Following the horrific attack by Japan on U.S. naval forces in Hawaii’s Pearl Harbor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt spoke to Congress and to the nation, declaring: “December 7th, 1941, a date which will live in infamy.”
This event ushered in a radical shift and realignment of the world order by bringing the United States into the war in Europe in defense of our longtime partners against the forces of tyranny.
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Following the horrific attack by Donald Trump and J.D. Vance on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the Oval Office on live television, we, the people, can proclaim: “February 28th, 2025, a date which will live in infamy.”
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This event ushered in the final installment of Trump’s realignment of the world order by aligning the United States squarely with the forces of tyranny against our longtime partners and our traditional democratic principles.
On January 20, 1961, President John F. Kennedy delivered his inaugural address in which he announced that “we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and success of liberty.“
On February 28, 2025, Trump and Vance ambushed Zelenskyy and said in more than words that we would pay nothing, bear nothing, meet no hardship, sacrifice our friends and allies, and embrace our foes to ensure the downfall of liberty.
As most of us know, so-called reality TV shows are anything but real. Networks manufacture them for the titillation and mindless entertainment of the viewing public.
Trump lured President Zelenskyy to the White House for the alleged purpose of discussing possible paths forward in ending the Russia-Ukraine War. But ever the entertainer, Trump’s bait-and-switch from a diplomatic negotiation into an obvious made-for-TV ambush of President Zelenskyy was one of the all-time low points in U.S. diplomacy and highlighted Trump’s utter insensitivity to the on-the-ground realities of the Ukrainian people. But since Trump apparently never developed the human quality of empathy, I suppose we cannot assume that he could ever understand their pain and suffering.
Trump could have coined the words attributed to Woody Allen: “What did reality ever do for me?”
Donald Trump serves as Russia’s orange agent by carpet bombing our democratic institutions. He performs as Putin’s puppet. But now, Trump is attempting to attach his own strings to President Zelenskyy both to help his Russian pals and also to advance his own political objectives.
As Energy Secretary in Trump’s first regime, Rick Perry was charged with pressuring the newly-elected Zelenskyy to award lucrative government oil and gas contracts to his longtime friends after he attended Zelenskyy’s inauguration in May 2019.
The possible spark igniting Perry’s resignation as cabinet secretary was Trump’s statement to Republican legislators that it was Perry who asked him to call Zelenskyy.
Trump, who famously never takes responsibility for his words and actions, argued: “I didn’t even want to make the call,” Trump said. “The only reason I made the call was because Rick [Perry] asked me to. Something about an LNG [liquefied natural gas] plant.”
Bill Taylor, the acting U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, testified in a public congressional hearing that Perry was one of several administration officials involved in a “highly irregular” channel of U.S. policymaking toward Ukraine.
This pattern follows Trump’s first attempted quid pro quo with the Ukrainian leader by threatening to withhold armaments unless President Zelenskyy investigated the son of Trump’s Democratic rival for the U.S. presidency, Joe Biden. This resulted in the House of Representatives impeaching Trump on charges of “abuse of power” and “obstruction of justice,” while the Senate gave him a pass without ever calling a witness.
In his first sit-down interview since returning to the White House for a second time, Trump criticized Zelenskyy, saying that he “shouldn’t have allowed this war to happen.” He said that the Ukrainian president is “no angel” and suggested that Zelenskyy shares much of the blame for the start of the Russia-Ukraine war.
“Zelenskyy was fighting a much bigger entity, much bigger, much more powerful,” Trump told Fox News. “He shouldn’t have done that, because we could have made a deal.”
Trump later went on to accuse Zelenskyy of doing a “terrible job” and of being a “dictator” by “refusing to have elections” since he became president in 2019.
It made no difference to Trump that Ukraine has been under martial law since Russia invaded its sovereign territory in February 2022, thereby suspending elections since millions of Ukraine’s citizens were seeking safe shelter in other nations and because its army was spread throughout the nation battling the advancing Russian military.
The Trump administration failed a primary tenet of diplomacy by announcing – through Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Secretary of State Marco Rubio (the latter seen as the alleged “adult in the room” among Trump’s cabinet incompetents) – the United States’ (and most likely Russia’s) terms for any peace settlement by taking the possibility of Ukraine’s NATO membership off the table and by demanding that Ukraine turn over a yet-to-be-determined percentage of its territory to the Russian Federation’s autocratic regime of Vladimir Putin.
Donald Trump and his administration are reacting as if the primary parties involved in the conflict are those of the United States and Ukraine, when, in fact, this is a matter of resolving a conflict between the Russian Federation and Ukraine.
