The more Donald Trump allies the United States with Vladimir Putin’s Russia, the more democracies around the world recoil. The reactions in Moscow, however, are predictably different.
“The new administration is rapidly changing all foreign policy configurations,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov declared over the weekend. “This largely aligns with our vision.”
The apparent fact that Russia is pleased hardly comes as a surprise. No modern White House has been so overtly eager to kowtow to Moscow the way Trump and his team have, so of course the Kremlin is delighted by the new Republican-imposed “alignment.” It was against this backdrop that a reporter asked the American president directly for his reaction to Peskov’s comments.
Initially, Trump dodged the question entirely, so a few minutes later, during the same Q&A at the White House, a different reporter followed up, effectively re-asking the same question, and adding whether Americans should be concerned about the administration’s approach. Trump didn’t challenge the premise, though he largely dodged the question again.
It was an unsatisfying response to one of the world’s most important lines of inquiry, but the president’s evasiveness was ultimately inconsequential: The facts of the Republican’s alignment with Russia’s wishes are so painfully obvious, and they’re part of a series of events that appear to be intensifying. NBC News reported:
The Trump administration is pausing military aid to Ukraine, according to two U.S. officials, following last week’s public clash between President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the Oval Office. “The president has been clear that he is focused on peace. We need our partners to be committed to that goal as well,” a White House official said Monday. “We are pausing and reviewing our aid to ensure that it is contributing to a solution.”
In case this isn’t obvious, the more the White House halts support for Ukraine, the more likely it is that Ukraine will no longer be able to protect itself against Russian aggression.
This is, in other words, exactly what Russia wanted to see from the American administration. But just as notably, it was the latest in a series of developments in which the White House also delivered exactly what Russia wanted to see from the American administration.
Consider what all of these recent moves have in common:
And did I mention that Senate Republicans, at Trump’s behest, confirmed Tulsi Gabbard as the nation’s director of national intelligence, despite her habit of echoing Russian propaganda? Because that happened, too. What’s more, this list might yet grow. Reuters reported that the Republican administration is also eyeing an overhaul to existing U.S. sanctions on Russia. Imagine a hypothetical scenario in which Putin spoke privately to Trump and provided the American president with a to-do list. Would it look much different than the White House’s agenda from the last six weeks? This post updates our related earlier coverage.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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