The drama going on between President Trump and President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine raises one of the most disturbing questions I’ve ever had to ask about my own country: Are we being led by a dupe for Vladimir Putin — by someone ready to swallow whole the Russian president’s warped view of who started the war in Ukraine and how it must end? Or are we being led by a Mafia godfather, looking to carve up territory with Russia the way the heads of crime families operate? “I’ll take Greenland, and you can take Crimea. I’ll take Panama, and you can have the oil in the Arctic. And we’ll split the rare earths of Ukraine. It’s only fair.”
Either way, my fellow Americans and our friends abroad, for the next four years at least, the America you knew is over. The bedrock values, allies and truths America could always be counted upon to defend are now all in doubt — or for sale. Trump is not just thinking out of the box. He is thinking without a box, without any fidelity to truth or norms that animated America in the past.
I can’t blame our traditional friends for being disoriented. Read the sorrowful essay last week by the heroic Soviet dissident and freedom fighter Natan Sharansky:
“When I first heard President Donald Trump’s words on the tarmac — when he blamed Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, for starting the war that Russia launched against Ukraine — I was absolutely shocked,” Sharansky wrote for The Free Press. “Trump seems to have adopted the rhetoric of Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin. He repeated a line from the Kremlin that sounded like Soviet-style propaganda: that Zelensky is not a legitimate leader. When Putin, the seemingly eternal leader of Russia, says it, it is laughable. When the president of the United States says it, it’s alarming, tragic, and does not comply with common sense.”
That’s a benign interpretation of Trump — that he is just besotted with Putin, Russia’s Christian nationalist, anti-woke crusader, and not applying the common sense that he promised. But then there is also another explanation: Trump does not see American power as the cavalry coming to rescue the weak seeking freedom from those out to quash them; he sees America as coming to shake down the weak. He’s running a protection racket.
Consider this stunning paragraph from a Wall Street Journal article about Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s recent meeting in Kyiv with Zelensky. Bessent presented Zelensky with an offer he couldn’t refuse — to sign over Ukrainian mineral rights to America, worth hundreds of billions of dollars, to compensate for U.S. aid.
It was a scene right out of “The Godfather”: “Bessent pushed the paper across the table, demanding that Zelensky sign it …. Zelensky took a quick look and said he would discuss it with his team. Bessent then pushed the paper closer to Zelensky. ‘You really need to sign this,’ the Treasury secretary said. Zelensky said he was told ‘people back in Washington’ would be very upset if he didn’t. The Ukrainian leader said he took the document but didn’t commit to signing.”