Trump knows and cares even less about history. Everything to him is about moment-by-moment transactions. He could learn a lot from some past leaders regarding diplomatic means of resolving conflicts.
For example, President Jimmy Carter and President Bill Clinton brought together Palestinian and Israeli leaders to approach common ground on several issues, resulting in Carter’s “Camp David Accords” (1978) and Clinton’s “Oslo Accords” (1993).
Republican idols
I was born on May 27, 1947, a little under two years after the end of World War II. Harry Truman was president. The first presidential election I remember took place in 1956 between the incumbent, Dwight D. Eisenhower, and his Democratic rival for the second time, Adlei E. Stevenson II.
Because my family and many people in my immediate neighborhood voted for Stephenson, I was shocked when he did not win. I understood for the first time at the age of 9 that my worldview was limited and did not reflect the larger country’s reality.
I became engaged in the political process in 1960. I talked with my middle school classmates about the presidential candidates, Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy. I believe I presented good and clear arguments as to why I thought Kennedy would be the better president and that he would make the changes we needed.
I will always remember Friday, November 22, 1963, the day my president, the 35th president of the United States, was shot and killed in Dallas, Texas.
In our high school senior orchestra class, the string sections were rehearsing Béla Bartók’s Romanian folk dances in preparation for an upcoming concert.
Over the intercom came the halting and serious voice of the school principal announcing that he just received word that the president had been shot and that he had been taken to the hospital. He concluded by telling us that this was all the information he had at the time.
Some of us, including myself, began crying. Our orchestra teacher told us to immediately come back to order as he gave the downbeat to resume our practice. Though I was appalled by his response, I lifted my violin, replaced it under my chin, and pretended to see the musical score through my welling tears.
Moments later, the principal informed us that President John F. Kennedy had died. A half hour later, he dismissed classes. I walked home in a daze, and when I reached my bedroom, collapsed into my grief.
The trauma continued with the murder of Malcolm X a year later and with the assassinations of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Senator Robert F. Kennedy in 1968.
Our leaders have a great impact on our lives and on our souls.
Watching Trump’s Oval Office ambush of Zelenskyy, I had not been so disgusted by a U.S. president since Ronald Reagan blamed gay and bisexual men and intravenous drug users for causing the AIDS pandemic.
“The glorious party of Ronald Reagan” has become the obligatory mantra by which GOP candidates hope to enter the hearts and minds of the Republican electorate. In echoing this idealized man, they evoke a mythical bygone era of hope and prosperity. Is Reagan’s motto, “morning in America” really all that different from “Make America Great Again”?
The reality is that Ronald Reagan is not the model politician most Republicans worship today. The real Reagan advanced policies that significantly increased the wealth gap between the very rich and the remainder of the population. He expanded the rate of people living in poverty with his doublespeak “trickle-down” economics.
He illegally and surreptitiously sold arms to Iran and furtively redirected the profits to fascist Central American dictators to fund and equip their death gangs. Contrary to Republican pundits, Reagan did not bring down the Soviet Union, which had been in decline for many decades by the time Reagan took office.
Most of all, the ungodly Reagan functioned as the Coconspirator-In-Chief in the deaths of people infected with HIV during the early years of what became a pandemic under his so-called “watch.” Ronald Reagan should have been charged with accessory to genocidal murder rather than seen as the much-venerated pseudo-saint whom the Republican Party has anointed.
Evidently, Donald Trump took Reagan’s deplorable lead in his feckless and deadly response to COVID. The Department of Justice has yet to punish Trump on what is arguably his biggest crime against the very lives of the people: his denial and failure to take appropriate action in the early days of the COVID crisis.
Trump has taken Reagan’s lead in laying blame on the victims of tragedies, in this case, the Ukrainian people and their brave and heroic leader, Zelenskyy.
What I have witnessed since Trump first announced his candidacy in 2015 was not “art” and was certainly no “deal,” though it has been a great “deal” for autocrats like Putin.
Many authoritarians appeal to the concept of “populism” in the service of a xenophobic nationalism. While “populism” encompasses a range of political stances emphasizing the idea of siding with “the people” against the so-called “elite” and can exist on the political left, right, or center, right-wing populism co-opts the term and juxtaposes nationalist and nativist aims.
We are witnessing this form of bait-and-switch populism during the Trumpian epoch.
I, however, stand with the vision of democracy. I stand hand in hand and shoulder to shoulder with Volodymyr Zelenskyy and the valiant and noble Ukrainian people.
Let’s all stand together.
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