently resides in Congress. We can only hope that oversight doesn’t kill what they created.