WASHINGTON — Ukrainian American commentator George Woloshyn last week wrote another explanation “Why Ukrainians should vote Republican” that reflected how apologists for U.S. President Donald Trump are increasingly untethered from reality.
As Trump supporters have failed to discredit Democratic Party presidential candidate Joe Biden personally or politically they have been reduced to contriving baseless speculation about his mental and physical health.
Woloshyn repeats those and drifts into fantastical explanations of his own for Trump’s adoration of Kremlin dictator Vladimir Putin.
Biden, throughout his long political career, has been a political moderate and centrist who routinely collaborated with Republican politicians for the good of the U.S. For example, he was friends with and worked closely with the late Senator John McCain, a staunch supporter of Ukraine.
Despite that, Trump campaigners are proclaiming Biden has surrendered to “radical” and “toxic elements” within the Democratic Party, something that ignores the inconvenient fact he handily won against radical leftist rivals and is thus not beholden to them.
Woloshyn’s disingenuous train of innuendo continues though with the suggestion: “Biden’s service as president may be greatly degraded or come to an untimely end because of his age, health. frailty, and/or (discernible signs of) cognitive decline.”
Biden is not that much older than Trump and certainly doesn’t display the same sort of physical frailty as the obese president, who was recently shown being aided to shakily shuffle down a gently-sloping ramp leading from a speaker’s podium.
As to the candidate’s mental faculties, Biden has a reputation for occasionally making gaffes but there is no evidence of failing mental ability.
In stark contrast Trump, whenever he strays from a text prepared for him, displays bovine cognitive abilities and a cringe-inducing mangling of the English language. His sentences often don’t make any sense and his vocabulary is repetitious and severely limited.
The misleading Trumpists’ narrative Woloshyn repeats implies that Biden might die or be incapacitated during his presidency leading to his replacement by Vice-Presidential running mate, Kamala Harris, and that would somehow lead to “the most socialist and intrusive government that this nation has ever seen.”
Kamala Harris has been decried by leftists for her tough line on law and order while she was attorney general of California before becoming a senator.
The dishonest portrayal of Harris accords with twisted Trumpist assertions equating the Democratic Party and liberals to hard left and anarchist “Antifa” protesters = socialism = Marxism = communism = Bolshevism.
Some virulent Ukrainian American Trump supporters now refer to Biden supporters as “Bidensheviks.”
This particular Bidenshevik is a lifelong conservative. I liked Ronald Reagan a lot and thought the world was in good hands when he was U.S. president, Margaret Thatcher was Britain’s prime minister and Pope John Paul II presided over the Vatican.
I could not vote for Trump in 2016 because of his sycophantic praise for Vladimir Putin and his murky financial connections to Moscow, which likely have made him hostage to the Kremlin.
I was appalled at his amorality, bullying, narcissism, pathological lying, crudeness, and a breathtaking ignorance of history and contemporary world affairs.
Those traits have only magnified during his four years at the White House. Only this month it emerged that Trump, a coward, and draft dodger, has called members of the U.S. military, including those killed fighting for their country, “suckers” and “losers.”
Woloshyn admits Trump has used hostile language about Ukraine and withheld badly-needed military funding in an attempt to force Kyiv to provide political dirt on Biden, something that led to Trump’s impeachment. And he notes Trump’s refusal to ever criticize Putin.
Trump has been silent on the violence wreaked in Belarus by the country’s Kremlin-friendly president and has questioned whether Moscow poisoned Russian opposition leader Aleksei Navalny.
He didn’t utter a word of criticism against Putin after Russia attacked Ukrainian vessels in the Azov Sea or even after it was revealed the Kremlin offered Taliban Islamic extremists cash bounties for killing American troops in Afghanistan.
At least two U.S. intelligence reports and the Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee concluded that the Kremlin supported Trump in 2016 and is supporting him in this election.
The intelligence also shows Moscow denigrates Biden because of his past and current support for Ukraine.
But Trump apologists try to airbrush out, in Soviet fashion, inconvenient facts or offer bizarre, conspiracy-rooted theories.
So, in an outlandish attempt to explain Trump’s supine attitude towards the Kremlin, Woloshyn asks “Could those clever [Russian] bastards be running an operation within an operation to actually discredit Trump?”
To which I would answer “no” and tell Woloshyn, a person who has done much for Ukraine and the American-Ukrainian community, “you look like a drowning man clutching at straws.”
