US President Donald Trump had a bad week. Once more, to his (and no one else’s) shock and dismay, he did not win the Nobel Peace Prize, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky resisted his pressure to capitulate to Russia, which he probably thought would have assured the prize for next year.
Trump doesn’t take such affronts lightly. With his typical lightning response, he imposed sanctions on the International Criminal Court because one of its judges, who couldn’t be deserving because he never heard of her, won the coveted gold bauble. Don’t be surprised if he also slaps new tariffs on Norway, home of the Nobel committee.
In his noble pursuit of world peace, Trump just eased sanctions on Russian exports of diesel fuel, which will give his friend Russian President Vladimir Putin a boost for his troubled economy, and the funds he needs to kill more Ukrainians and help his allies in Iran build more drones and missiles, provide more satellite intelligence, and other lethal assistance for killing more Americans and our Arab and Israeli allies.
The United States is already the world’s largest exporter of diesel, so saying his gift to Putin will help American farmers and ranchers is a subterfuge to get Republican voters to believe he is dealing with their affordability problem, something until recently he branded a Democratic “hoax.”
In Trump’s inexplicable view, Ukraine’s refusal to agree to Russia’s terms is responsible for higher gas and other prices in America, not his own costly and erratic tariff wars, much less his lethal and extraordinarily costly war on Iran.
Trump announced that his “refinery for refinery” deal means Russia and Ukraine would halt their attacks. He apparently was so anxious to tell the world that he forgot to tell Zelensky, who said Russia’s attacks on energy infrastructure were nonetheless continuing. In addition, the Kremlin launched more drones on civilian targets.
Trump has said Zelensky “better damn well stop” hitting Russian oil facilities, but said nothing about Putin’s repeated attacks on civilian infrastructure or kidnapping Ukrainian children. Instead, Trump keeps saying Zelensky “could have ended this war many times” but “doesn’t want to end it.”
He conveniently ignores that his friend Putin started the war with the goal of taking over the former Soviet republic and making it part of his new Russian empire.
Trump’s ‘energy ceasefire’
Trump claimed he negotiated his “energy ceasefire” in a 90-minute phone call with Putin, apparently to congratulate the Russian on his 74th birthday last week. He failed to get any commitment to resume peace talks, a Kremlin spokesman said.
Axios called the deal “lopsided” since Ukraine has only one refinery and Russia has attacked it many times, while Russia has a vast network of refineries. Zelensky offered a quid pro quo: stop hitting our power grid and we’ll stop hitting your refineries. No takers so far.
Trump is also threatening to withhold intelligence sharing from Ukraine at a time when Russia is stepping up similar support for America’s enemies in Iran, Axios reported.
Richard Haass, former president of the Council on Foreign Relations, said on MSNOW that if Trump wants to be a peacemaker, he should “stop embracing Russia and penalizing Ukraine.”
Even some Republicans were outraged by Trump suspending sanctions on Russian energy exports. Former vice president Mike Pence called it a “betrayal,” and Rep. Don Bacon (R-Nebraska) accused Trump of “propping up Putin’s war economy.” Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) said this will let Putin “rake in revenues” to continue his “catastrophic war.”
Trump’s latest demand that Ukraine needs a new president goes deeper than resentment over Zelensky’s refusal to surrender to Putin’s demands. It is also revenge, a Trump obsession.
He holds the Ukrainian president responsible for his first impeachment. That was when he got caught trying to extort political dirt from Zelensky on the Biden family in exchange for congressionally approved military assistance.
Trump, 80, is having trouble understanding why he hasn’t gotten the eight Nobel prizes he thinks he’s entitled to. He seems unable to comprehend why having kidnapped the president of Venezuela, bullying Greenland and Canada to surrender to his control, threatening to wipe out the “whole civilization” of Iran, starting an unnecessary war of choice, and sending troops into American cities should not earn him the coveted gold.
What disturbs him more may not be that he didn’t win this year, but that in 2009, newly elected president Barack Obama received the prize. Trump was the voice of the birther movement that tried to brand the Hawaiian native as a Muslim (he relishes using the former president’s middle name, Hussein, as if it were the mark of Cain) born in Africa, and thus unqualified to be president of his white, Christian country.
Many view Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize as a rebuke of the George W. Bush presidency and its wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. By that standard, Trump’s successor may get the prize in 2029.
Trump has proven to be not only a sore loser, still refusing to accept that he lost the 2020 election (by more than 6 million votes), but he’s also a sore winner.
HE HAS MADE retribution a hallmark of his second term. Last week, he threatened that if Democrats win in November and try to impeach him, he may order his Justice Department to revive his revenge investigations of Obama as well as Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, and others he feels have done unspecified “very bad things.” Why? Because he can do “whatever I want” as president, he has said.
He just asked the Supreme Court to revive his suit accusing Clinton and others of orchestrating a plot to sabotage his 2016 campaign by tying it to Russia. Lower courts dismissed the suit as “frivolous” and fined his attorneys $1 million for filing it.
The hyper-litigious president is a convicted felon and has been judged liable for sexual abuse, but he has long pined to put his foes in prison for crimes that mostly seem centered on their opposition to him and his policies.
He wants his former FBI director jailed for taking a picture of seashells that the White House claims constitute a threat to the president’s life.
His administration has hired, fired, and replaced prosecutors who have been unable to deliver enough revenge indictments against assorted foes, real and imagined.
Trump has been traveling the country telling his MAGA cult to vote as though his name is on the midterm ballots, even though it is not. That has proven a boon to the Democrats, who are happily reminding voters that Trump’s approval on key issues is at rock bottom.
Elections in the US are a few weeks away, and if the polls are right, Democrats will control one or possibly both chambers of Congress, and Trump’s lame duck status officially begins. What is less clear – and more ominous – is the question of what a bitter, paranoid president who has little use for democratic institutions will do if that happens.
Buckle your seatbelts, it’s gonna be a bumpy ride.
The writer is a Washington-based journalist, consultant, lobbyist, and former legislative director at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.
