Littwin: There’s no bottom to Trump’s assault on democracy, including the one in Ukraine ...Middle East

If there’s anything we’ve learned over the first month of the Trump restoration, it’s that there is no bottom.

Just when you think that the Musk/Trump/DOGE/MAGA full-frontal assault on democratic norms has to be at least somewhere near the bottom, Donald Trump has now officially joined hands with Vladimir Putin in support of Russia’s criminal assault on Ukraine. 

And we’re still free-fallin’.

We’ve heard Trump repeating Putin’s absurd talking points on Ukraine — that Volodymyr Zelenskyy is the real dictator, that Ukraine is actually responsible for starting the war, that Zelenskyy’s approval ratings, which are, in fact, much higher than Trump’s, are at 4% — but all that could be dismissed as so much Trumpian bluster.

Now we’ve seen the action. In marking the three-year anniversary of the war in Ukraine, several resolutions were introduced at the United Nations. 

Guess which side the United States took.

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Eighteen nations voted against a European-led General Assembly resolution condemning Russia’s assault on Ukraine, condemning Russia’s war crimes in Ukraine, and calling for the withdrawal of Russian troops from Ukraine.

Here’s the list (with an explanation for why each of the countries backed Russia): 

Belarus. Burkina Faso. Burundi. The Central African Republic. Equatorial Guinea. Eritrea. Haiti. Hungary. Iran. Israel. Mali. The Marshall Islands. Nicaragua. Niger. North Korea. Russia. Sudan. 

And the United States of America.

Add this to the list of unprecedented shameful acts brought to us by Trump. I’m pretty sure there has never been a U.N. vote in which the U.S. stood exclusively with this list of 17 nations.

The resolution did pass easily, with 93 nations voting for it — including nearly all of what we would have once called America’s allies — and 65 abstaining. Because it’s apparently still possible, at this late date, to find people who adhere to the truth.

But the sound you may be hearing is Ronald Reagan rolling over in his grave at even the thought of this vote.

The sound you may not quite be hearing is the sound of silence from the formerly anti-Putin Republican hawks in Congress.

The sound you can clearly hear is Trump twisting the knife in Ukraine’s back, blaming the victim for the nearly million dead in the war. What you also hear is the Republican Party becoming the party of appeasement. Somewhere Neville Chamberlain is cheering them on from his grave.

And, arguably, that’s not even the worst of America’s betrayal of Ukraine.

Even as Trump and his henchpeople were spreading Russian disinformation about the war, even as JD Vance was ripping European allies for not giving sufficient voice to far-right, neo-Nazi political parties, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent was in Ukraine demanding that Zelenskyy sign a two-page document assigning over half of Ukraine’s mineral rights to the United States as payback for the money that the U.S. has spent in support of Ukraine.

In a recent version of a deal — which some have estimated to be worth $500 billion —  there is no guarantee of Ukrainian economic or military security in exchange for half the mineral rights of a nation that lies largely in ruin from the Russian assault. Instead, Bessent said in an interview on Sunday, there was an “implicit guarantee” of American support should Ukraine be attacked again.

Of course, an “implicit guarantee” is not, as students of the English language might know, a guarantee at all.

As Anne Appelbaum — the prominent historian of Soviet Russia, present-day Russia and of the post-communism era in former Eastern Bloc countries — writes, the most obvious comparison to this move against Ukraine is the German-punishing Versailles Treaty after World War I, which is commonly believed to have led to World War II. 

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Except, of course, Germany was the villain in the tale at the time and Ukraine is now the victim of Russia’s villainy.

And yet, the United States and Ukraine have apparently agreed to a minerals deal — though with few details available as of this writing on Tuesday afternoon — which, we can hope, is not as onerous as earlier versions and for which Ukraine receives some kind of explicit guarantee in return.

However it works out, it’s still Trumpian extortion, plain and simple.

And it’s another example of Atlantic writer Adam Serwer’s famous judgment on Trump — that cruelty is the point.

Of course, while demanding mineral rights from Ukraine, the proposed deal seems to cut out any such return for Europeans countries, which as a group have spent, despite what you hear from Trump, more than the United States in aiding Ukraine’s war effort.

You can watch French President Emmanuel Macron fact-checking Trump on aid to Ukraine in real time in their recent joint news conference. Macron did so while smiling and playing nice with Trump — in the latest European strategy on how to handle Trump, with flattery and gentle resistance. 

Or you could watch a hilarious take on the news conference via Stephen Colbert. Better yet, watch both.

Meanwhile the Trump administration is negotiating directly with Russia on how to end the war in Ukraine, which was not invited to the talks. Our European allies also weren’t invited to the talks.

What are the odds that Putin and Trump could come up with a deal that benefits anyone other than, well, Putin or Trump?

If there is no deal and Trump cuts off military aid to Ukraine, as he has threatened, it’s hard to say what might happen. Clearly the advanced weaponry sent from the United States can’t be matched anywhere else.

And yet, there are those who posit that Russia is in a weaker military position than generally assumed and that Ukraine, which has fought so bravely against a superpower,  would continue to fight on, presumably with far greater contributions of financial and military aid from European nations.

But that doesn’t mean that Ukraine’s people won’t continue to suffer if the war continues. Trump is right — I say this without hesitation — that the war must end. But it must end on terms acceptable to Ukraine, which is presently being asked to give up those mineral rights and also cede territory ruthlessly taken by Russia.

What kind of deal would that be?

Not just a raw deal, as anyone could see. Not just another example of Trump’s endless sucking up to Putin.

But a shameful deal, by “careless people,” of whom F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote a century ago in his novel, “The Great Gatsby,” “smashed up things and creatures and retreated back to their money or their vast carelessness.”

And with that kind of reckless carelessness, brought to you by Trump and his craven group of sycophants and enablers, we see once again that there is, in fact, no bottom anywhere in sight.

Mike Littwin has been a columnist for too many years to count. He has covered Dr. J, four presidential inaugurations, six national conventions and countless brain-numbing speeches in the New Hampshire and Iowa snow. Sign up for Mike’s newsletter.

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