Trump’s Ambush of Zelenskyy Was an Attack on the United States

Nobody Seriously Believes Trump Is Even Trying to Act in the Best Interests of the United States

The most shameful fifty minutes in the history of American foreign policy? It’s up there. Extra shame points for doing it as reality TV.

The more significant distinction of Trump’s ambush of Zelenskyy is that it served no plausible US interest whatsoever. My own strong view is that, for reasons of both moral principle and national self-interest, the US should continue arming Ukraine and work for a just and lasting peace that would diminish Russia’s threat to Europe. But even if you think that’s not worth the cost of the weapons we’re sending, or that our weapons are just prolonging the suffering, there’s no way to find a moral or national interest in humiliating Zelenskyy, slandering him, repeating Putin’s lies about the war, or unilaterally relaxing the pressure on Russia (so far Trump has ended cyber operations against Russia and “paused” aid to Ukraine).

And yet, nauseating as it was to watch, none of us expected Trump to look to moral principle or national interest in making any decision about anything. Is he literally on Putin’s payroll? Or is it about punishing Zelenskyy for not helping him subvert the 2020 election? Or is it his affinity for strongmen, or his contempt for underdogs? Or does he just see alliances with dictators and the demise of democracies as the surest path to consolidating his own authoritarian takeover of the United States of America?

I lean towards a combination of all of these, with the last one being the strongest motivator. But we don’t know.

The only thing we know absolutely is that there is no way in all creation that he’s thinking of anything but what he personally wants and likes and thinks is best for himself and himself only.

The Constitution Forbids Trump From Serving as President for Exactly This Reason

There are many ways for a president to “make deals” with foreign powers that turn out to be great for the president but not for us—and not as many ways to keep a president honest. We don’t, for example, have the tools corporations use to align the interests of their executives with shareholders. We can’t, say, give the president stock options in the USA. We also don’t have fully independent enforcement mechanisms, since the president is the law-enforcer himself.

Given the temptations of the office and the difficulty in controlling the office-holder, character really does matter. The standard is low; arrogant blowhards are par. But it’s important to sign up people who might feel pleased with themselves to accomplish something positive for us, and at least a little disappointed to sell us out. 

Among the too few protections we do have against the very worst people for the role, the truly dangerous and uncontrollable, is the rule of section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment, which says that anyone who took an oath of office to support the Constitution, and then engaged in insurrection against the United States, is barred from serving again. 

That can’t save us from presidents who succeed in overthrowing the government on their first try, but it bars this entire second Trump term, since he took an oath when he became president the first time in 2017 and then tried to overturn the election results of 2020 to remain in office.

It’s All Part of One Illegal Whole That Needs to Stop

I make this point now as to Trump’s attack on Zelenskyy—having made a similar point as to his assault on the constitutional order as such—because we will not act to save the nation from autocracy unless we get our head around the essential illegality of the whole enterprise that is this presidency. 

This is not a case of “Unfortunately, this is what the American people voted for,” or even “He was legitimately elected, but [such-and-such] is not allowed.” This is a crucial point as to foreign affairs particularly, because the president has broad power in foreign affairs under the Constitution, and even the limited powers reserved for Congress have been whittled down by courts and historical practice.  I don’t suggest that legal limitations would restrain this president; law has not restrained him on domestic issues, and if there were greater legal limitations on foreign matters he would likely ignore them. But whereas we’re at least seeing a river of lawsuits about domestic issues and spending, we aren’t likely to see a parallel effort to block Trump from destroying our standing in the world and teaming us up with Putin.

A dearth of legal actions challenging it doesn’t mean it’s legal. Trump’s foreign policy moves are as illegal as his transgressions at home, not only because he was never allowed to be president, but also because selling us out to our enemies is exactly the kind of danger that the rule against oathbreaking insurrectionists in office is meant to protect us against. The relevant passage of the Constitution even lists giving aid or comfort to enemies among the disqualifying offenses, alongside insurrection and rebellion. I don’t say that what Trump has done so far with Putin rises to the level of a disqualifying offense all by itself (although it may, depending on details we don’t yet know and may never learn). It is definitely, though, running foreign policy to benefit an adversary of the nation and to benefit the president personally, and to the detriment of the nation.

Seeing his foreign policy this way—not as bad but unfortunately legal, but rather as part of a pattern of illegality that follows foreseeably from the failure to apply a constitutional rule that would have prevented it—allows us to see from above the trees on the domestic side, too. 

What we face—and what we need to undo—is a single assault on our whole society, on our safety, our well-being, and our moral condition.

Best,

David