Marc Cooper
What a difference a 14-hour plane ride makes! There I was basking in the 90-degree sun in peaceful Chile where the leftist young president finally achieved modest and important improvements to Chile’s decrepit U.S.-inspired pension program.
Next thing I know, I fall asleep on an overnight flight and land in Portland where it was 34 degrees at mid-day. I awake Thursday morning to several inches of snow, 30-degree air temperature and wind whipping up a series of flurries with cars skidding down the street.
I can live with the weather change but then I made the mistake of turning on the TV to hear that cult-follower Tulsi Gabbard and the mad RFK have been confirmed by the Reichstag Senate and that Mitch McConnell is now our ally! Then I really went down the rabbit hole and caught the unhinged Donald Trump who spoke so softly to reporters he appeared to be stoned with a Thorazine cocktail. His tone was tempered but his discourse was a constant babble of bullshit, lies, and delusions. Spooky to hear such crap from such an unemotional speaker — one symptom of sociopathy.
He was still going on about how we are suckers to the rest of the world, how great it’s gonna be when Canada becomes the 51st state, how he’s going to impose “reciprocal tariffs” on more European countries, how he is going to rename Greenland into RedWhiteAndBlueland, and how great a job Elon Musk is doing (in spite of a whopping 20 percent of Americans strongly approving of his Best Friend and fellow sociopath).
It was straight up Alice in Wonderland as I was expecting Elmo to come busting into the press briefing dancing around as the Queen of Hearts.
That was bad enough to last me a month or two. But the truly horrific mumblings from Trump on Thursday is how he is now talking to Putin about ending the war in Ukraine — on Putin’s terms. It was 1938 in Munich updated. Just as the Brits, the French and Fascist Italy gave away the Czech Sudentland to Hitler without bothering to include the Czechs, Trump is in the process of giving away a chunk of Ukraine to Putin without including Ukraine in this “great deal.”
Almost word for word, Trump repeated all of Putin’s monstrous lies justifying the invasion. He repeated the blatant lie uttered by Putin (and by some truly deluded American cosplay leftists) that the invasion was totally justified because Russia had a right to be bothered by Biden saying Ukraine would one day join NATO. And that is something that the U.S. supported and Russia was rightfully threatened and responded properly. I don’t feel it’s worth it to seek out the direct quotes because Trump is not worth the energy it would take in my jet-lagged state to transcribe them. You can read them for yourself here.
He also thought it was wrong to eject Russia from the G7 and he says he wants them back in. That’s because Russia is such a positive influence on international affairs.
Trump did say at some point Ukraine would be given a seat at the table as the U.S. hands Russia a scalpel to begin the carve up. He also seems to ignore, or not give AF, that he is now in the process of alienating ALL of our European allies — whom I guess are little fish in Trump’s addled head as he is much more interested in appeasing and allying with Russia and China, two countries that suffer under the autocratic form of government he wants to erect here.
NATO’s defense ministers, who were meeting Thursday, appeared to be blindsided by Trump’s verbal endorsement of Russia’s position on the war. Some of them remember what followed in the wake of that last great appeasement in 1938. Sixty million dead Europeans and several destroyed and occupied nations.
The BBC crisply reported on the shockwave that hit the Europeans as Trump, in a doped-down monotone basically announced he was ignoring Ukraine’s demand for something in return for an end to the war other than ceding territory to Moscow.
Arriving at NATO headquarters early on Thursday, Europe's defence ministers had one common message - that there could be no negotiations about Ukraine without Ukraine and Europe at the table too.
The question is to what extent the US is listening.
After a frenetic 24 hours of US declarations, there is a tangible sense that Europe's leaders now fear being bypassed on any potential Ukraine deal and being deprived of a voice on the future of European security.
Germany's Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock spoke of Donald Trump's call with Vladimir Putin as being "very much out of the blue" even if the US president had made it clear for months that he was aiming to bring a quick end to the war.
"There can be no negotiation about Ukraine without Ukraine," said the UK's Defence Minister John Healey.
"The same is true for Europe," warned Dutch Defense Secretary Ruben Brekelmans. "Because of course what is negotiated also has implications for Europe, so we think Europe should also sit at the table."
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk rammed home the message on X when he posted: "All we need is peace. A just peace. Ukraine, Europe and the United States should work on this together. Together."
