Trump: It’s all Zelensky’s fault

Generally, I try to vary my subjects not to bore readers more than is unavoidable. Well, not now. Every other subject seems trivial compared to what’s going on in the Ukraine.

I’m convinced that the consummation of the love affair between Trump and Putin is by far the most pivotal event of my lifetime (I missed the Second World War by a few years).

Every day brings new outrages, each one pushing the world closer to a devastating global conflict, and the two lowlife personages are to blame. I’d even suggest that Trump is worse than Putin, if only because the United States is supposed to be the leader of the free world.

Trump’s effrontery is most refreshing. Yesterday he went so far as to blame Zelensky for the war, which is like saying that the rape victim egged her attacker on by wearing a short skirt.

Like a gangster holding a victim at his mercy, Trump feels he can get away with mouthing any gibberish. Who cares about words? He’s the one holding the big gun. Just look at his statement yesterday, when Trump sneered at Zelensky for protesting against not being invited to the negotiations on his country’s fate:

“I hear that they’re upset about not having a seat. Well, they’ve had a seat for three years and a long time before that. This could have been settled very easily. Just a half-baked negotiator could have settled this years ago without, I think, without the loss of much land, very little land, without the loss of any lives, and without the loss of cities that are just laying on their side.”

“Laying”, sic. All one can say is that Trump’s expensive education failed miserably. “To lay”, Donny, is a transitive verb in English. Saying ‘lay’ instead of ‘lie’ is a sure and, alas, widespread sign of illiteracy.

This is a minor quibble about a major problem: the United States is currently governed by a savage lout in Putin’s pocket. Every word in Trump’s tirade is a lie, including, to quote Mary McCarthy, ‘and’ and ‘the’.

The war could indeed have been prevented by the Ukraine’s surrender before the invasion or stopped at any time thereafter. But that wouldn’t just have involved “the loss of very little land”. Since Trump knows this, what he is saying is a boldfaced lie.

When pushing the button for the invasion, Putin declared that his goal was to “de-Nazify and de-militarise” the Ukraine. In other words, to stamp out her sovereignty. And the original thrust of the Russian offensive was aimed not at “very little land” but Kiev, which Putin said would be taken in three days.

Anyway, as far as Trump is concerned, it was the Ukraine that started the war: “Today I heard, oh, we weren’t invited. Well, you’ve been there for three years. You should have ended it three years – you should have never started it. You could have made a deal.”

“You should have never started it” – has there ever been a more mendacious statement uttered on who started a war? Oh yes, both Hitler and Stalin justified their 1939 rape of Poland by declaring the Poles had provoked it. Trump is in good company there.

You must understand that, when Trump says such things, he is merely being the dummy to Putin’s ventriloquist. Just think about it: the president of a free country is repeating verbatim words put into his mouth by a fascist dictator.

One cretinous claim that dictator makes and Trump repeats is that Zelensky isn’t a legitimate leader because there have been no elections since the war started. Of course, Zelensky could have ensured his legitimacy by doing a Putin: having ballot boxes stuffed all over the country. But he neglected to do that, so he’s no democrat.

Trump doesn’t question Putin’s legitimacy, only Zelensky’s: “Well, we have a situation where we haven’t had elections in Ukraine, where we have martial law, essentially martial law in Ukraine, where the leader in Ukraine, I mean, I hate to say it, but he’s down at 4 per cent approval rating and where a country has been blown to smithereens.”

Actually, Zelensky’s approval rating is closer to 50 per cent, but I did tell you that a gangster holding the big gun feels entitled to say anything he wishes. However, by Trump’s (or rather Putin’s) logic Churchill wasn’t a legitimate leader either, and Britain stopped being a democracy between 1935 and 1945 when no general election was held.

The Ukraine, according to Donald ‘Putin’ Trump, forfeited any claim to legitimacy by declaring martial law when coming under attack. The word ‘martial’, deriving as it does from Mars, the god of war, should have given him a clue: it’s a temporary law introduced at war time.

Following Pearl Harbour, Trump’s own country arbitrarily interned thousands of Americans for the crime of being ethnically Japanese. People who cherished due process winced, but they acknowledged that the measure was excusable. Democratic bets are off when there’s a war on.

Trump’s musings would be absurd if taken at face value. But, in fact, he doesn’t give a damn about the Ukraine observing democratic niceties.

Trump simply shares Putin’s hatred of Zelensky and, broader, of the Ukraine’s independence. Zelensky had the temerity to rally his country when Trump’s fascist friend committed an act of blatant aggression, and now he doesn’t deserve his post any more than his country deserves her sovereignty.

Trump-Putin demands elections as a precondition for any peace talks involving the Ukraine. Yes, but what if the Ukraine complies, holds elections, and Zelensky wins? Wouldn’t that be a slap in Trump-Putin’s face?

Yes, it would be. That’s why Zelensky would never be allowed to stand in any such mockery of a presidential election demanded by the partners in crime.

The Ukrainians would be told that what’s needed isn’t any old election, but one on which their wartime leader wouldn’t be allowed to stand. If they refuse, Zelensky would probably be assassinated, and it could be either Putin or Trump sending the murder squad out.

After that, an election would be held at gunpoint, just like the travesty conducted in the Crimea after the Russian invasion. Some Quisling would be elected, and the Ukraine would fall under Russian rule yet again, with America’s blessing. And then massacres would start, with thousands, possibly millions, murdered for having dared resist Russian invaders.

Other observers also noticed that Trump simply parrots Putin, and Trump hastened to assuage their fears: “You know, it’s been a long time since we’ve had an election. That’s not a Russia thing. That’s something coming from me and coming from many other countries also.”

Out of idle curiosity, which many other countries? Iran? North Korea? China? Other champions of democracy? Come on, Donald, the people have a right to know.

Meanwhile, Putin and his foulmouthed ‘diplomat’ Lavrov are making hay while Trump’s sun shines. For weeks now, it has been mooted that, following a ceasefire, an international peace-keeping force would move into the no-man’s land separating the two countries.

Trump said that no US troops would take part, but everyone confidently assumed that the contingent would come from European NATO members. Now, emboldened by Trump’s treachery, the Russians are saying that the presence of NATO soldiers in the Ukraine wouldn’t be tolerated. They don’t want peacekeeping because they don’t want to keep peace.

Yet again the world is approaching the brink of a global catastrophe, and yet again the world is reacting the ostrich way. For Trump gives every sign of delivering Europe to Putin the way Roosevelt and Churchill delivered the eastern part of it to Stalin.

That eventually put the world on the threshold of nuclear disaster, narrowly averted several times at the eleventh hour. Next time we may not be so lucky.

I won’t countenance the laments of some of my conservative friends who wish Thomas Matthew Crooks had shot straighter. But I understand how they feel.