Make nice with a dictator, scold our allies: Trump-Vance betrayal prompts a letter to Europe

In his first term as president, Trump went to France and passed on a visit to the U.S. military cemetery because of rain. A delegation lead by Chief of Staff John Kelly, the retired general, went instead. It was later reported that Trump rejected the idea of a cemetery visit because he didn’t want to mess up his hair, and he refered to the fallen soldiers as “losers” and “suckers.” Trump denied saying those things but Kelly later confirmed the original report. Trump, who dodged service in Vietnam, had earlier disparaged John McCain’s heroism and other veterans.

“A person that thinks those who defend their country in uniform, or are shot down or seriously wounded in combat, or spend years being tortured as POWs are all ‘suckers’ because ‘there is nothing in it for them,'” Kelly said of Trump in 2020. “A person that did not want to be seen in the presence of military amputees because ‘it doesn’t look good for me.’ A person who demonstrated open contempt for a Gold Star family — for all Gold Star families — on TV during the 2016 campaign, and rants that our most precious heroes who gave their lives in America’s defense are ‘losers’ and wouldn’t visit their graves in France.”

Trump’s vulgar disrespect for those who served and those who died not only confirmed his malignant narcissism; it revealed a level of ignorance and myopia about the American role in world history that fully explains his suck-up to Putin today. A man who can disparage those who died for freedom — to end the great atrocity of World War I, to stop Hitler and the Nazis in World War II — can easily walk away from an ally, like Ukraine, to make nice with a dictator.

And now Trump’s boot-licking vice president, Vance, has picked right up on this theme: It’s time for Germany to make nice with the country’s far-right extremists who have a history of Nazi sympathizing. Vance actually advanced this idea at last week’s security summit in Munich. Instead of calling for more solidarity among allies in defense of Ukraine, he got in Germany’s business and met with representatives of far-right AfD party.

Meanwhile, Trump made nice with Putin on the phone and claimed he and the murderous Russian dictator would settle the war, without Ukraine’s heroic leader, Zelensky, included in the talks.

And our new, thoroughly unqualified U.S. defense secretary said restoring Ukraine’s Eastern borders to where they were before the 2014 Russian invasion was unlikely. He said sending troops to help Ukraine was unlikely. He said supporting Ukraine membership in NATO was unlikely.

What a humiliation for the United States — the president, vice president and defense secretary making concessions to a Russian dictator while scolding leaders of European democracies. It’s a betrayal of an American ideal — that we love and protect democracy and that of our allies. It prompted my Letter To Europe on Substack.