Editor’s Note: Frida Ghitis, a former CNN producer and correspondent, is a world affairs columnist. She is a weekly opinion contributor to CNN, a contributing columnist to The Washington Post and a columnist for World Politics Review. The views expressed in this commentary are her own. View more opinion on CNN.
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When Donald Trump became president in 2017, Russians popped champagne corks across Moscow, secretly and publicly. Trump’s victory, they believed, would be beneficial for the Kremlin. Today, the bubbly must be flowing again. Russian President Vladimir Putin didn’t even have to wait until the 2024 election and Trump’s possible return to the White House to have cause for celebration.
Trump is already proving fantastically useful for Putin.
The former president and his MAGA loyalists are wrapping up an invaluable gift for the Russian leader just in time for the second anniversary of Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
With every passing day it looks like they’re going to force the United States to break its word and all but abandon Ukraine – along with other war-torn regions and Indo-Pacific defense.
For a moment, it looked like the US Congress would behave responsibly. It was odd that urgently needed aid for Ukraine was included in a border security bill. But the bill, painstakingly negotiated and containing almost everything Republicans had demanded to deal with a crisis at the border, was suddenly torpedoed by Trump’s Republican allies.
Never mind that MAGA activists had spent years suggesting nothing mattered more than controlling the border. Never mind that the legislation imposes the toughest restrictions in decades. Never mind that it includes the support that Ukraine needs to fight a war that is of vital importance to the United States and its allies, along with funding for Israel’s war against Hamas, humanitarian aid for Gaza, and funding for operations in the Red Sea, where the Iran-backed Houthis are launching missiles at ships and near Taiwan, the self-ruled island claimed by China.
No, the bill was declared dead by Trump’s allies because the former president decided it was bad for him.
Trump has made it clear that he wants chaos at the border, so he can campaign on the issue, blaming Biden. Solving it, he said, would be a “gift” to Democrats.
For Trump, the worse things are in the United States, the better his chances of capitalizing on discontent and portraying Biden’s administration as a failure. That’s why he said he hopes a recession, an economic “crash,” happens before the end of the year.
It’s an astonishingly cynical tactic for a man trying to convince voters to put him in charge. It may or may not work at the polls, but it’s already turning policy-making into a deliberately counterproductive mess. Incredibly, he expects his supporters in Congress to vote against bills that they believe would benefit their country. It’s the reverse of patriotism.
Trump’s congressional toadies quickly fell into line even before they saw the border bill. And after he threatened anyone who supported it with the “end of their career,” many Republicans who might have wanted to support it quietly peeled away.
Sen. Brian Schatz (D-HI) declared himself “gobsmacked” by the result. Republicans got everything they demanded, he wrote on X, then they “killed it.”
Barring a miracle, the legislation is doomed and with it, very likely, the prospects for substantial US aid for Ukraine.
Imagine the joy in Moscow!
CIA Director Bill Burns earlier this year described abandoning Ukraine as a mistake of “historic proportions.”
Former Republican Rep. Liz Cheney noted the long-term repercussions. “On Trump’s orders,” she wrote on X, Republicans are not just discarding the border security deal – they’re also abandoning America’s allies in Ukraine. “Trump and the (GOP) are losing the war on purpose in an inexcusable…
Read More: Opinion: MAGA’s gift to Putin