Washington Merry-Go-Round

IMMEDIATE RELEASE 23 February 2025
WASHINGTON MERRY-GO-ROUND
Today’s Events in Historical Perspective
America’s Longest-Running Column Founded 1932
Why?
By Douglas Cohn and Eleanor Clift         
 
WASHINGTON – The elephant in the room that few people seem to address is a single word: Why?
         Why is Pres. Donald Trump so subservient to Russian dictator Vladimir Putin? Why does he never speak ill of him? Why does he parrot the Russian’s talking points? Why does he denigrate and undermine our allies who are confronting Putin? Why does he do so even when these actions are contrary to the views of most of his MAGA base? Why is he is demanding war reparations from Ukraine, the victim of Putin’s aggression?
              Instead, interviewers and commentators tend to focus on the actions rather than the motivation. And his motivation can only be one of two things. Either Trump actually believes Putin is in the right or Putin has Trump in his pocket.
              If it is the first, then we can only conclude that Trump aspires to dictatorial control, which is why he speaks so well of Putin and another dictator, the notorious Kim Jong Un of North Korea.
              If it is the second, we have a national security problem.
              Either way, we need an answer to the question: Why?
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy certainly is wondering why the leader of the free world is behaving in such a bizarre fashion. Trump says Zelinsky, “must make peace or he won’t have a country anymore.” Further, Trump said that military aid the Biden administration granted was not a grant, and he want you to pay it back twice over by signing over half your mineral rights.
About the war that is now in its third year, Trump says, “he should never have started it.” Then, Fox News turned on him and he retracted.
And Trump is just getting started. He called the 47-year-old wartime leader a “dictator” and berated him for not holding elections. But how are elections held when half your population has fled, and Russian bombs are falling?
Meanwhile, Trump is pulling 20,000 U.S. troops out of NATO in Europe and telling our NATO allies the United States will not send peacekeepers to Ukraine when the war ends.
Europe is answering with an emergency meeting, and the UK has already offered to send peacekeepers. They would not be going as NATO members, but Putin will not see it that way, and Trump is taking Putin’s side although there could be no peace without peacekeepers.
Finally, a handful of Republicans broke with Trump over his Putin fetish, most notably Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., who chairs the Senate Armed Services Committee, saying, “Putin is a war criminal and should be in jail for the rest of his life, if not executed.”
House Armed Services committee member, Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., said, “The president needs a do-over day – and start again. He took a bad turn.” A moderate Republican, Bacon added, “I think what he (Trump) said is wrong, and it’s a shame.”
When the full impact of Trump’s words and actions are understood, more Republicans will join them. There is even talk about removing the president by employing the 25th Amendment, but this would require 20 Republican senators to join with Democrats in such an effort and a similar percentage of House Republicans to do likewise.
              It will all hinge on one question: Why?
 
See Eleanor Clift’s book Selecting a President, and Douglas Cohn’s latest books The President’s First Year: The Only School for Presidents Is the Presidency and World War 4: Nine Scenarios (endorsed by seven flag officers).
          Twitter:  @douglas_cohn
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END WASHINGTON MERRY-GO-ROUND