This is for anyone looking back with nostalgia at Donald Trump’s foreign policy plans and for those who believe he will lead in the best interest of the United States.

Let’s take a walk down memory lane.

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As Vladimir Putin assembled nearly 200,000 Russian troops surrounding three sides of Ukraine in 2022, having already invaded portions of the sovereign nation’s east and southern regions, the twice impeached former President of the United States continued to heap praise on his alleged friend and fellow narcissistic sociopath in the Kremlin.  

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Regarding Putin’s actions, Trump was downright giddy with praise: “I said, ‘This is genius,’” Trump blurted on a right-wing podcast on February 22, 2022.

“Putin declared a big portion of… Ukraine… as independent. Oh, that’s wonderful.… I said, ‘How smart is that?’ And he’s going to go in and be a peacekeeper…. We could use that on our southern border. That’s the strongest peace force I’ve ever seen. There were more army tanks than I’ve ever seen. They’re going to keep the peace all right. Here’s a guy who’s very savvy.… I know him very well. Very, very well.”

Then a GOP Senate candidate from Ohio, J.D. Vance said on a 2022 episode of Steve Bannon’s “War Room” show: “I gotta be honest with you. I don’t really care what happens to Ukraine one way or another. I do care about the fact that in my community right now, the leading cause of death among 18-45-year-olds is Mexican fentanyl that’s coming across the southern border.”

Missouri Senator Josh Hawley (R) took an isolationist stance on Ukraine on Tucker Carlson’s Fox Network broadcast: “And right now, we’ve got to put American security interests first. And that means we’ve got to focus on China, and we’ve got to focus on our own borders. We need to ask our European allies to do more.”

Trump’s pal Carlson spoke on his show about considering Putin a member of his home team: “Why shouldn’t I root for Russia? Because I am!” And he dismissed what he considered the hyperbole over Putin’s intention to gobble up more territory, stating: “Whatever [Putin’s] many faults, [he] has no intention of invading Western Europe.”

Isn’t that what British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain suggested following Hitler’s takeover of Czechoslovakia?

This is the same Tucker Carlson who goes gaga over the mention of Hungarian dictator Viktor Orban, whom he visited when broadcasting his program from the Eastern European country.  

Useful Idiots

Throughout the 2016 presidential election and during the transition, Donald Trump, who had virtually no international relations experience other than business, made policy proposals and placed into nomination key officials, some who themselves had limited credentials for the jobs they were to hold.

Trump also encouraged Russia to cyberattack Hillary Clinton’s email server, and when the CIA offered conclusive evidence of Russia’s hacking into the Democratic National Committee, Trump issued continual denials and challenges to the efficiency and accuracy of U.S. intelligence.

Throughout his 2016 presidential campaign, Trump promised that when elected, he would hire only “the best and brightest people” to serve in his cabinet.

For Secretary of State, the most important of all cabinet positions, Trump nominated a man whose “international” and “diplomatic” background centered on negotiating oil and natural gas extraction and distribution deals with foreign governments – including Russia and many other repressive regimes like Chad – to line the pockets of tyrannical dictators. 

Prior to the U.S. and other Western governments imposing economic sanctions on the Russian government over its invasion of eastern Ukraine and annexation of Crimea in 2014, Secretary of State-designate Rex Tillerson, CEO of ExxonMobile corporation, negotiated an estimated $500 billion agreement with Vladimir Putin and the Russian petroleum industry. Putin presented Tillerson with the highest honor for a civilian in 2013 with the Russian Order of Friendship Award.

Since taking over the reins of power in Russia after the resignation of Boris Yeltsin on December 31, 1999, Putin has become THE richest person in the world. Both Tillerson and Trump profited enormously from being in Putin’s favor by eliminating sanctions against his government.

The term “useful idiots” (in Russian: полезные дураки, tr. polezniye duraki) refers in Russian to a person perceived as a beneficial mouthpiece for policies they do not fully understand, and who are contemptuously exploited by leaders for a goal or cause.

Though often attributed to Vladimir Lenin, controversy surrounds its actual coinage. It seems very clear, however, that Trump and his conservative acolytes have and most likely will continue to serve as Vladimir Putin’s and other demagogues’ useful idiots in the scope of international affairs (and domestic issues) if ever allowed back into the Oval Office and Situation Room.

The MAGA party either knows nothing or does not fully understand foreign policy issues, and quite possibly it does not want to know. Donald Trump proved this in his refusal as president to take daily intelligence briefings or delve deeply into these issues as president.

Now, Trump has promised that if elected in November, he not only “will be a dictator on day one,” but also that he will end the war between Russia and Ukraine in one day.

We all know what his grand “peace” plans are. Since he previously termed Putin’s invasion in 2022 as a “peacekeeping force,” Trump will pressure President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and the Ukrainian people to surrender large regions of its sovereign territory to the brutal terrorist regime of Putin and his oligarchs.

This is not a plan to end a war equitably. It is a formula to embolden Putin to invade and conquer other European nations in his quest to reestablish the former Russian empire.

While President Joe Biden has largely been ineffective in persuading Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his ultra-right-wing regime to end its mass slaughter of innocent people in Gaza, the West Bank, and Lebanon, he has organized and maintained an efficient alliance against Putin’s aggression and has kept Ukraine afloat and resilient in the face of Putin’s belligerence.

If Harris wins, however, I believe she will chart a new course in the quest for peace through justice in our country’s foreign policy initiatives.   

We desperately need a better alternative to Trump. Let us, therefore, vote for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz to take the reins.

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