So far, there is no obvious space for Europe in Trump's peace push, and arguably not enough for Kyiv. Until now there had been a general acceptance that there should be no talking to Vladimir Putin without Ukraine.
Trump is planning face-to-face talks with the Russian leader, apparently in Saudi Arabia, but the two men have already prepared the ground with a lengthy phone call.
The US president's follow-up chat with Volodymyr Zelensky was far shorter. “Trump said to me that Putin wants to stop the war," Ukrainian President Zelenskyy said while speaking on a security cooperation panel at the Munich Security Conference on Friday. "I said to him 'Putin is a liar. I hope that you will pressure him because I don’t trust him.' We had a direct conversation with Putin about a cease-fire in 2019,” he added.
Zelensky had spoken initially of his belief that "America's strength is sufficient to pressure Russia and Putin into peace." But on a trip to the southern city of Kherson on Thursday Zelensky made clear that, as an independent state, Ukraine would not accept either bilateral negotiations or "any agreements reached without us."
"Putin hopes that by holding talks only with Trump, he will be able to negotiate more favorable terms," Aleksandra Kozioł, from the Polish Institute of International Affairs, said. "In doing so, he will also present himself as a leader who talks to another superpower on an equal footing."
The worry for European leaders is that the US may have already moved some way towards meeting Russia's war aims - and that it might go further. Trump reportedly backtracked later in the week, saying that Ukraine would be involved in negotiations.
Ukraine's consistent demand has been for a complete withdrawal of Russian troops from its sovereign territory and for Ukrainian control over its state borders. Judging by remarks from Trump and Hegseth, the US already considers Russia's 2014 capture of Crimea and eastern areas in the Donbas as a fait accompli. The other major giveaway was an assurance that the Ukraine won't be joining NATO.
U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth with NATO Secretary Mark Rutte, and you can read the body language.
Just so you don’t get too worried, our own Secretary of Defense, Warrior Pete Hegseth, was indeed also present at the NATO meeting. No reporting yet on whether he participated in the usual champagne toasts at such meetings and presumably looked up Ukraine on the map before the meeting so he wouldn’t feel completely in the dark.
From Day One of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Trump has leaned toward Russia. There were mixed signals before he assumed the presidency, notably with the appointment of He is now consolidating that posture into an official position that lays the groundwork for an easy Russian exit from the war while the Ukrainians get zilch in the deal he’s trying to make over their heads, Meanwhile the war has faded from the ADD-riddled American media who are too busy renaming the Gulf of Mexico on their official maps.
The Ukrainian war has been an ongoing atrocity and marked not only the first large ground war in Europe since WWII, but also has been a dismal and despicable turning point for much of the Global Left, primarily in the goldfish bowl of American leftism. Just as Stalin pacted with Hitler in 1939, too many muddle-headed American Youtube Leftists cast their sympathies with Putin, the strongest supporter and financier of the European extremist Right.
There was absolutely no justification for the invasion and the “it’s NATO’s fault” is the refrain of the ignorant and the uncaring. The scope of death and destruction wrought by Russia, the unprovoked invasion, the brutality of the war crimes, the constant bombardment of the civilian population, the destruction of entire towns and vllages, the imperial justifications offered by Putin, the displacement of millions inside of Ukraine and the towering number of Ukrainian deaths will go down in history as one of the most brutal military adventures since the war in Vietnam.
Which brings me to his unsettling question. As Ukraine is now threatened with permanent annexation of Russian-occupied territory, as the bloodbath continues, where in the hell are all those mostly young and some older protesters that were so agitated over Gaza last year? I am deathly opposed to any hierarchy of oppression, but it does not take more than an 85 IQ to see that the horrors in Ukraine are arguably worse than in Gaza. Different actors, but same outcome. I’m all for protesting the US support for Netanyahu. But it sure would be nice if the Gaza-obsessed focused protesters might raise a sign or two demanding all Russian troops out of Ukraine. Of course, many of these folks made the phantasmagorical decision to campaign against Biden without thinking for a moment that Trump would be ten times worse in Gaza as he has made a “peace and occupation deal” with Israel over the heads of the Palestinians.
I guess I am just out of touch to believe people can be consistent in their moral principles. War crimes, mass murder, and wonton killing of civilians are wrong, no matter who’s doing it.
Marc Cooper has written for Harper's, The New Yorker, The Nation, and many others. At the University of Southern California he was the founding director of Annenberg Digital News. Read him on Substack at The Coop Scoop.