ALTHOUGH THIS IS NOT SURPRISING, IT IS INDICATIVE OF HOW REPUBLICAN STATECRAFT AND MAGA DELUSIONS INTERACTPossibly no promise except lowering the price of eggs became more of a Donald Trump signature line than his posturing on the Ukraine war:
////Former President Donald Trump said if reelected he would end the war in Ukraine before his inauguration because he is respected by Ukraine and Russia’s leaders.
////“That is a war that’s dying to be settled. I will get it settled before I even become president,” the Republican said during his debate with Vice President Kamala Harris on Tuesday. If I win, when I’m president-elect and what I’ll do is I’ll speak to one, I’ll speak to the other, I’ll get them together.”
////“I know Zelenskyy very well and I know Putin very well. I have a good relationship and they respect your president, O.K., they respect me, they don’t respect Biden.”////
It's completely unsurprising that he's been backing away from that since day one as well, with my personal favorite idiotic lie coming about a month ago:
////“Well, I was being a little bit sarcastic when I said that,” Trump said in a clip released ahead of the episode airing Sunday. “What I really mean is I’d like to get it settled and, I’ll, I think, I think I’ll be successful.”////
At the end of March, CNN published a timeline of the Trump administration reeling backward from his words, which could have been subtitled, "President Trump learns that neither Putin nor Zekenskyy actually respects him."
Now, predictably, comes Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who took time off from his daily masturbabory quest for foreigners who said something he doesn't like to announce that the United States is about to dump the entire enterprise:
////“We are now reaching a point where we need to decide whether this is even possible or not,” Rubio told reporters upon departure. “Because if it’s not, then I think we’re just going to move on.”
////“It’s not our war,” Rubio said. “We have other priorities to focus on.” He said the U.S. administration wants to decide “in a matter of days.”////
This was, of course, inevitable, but there's an aspect of the situation that deserves closer attention: how successfully the Trump administration has been in terms of undermining pro-Ukraine legislators in his own party.
Just three days ago, The Guardian (among many others) ran stories about GOP lawmakers being outraged about Russian attacks on Palm Sunday to buttress the support of MAGA voters on behalf of Ukraine:
Indeed, just a month ago the Brookings Institution found that support for Ukraine and disdain for Russia had remained strong among MAGA voters:
But no more. Polling released yesterday by Pew shows us how much this has changed:
That this has been driven by President Trump himself is undeniable, as Jeffrey Goldberg first noted less than a month after the Inauguration, but pay attention to the motivations he ascribes to the shift:
////One difference from Trump's first four years in office is that he has now adopted not only a pro-Putin take on Russia's conflict with Ukraine, but an approach to foreign policy overall, which echoes Putin's throwback view of the world as a playground for predatory great powers to exert nearly unlimited control over the smaller nations that fall within their sphere of influence.////
But, as Susan Glasser points out in the same discussion, this ignores the moment when Trump directly signaled his supporters that they had changed their minds, referring to the "breathtaking moment that we will remember was what happened this Tuesday afternoon when Trump in a press conference in Mar-a-Lago explicitly said to Ukraine, it's your fault that Russia invaded you."
This was NOT a gaffe, a dementia moment, or an off-the-cuff remark any more than his famous exhortation to the Proud Boys in the 2016 presidential debate: "Proud Boys, stand back and stand by."
While CATO's Brandon Buck awkwardly attempts to graft growing MAGA opposition to the war and antipathy toward Ukraine to "a generation’s experiences in the Global War on Terror," the reality is both far simpler and more terrifying.
Trump's MAGA base supports him through thick and thin, through backtracking and vacillation, because -- as polling by Northwestern University determined nearly a decade ago -- they don't care what his position was yesterday, they don't care what his position might be tomorrow -- they only care about his position today:
On the other hand, there is a strong core of positions upon which Trump has never wavered ... and cannot waver without losing his MAGA core support: racism, homophobia, nativism, and Christian nationalism. Neither candidate nor President Trump could ever survive waffling on the issues closest to MAGA's heart.
It if literally this simple:
As long as Donald Trump is enacting policies designed to place white Christian nationalist males at the center of his agenda ...
... they literally don't care what he says or does about anything else.
This defines the parameters (such boundaries always exist) beyond which he may not go, but those parameters are so broad that he can undercut any other position that Republicans have traditionally held and not feel blowback from his core constituents.
Which gives him incredible power over every other elected Republican:
Trump loves to fellate dictators, true. But MAGA doesn't care whether he spits or swallows just as long as he keeps people of color, queers, uppity liberal women, and greasy immigrants under his boots while he's kneeling.
He's so good at this that he can simultaneously attack higher education in a purely performative rage over antisemitism while not losing his hold on the stunningly large percentage of MAGA loons who wore "Six million was not enough" T-shirts to January 6.
////Republican supporters of Ukraine are using the Kremlin’s deadly missile strikes as their latest evidence to convince Donald Trump that he must increase pressure on Vladimir Putin if he wants to reach a ceasefire deal.
////Pro-Ukraine lawmakers and aides in the Republican party have carefully navigated Trump’s apparent affinity for Putin and avoided direct intervention in their efforts to shift his support toward Kyiv. But following the Russian strikes during Palm Sunday celebrations in the city of Sumy, advisers and allies have been highly vocal in condemning the attack using language meant to resonate with the US president’s conservative, religious base.
