(Bloomberg Opinion) -- The days when “politics stopped at the water's edge” are long gone. It seems quaint to think that U.S. foreign policy was once based on bipartisan consensus, shaped by a need to restrain Soviet Union-era communism. Even so, it's jarring for Americans to see a former president calling his successor “dumb” at a time when the commander-in-chief is conducting sensitive negotiations for international sanctions to stop an aggressive Russian bear.
Yet so it was when Donald Trump spoke Saturday night at the winter Conservative Political Action Committee. After a week in which he praised Vladimir Putin as “smart” and “savvy” for attacking Ukraine, Trump piled on in an even uglier manner, claiming that, “This horrific attack would have never happened if the election wasn't rigged and I was still president.” In so doing, Trump intertwined two “Big Lies.” His false stolen-election narrative, entering its third year, has now been augmented with the claim that only his strong foreign policy kept Vladimir Putin in check, rather than his erratic policy praising the Russian president to the heavens while doing everything possible to destabilize NATO.
This is the reality to be confronted by anyone who wants to lay claim to leadership of the Republican Party from now until 2024.
Trump repeated his praise of Putin as “very smart” while condemning current administration leadership as “so dumb.” Would the attack have occurred if Trump were still in office? Perhaps not (as many Americans seemingly believe) – but only because, reportedly, Trump planned to withdraw the United States from NATO. In such a scenario, Ukraine would already have been in a vastly weakened position (just as it would have been if Trump followed through with his 2019 threat to withhold arms if Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy didn't provide dirt on Joe Biden).
Post-CPAC, Trump was asked by Fox News what message he has for Putin. His answer: “I have no message.”
Trump has refused to criticize Putin since he began his rise in the GOP. As a presidential candidate in 2015, he was asked why he accepted Putin's de facto endorsement — a man known to have killed journalists (among other political enemies). Trump responded, “Well, I think that our country does plenty of killing, too.” He repeated the sentiment in a 2017 interview with Bill O'Reilly: “There are a lot of killers. We've got a lot of killers. What do you think? Our country's so innocent?” In his infamous public appearance in Helsinki in 2018, Trump tossed his own intelligence community aside to accept Putin's word that Russia hadn't interfered in the U.S. 2016 election.
In the 1980s, Reagan's former ambassador to the UN, Jeane Kirkpatrick, referred to the Democrats as the “Blame America First” crowd. Now Trump has seized that role for himself. The Republican Party that once touted as its North Star a Ronald Reagan who denounced the Soviet Union as an “evil empire” is in thrall to a man who has smeared his own country as a murderous aggressor and now praises an actual killer who is invading a fellow democracy.
Is the GOP's conservative base — as manifested this week by CPAC — truly going to jump on this merry-go-round again?
In a new memoir, Trump's attorney general, William Barr, urges the party to move on from Trump, who he believes threw away the 2020 reelection because of his lack of self-restraint. Trump's praise of Putin as he invades another country seems like just the opportunity Republicans need to start backing away.
But the difficulty is readily apparent: Sunday morning, ABC news anchor George Stephanopoulos asked Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton, an otherwise fiery hawk tight with the conservative base, to condemn Trump's praise of Putin's “savvy” invasion of Ukraine. Three times Cotton was asked, “Why can't you condemn Trump's praise of Putin?” And three times he replied only, “You should ask the former President; I don't criticize other politicians.”
Putin has cast a wide shadow over Trump for at least seven years. While the former president called federal probes into his 2016 campaign a Democratic hoax, a Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee confirmed the surreptitious role that Russian intelligence had in aiding Trump's electoral success.
And now Trump has linked two fantastical, anti-American themes for 2022 and 2024 that Republicans must be held accountable for.
In the coming weeks, Congress's Jan. 6th Committee will hold public hearings that lay out Trump's actions perpetuating the Big Lie and the insurrection they spawned. Republicans must be required to explain how they can align themselves with a man who sparked — and continues to inflame — a domestic crisis. And whether they now think Trump's inability to denounce Putin should disqualify him for continued leadership of the GOP.
If the media fails to extract real answers from Republicans on these questions, the Democrats had better be prepared to do the heavy lifting themselves. Trump's lies have weakened the United States domestically and that has had ramifications globally. He needs to be called out on this now and continuously.
More From Other Writers at Bloomberg Opinion:
- No, Republicans Aren't the Party of Putin: Ramesh Ponnuru
- Phony Republican Scandals Harm Democracy: Jonathan Bernstein
- Ukraine Shows That U.S. Cannot Afford Culture Wars: Clive Crook
This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.
Robert A. George writes editorials on education and other policy issues for Bloomberg Opinion. He was previously a member of the editorial boards of the New York Daily News and New York Post.
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