Trump consummates his bromance with Putin, selling out Europe and Ukraine

BERLIN — Donald Trump has tossed aside America’s 80-year-old alliance with democratic Europe and aligned with a Russian dictator who hates the West and wants to destroy it.

The president’s long-running bromance with Vladimir Putin — kept in check during Trump’s first term by responsible members of the administration — has finally been consummated.

Released from any restraints, Trump has publicly embraced a de facto alliance with a Russian war criminal. Most shameful, the president has taken up Putin’s position on Ukraine, blaming President Volodymyr Zelensky for starting a war that began with an unprovoked Russian invasion.

Trump has even begun using the Kremlin’s language in his vicious attacks on Zelensky.

It is still hard to believe, but at a time when the world is in turmoil, an American president is openly acting as a Russian shill.

Munich and Berlin, where I have spent the past few days, were sadly appropriate spots from which to watch Trump fracture America’s most important military and moral partnerships. In both cities, you can soak up the history of life under dictatorship and the painful transition to freedom.

Munich was where Adolf Hitler signed the infamous 1938 pact with British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain that carved up Czechoslovakia, and which convinced the führer the West was too weak to oppose his plans for territorial expansion..

Berlin is crammed with sites that recall life under fascist and communist dictatorships, from Hitler’s Third Reich to Soviet overlordship. They range from a dramatic Holocaust memorial to the still-standing bits of the Berlin Wall that provide mute testimony to the courage of those who died trying to escape communist East Berlin.

» READ MORE: Trump’s appeasement of Putin is a betrayal of Ukraine and European allies | Trudy Rubin

The handsome glass dome of the Reichstag, rebuilt after German reunification to house Germany’s parliament, stands as a stunning reminder of how a strong, generous United States, acting on its best principles, helped Germany transition to democracy after World War II. President George H.W. Bush godfathered German unification after the collapse of the Soviet Union. And Germany takes democracy seriously, becoming a stalwart U.S. ally and member of NATO.

Trump has now chosen to turn his back on history and close allies to partner with a despot. This is not America First. This is America in retreat.

For clues about what is driving the president — and our country — toward disaster, let’s look back at the week that saw Trump treat NATO partners like enemies and a war criminal like a friend.

The prelude to Trump’s break with European democracies came with a Feb. 12 phone call by Trump to Putin proposing talks on peace for Ukraine. The phone call itself was a gift to Putin, ending the West’s isolation of the Russian for his bloody attempt to destroy Ukraine’s independence. Worse yet, neither Ukraine nor European partners were consulted beforehand.

Russian media crowed. Talking heads on Russian TV breathlessly announced Trump was on their side.

If there was any doubt this was true, the date of the call was the giveaway, coming immediately after the 80th anniversary of the Yalta Conference in which President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin divided up postwar Europe between them. It’s hard to believe the timing of the call was coincidental.

Next came Vice President JD Vance’s much-awaited speech on Feb. 15 at the Munich Security Conference. There was silence in the main hall as top leaders nervously awaited some clarity on U.S. policy toward a peace process for Ukraine. Instead — to the shock of all participants, me included — Vance launched an attack on the internal policies of our European allies, berating them for allegedly handicapping extremist right-wing parties.

Before his speech, Vance met with German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, who asked him whether he intended to raise internal political issues in his remarks, given that Germany is holding strongly contested national elections on Sunday. Vance dishonestly assured Steinmeier, that he didn’t intend to do so. Then the vice president went out and praised Germany’s extreme right-wing pro-Putin party, Alternative for Germany, known as the AfD, while falsely accusing mainstream parties of mistreating the extremists.

“He wants to build an alliance with pro-Putin parties in Europe,” was the conclusion drawn by German officials I spoke with. What was especially shocking was how blatantly Vance interfered in Germany’s elections, (following the lead of fervent AfD booster Elon Musk). The vice president even visited the AfD’s leader in Munich while pointedly avoiding a meeting with Chancellor Olaf Scholz.

Next came Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s trip to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on Feb. 17, with a team tasked with advancing talks between Ukraine and Russia. Ukraine and the Europeans were excluded from the meeting, even though Trump insists Europe is solely responsible for any security arrangements to make certain Putin won’t break a deal..

Rubio, formerly a Russia hawk who called Putin a “butcher” and supported Ukraine, stressed “the incredible opportunities ...to partner with Russians” once a deal was done. This is the same line Russian officials have been heavily promoting.

From then on, during this shameful week of U.S. surrender to Moscow, Trump’s rhetoric began to sound as if it had been dictated by the Kremlin. On Feb. 19, the U.S. president moved fully into Putin’s camp, blaming Ukraine for starting the war.

“You should have never started it,” he spewed at Zelensky, “you should have made a deal.” This outlandish outburst blamed the Ukrainian leader for the massive Russian invasion the world witnessed live on TV and social media - as it happened.

Moreover, the “deal” to which was referring was one that Putin has repeatedly offered. It would not only permit Russia to grab even more territory than it has already seized, but would shrink Ukraine’s military and forbid any international guarantees to prevent Russia from reinvading. Such guarantees are essential, since Putin has broken every deal he ever signed with Ukraine.

» READ MORE: At Munich Security Conference, Trump makes it clear: Europe and Ukraine are on their own | Trudy Rubin

Finally, in his latest, most detestable pro-Putin tirade on Trump Social, in which every sentence contained at least one lie, Trump called Zelensky “an unelected dictator” who had less than 4% approval rating in Ukraine (the real number is 57%, higher than Trump’s current standing).

Moreover, Trump repeated Putin’s call for elections in Ukraine — a Russian ploy to try to get rid of the Ukrainian leader and install a puppet in Kyiv. The president conveniently ignored the facts: Elections during war, at a time of martial law, are illegal in Ukraine. Moreover, they would be impossible to hold when 20% of the country is occupied and millions of Ukrainians are displaced at home and abroad.

The obvious question, after a week of Trump’s capitulation to Putin, was asked by the European Union’s foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas: “Why are we giving them everything that they want even before the negotiations have been started? It’s appeasement. It has never worked.”

As I head home, here’s my hypothesis about the meaning of the appalling U.S. cave-in this week: Trump is dazzled by the prospect of a new Yalta accord, cooked up by him and Putin, where the U.S. can seize land in the Western Hemisphere (think Greenland and the Panama Canal) just as the Russian leader does abroad..

Trump doesn’t appear to care if Putin eventually swallows Ukraine, so long as he can receive credit for a (temporary) ceasefire. Perhaps he believes he’ll receive the Nobel Peace Prize he’s yearned even if there is no peace for Ukraine.

Meantime, the president’s minions will continue to interfere in European elections in hopes of advancing the election of pro-Putin extremist parties that disdain democratic checks and balances on central government power.

The next date to watch for in this shameful appeasement drama is May 9, to see if Trump agrees to travel to Moscow and stand as a prop on the viewing platform during the Victory Day celebration of the Soviet defeat of Nazism. Recall that Putin calls Ukrainians Nazis.

Trump has denied he will attend, and I hope he means it, but he is a master at reversing positions.

Before then, it is critical for Americans to grasp on which side of the divide between democracy and an aggressive Russia the U.S. president now stands.