////“Putin and peace apparently do not fit in the same sentence,” wrote Lindsey Graham, the Trump-allied senator who has sought to balance his support for Ukraine with his desire to remain on Trump’s good side. “Russia’s barbaric Palm Sunday attack on Christian worshippers in Ukraine seems to be Putin’s answer to efforts to achieve a ceasefire and peace,” he wrote.
////“While Ukraine has accepted President Trump’s ceasefire proposal, Putin continues to show he is more interested in bloodshed than in peace,” said Michael McCaul, a representative for Texas. “Targeting innocent civilians as they gather to worship on Palm Sunday is beyond the pale.”////
Indeed, just a month ago the Brookings Institution found that support for Ukraine and disdain for Russia had remained strong among MAGA voters:
////ast summer, our American public opinion poll showed that Americans supported Ukraine over Russia by a wide margin: 62% to 2%. Taken a week after the fateful White House meeting between President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and a few days after the White House announced it was suspending aid to Ukraine, our latest poll shows roughly the same results: 59% of Americans say they sympathize more with Ukraine while 2% say they sympathize more with Russia. And only a little more than a third (35%) say they support Trump’s decision to suspend aid to Ukraine.////
But no more. Polling released yesterday by Pew shows us how much this has changed:
/////Republicans and Republican-leaning independents have become less likely over the past year to say Russia is an enemy of the United States – and more likely to call it a partner or competitor.
////Republicans have also become less likely to say the U.S. has a responsibility to help Ukraine defend itself and to express concern about Russia defeating Ukraine or invading other countries in the region. As a result of this change in opinion, the partisan gap on many of these issues has grown.
////For example, when asked whether Russia is an enemy, competitor or partner of the U.S., 40% of Republicans say Russia is an enemy, down from 58% last year. The share of Democrats and Democratic leaners who see Russia as an enemy is down 5 percentage points over the same period. Overall, half of Americans now call Russia an enemy, down from 61% in 2024.////
That this has been driven by President Trump himself is undeniable, as Jeffrey Goldberg first noted less than a month after the Inauguration, but pay attention to the motivations he ascribes to the shift:
////One difference from Trump's first four years in office is that he has now adopted not only a pro-Putin take on Russia's conflict with Ukraine, but an approach to foreign policy overall, which echoes Putin's throwback view of the world as a playground for predatory great powers to exert nearly unlimited control over the smaller nations that fall within their sphere of influence.////
But, as Susan Glasser points out in the same discussion, this ignores the moment when Trump directly signaled his supporters that they had changed their minds, referring to the "breathtaking moment that we will remember was what happened this Tuesday afternoon when Trump in a press conference in Mar-a-Lago explicitly said to Ukraine, it's your fault that Russia invaded you."
This was NOT a gaffe, a dementia moment, or an off-the-cuff remark any more than his famous exhortation to the Proud Boys in the 2016 presidential debate: "Proud Boys, stand back and stand by."
While CATO's Brandon Buck awkwardly attempts to graft growing MAGA opposition to the war and antipathy toward Ukraine to "a generation’s experiences in the Global War on Terror," the reality is both far simpler and more terrifying.
Trump's MAGA base supports him through thick and thin, through backtracking and vacillation, because -- as polling by Northwestern University determined nearly a decade ago -- they don't care what his position was yesterday, they don't care what his position might be tomorrow -- they only care about his position today:
////All candidates massage their records, but the charge of changing positions can doom a campaign, most notably Democrat John Kerry in 2004. He never recovered from his statement that he voted for an Iraq War measure before he voted against it.
////But evidence that Trump has traded liberal views for conservative ones does not much matter to his most enthusiastic supporters.
////“We evolve. That’s the great thing about America,” said former army Capt. Aunisa Strokland at an Iowa rally. “You have the right to believe in anything you want to believe in at a given point. I don’t believe in things I used to believe in five years ago.”////
On the other hand, there is a strong core of positions upon which Trump has never wavered ... and cannot waver without losing his MAGA core support: racism, homophobia, nativism, and Christian nationalism. Neither candidate nor President Trump could ever survive waffling on the issues closest to MAGA's heart.
It if literally this simple:
As long as Donald Trump is enacting policies designed to place white Christian nationalist males at the center of his agenda ...
... they literally don't care what he says or does about anything else.
This defines the parameters (such boundaries always exist) beyond which he may not go, but those parameters are so broad that he can undercut any other position that Republicans have traditionally held and not feel blowback from his core constituents.
Which gives him incredible power over every other elected Republican:
////So the primary fear among Republicans is that, individually, if they get on Trump’s shit list, they may well be kicked out of office, and Trump doesn’t really care whether his alternative candidate can win or not. He gets his vengeance either way. This tells them that, if Trump is sufficiently angy, he can take it a step further: he can ask his MAGAs to not vote Republican. He can ask them to stay home, to vote for a third party candidate, whatever.////
Trump loves to fellate dictators, true. But MAGA doesn't care whether he spits or swallows just as long as he keeps people of color, queers, uppity liberal women, and greasy immigrants under his boots while he's kneeling.
He's so good at this that he can simultaneously attack higher education in a purely performative rage over antisemitism while not losing his hold on the stunningly large percentage of MAGA loons who wore "Six million was not enough" T-shirts to January 6.
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