Trump risks repeating Bidens Afghanistan disaster by appeasing Putin

If Donald Trump acts on the sentiments he expressed this week, he is poised to usher in a dark new world order and blow up his own legacy.The president’s position on the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine has long been difficult to pin down.In one breath, he’ll articulate a Reaganesque vision for achieving peace through strength.In the next, he’ll sound like a blue-haired Code Pink protester.Of late, he’s landed on the latter tone.After speaking with Vladimir Putin last week, Trump proclaimed that Russia would keep some of the Ukrainian territory it has taken by force because it “took a lot of land, and they fought for that land, and they lost a lot of soldiers.”If that’s to be the United States’ guiding principle going forward, what murderous psychopath with designs on its neighbors wouldn’t start a war in the years to come?Trump had still more inadvisable, morally backward pronouncements to make on Tuesday.Speaking with reporters at Mar-a-Lago, Trump entertained forcing Ukraine to hold elections — a Russian demand and practical impossibility, given the fact that parts of the country are currently occupied and Ukraine’s Constitution explicitly prohibits wartime elections — before bringing the parties to the negotiating table.“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% approval rating, and where a country has been blown to smithereens.You got-, most of the cities are laying on their sides,” said Trump.“Wouldn’t the people of Ukraine have to say, like, ‘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.”“You’ve [Ukraine] been there for three years, you should have ended it three years-, You should have never started it, you could have made a deal,” he insisted.The logic...