Woloshyn reels out the false reasons many Ukrainian-Americans give for supporting Trump.
He disingenuously credits Trump with supplying U.S. Javelin anti-tank missiles,16 coastal defense vessels and providing training for Ukraine’s military forces. He cites Trump blocking the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline which would bypass Ukraine losing her some $2 billion in transit fees and contends Trump “tightened Obama’s sanctions and added new ones.”
Former senior members of Trump’s administration are on record detailing how Trump loathes Ukraine and was enraged at proposals to give military help. Trump’s actions and words provide overwhelming evidence that he would never supply military aid or lethal weapons to Ukraine.
It has been patriotic officials serving in the White House, at the State Department, the Pentagon and other divisions of the American government who realize U.S.and Ukrainian interests coincide and – crucially – bipartisan Congressional support that resulted in military, political and financial assistance for Ukraine.
These honorable people ensured America continued to be Ukraine’s most valuable ally.
When he came to power, Trump wanted to lift sanctions against Moscow for invading Ukraine that had been imposed by his predecessor, Barack Obama.
Congress was so concerned Trump would try to curry favor with Putin by scrapping sanctions it passed a law curbing the president’s ability to do so. Trump only reluctantly closed Russian consulates and imposed new sanctions against Russia because of pressure from Congress.
Trump wants to allow Russia back into a G7 + 1 from which she was ejected because of aggression against Ukraine. He is not asking Moscow to first change its hostile behavior towards Ukraine.
He is blocking Nord Stream 2, which brings Russian gas to western Europe because it is unwelcome competition for American liquid natural gas exports to the same markets. His opposition is completely unconnected to helping Ukraine.
Woloshyn cites the Washington-based Atlantic Council think tank assessing that the Trump administration has been much tougher on Russia than any in the post-Cold War era.
But there’s the rub: “The Trump administration” – not Trump himself.
Because it’s clear the invaluable U.S. assistance and support for Ukraine has been provided DESPITE Trump – not because of him.
Woloshyn contends the Republican Party is split between the “real” Reaganesque party and Trump supporters who have warped it.
However, anyone who followed the Republican Party national convention saw the Grand Old Party now resembles something out of Putin’s Russia, or the Chinese and North Korean Communist Parties requiring cult-like obedience to Trump’s whims.
The “real Republicans” have no voice there and many Republican luminaries have left. Some founded the Lincoln Project and other groups campaigning for Biden to win.
I support the Lincoln Project and the Ukrainian-Americans for Biden group, which counts among its members many former and current Republican Party members.
A prominent member of the Ukrainian-American community, international lawyer Victor Rud, who describes himself as a staunch “ former Republican,” is one of those who has decided he cannot vote for Trump but is uncertain yet whether he will vote for Biden.
Rud has helped with rule-of-law projects in independent Ukraine and is a founder and past Chairman of the Ukrainian American Bar Association. He spoke to the Kyiv Post in a private capacity.
“The Republican Party has suffered an apostasy from President Reagan’s view of our foreign policy imperatives,” said Rud. He compared the Trump-dominated Republican Party to France’s WW2 puppet Vichy Government whose members, while declaring themselves French patriots, collaborated with their Nazi occupiers.
Rud has been appalled by recent revelations about Trump’s “disrespect and insult of our military heroes ………under siege by their own commander-in-chief.”
He is concerned that under Trump, the U.S. “has suffered a world-wide reputational/credibility catastrophe” leaving allies “dismayed, alarmed and distrustful…. while enemies are lauded and buoyed by that same commander-in-chief.” That, said Rud, has resulted in such deterioration of global security that it poses an “existential threat” to America.
He believes “Ukraine is the fulcrum that Putin has leveraged to flip the international order on its head” but “America’s awakening to its own pressing interests in Ukraine has been feloniously belated and its support for Ukraine has been grossly parsimonious.”
Rud said: “Trump’s full-throated embrace of Putin’s reality reversal concerning Ukraine, including, among many other points, ‘election interference,’ is mind-bending. Eventually, the reason for the sycophancy will surface.”
On claims that Trump has helped Ukraine, Rud urged a careful examination of to what extent any assistance under this Administration was “because of or in spite of” Trump.
Some Ukrainian-Americans support Trump for a variety of reasons related to U.S. domestic issues.
But anyone who claims to have concern or affection for Ukraine needs to understand that Putin would see another term in office for Trump as an invitation to step up efforts to dismantle Ukraine including by increased military aggression.
