By Jeffrey Blehar

His tone and false claims can be explained by personal history more than anything else.

Yesterday, during a press conference about the United States’ bilateral talks with Russia to end the Russo-Ukrainian War — talks which, currently at least, have bypassed Ukraine entirely, a goal Vladimir Putin long sought — Donald Trump casually averred that Ukraine actually started the Ukrainian invasion: “Today I heard, ‘Oh, well, we weren’t invited.’ Well, you’ve been there for three years. You should have never been there. You should have never started it. You should have made a deal.”

It was not a confidence-inspiring moment for those who believe in basic historical fact, let alone for those who know how to check calendars: Trump’s language suggested rather clearly that he resented Ukraine for failing to surrender as Russia prepared to occupy Kyiv and annex the entire country back in February-March of 2022. In case anyone was prepared to defend this as a mere slip of the tongue, Trump went ahead today and offered the world more of his thoughts about Ukraine from his Truth Social account:

Think of it, a modestly successful comedian, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, talked the United States of America into spending $350 Billion Dollars, to go into a War that couldn’t be won, that never had to start, but a War that he, without the U.S. and “TRUMP,” will never be able to settle. The United States has spent $200 Billion Dollars more than Europe, and Europe’s money is guaranteed, while the United States will get nothing back. Why didn’t Sleepy Joe Biden demand Equalization, in that this War is far more important to Europe than it is to us — We have a big, beautiful Ocean as separation. On top of this, Zelenskyy admits that half of the money we sent him is “MISSING.” He refuses to have Elections, is very low in Ukrainian Polls, and the only thing he was good at was playing Biden “like a fiddle.” A Dictator without Elections, Zelenskyy better move fast or he is not going to have a Country left. In the meantime, we are successfully negotiating an end to the War with Russia, something all admit only “TRUMP,” and the Trump Administration, can do. Biden never tried, Europe has failed to bring Peace, and Zelenskyy probably wants to keep the “gravy train” going. I love Ukraine, but Zelenskyy has done a terrible job, his Country is shattered, and MILLIONS have unnecessarily died – And so it continues…..

I’m glad there’s clearly no character limit to posting over there, at least — in either sense of the phrase — so we got to see the unfiltered Donald. To be perfectly honest, I’m more interested in all of the people on the right who will now pretend they agree with every word of this run-on disgrace because Trump Said It Out Loud — so now it’s time to “fall in line” with the message like a well-trained myrmidon — than I am in those who actually believe it all. (What can I say? I dislike the hypocrites more, and I know who they are.)

I also know what many of the responses to my outrage over this will be — I have been receiving them all day on social media, after all — and I will restate the gist of them for you here: “It’s just a negotiating tactic to end the war. It’s 4-D chess. I trust in Trump, I trust in the process.” Many more on the right seem happy to go further than that and adopt Trump’s claims wholesale.

I instead am going to draw a much straighter, cleaner line to explain Donald Trump’s ferocious hostility toward Ukraine and Zelensky. Donald Trump was once impeached over Ukraine and Zelensky. You do remember that, right? I ask because I am shocked at how many seem to have forgotten — at how many are analyzing this week’s events through anything but that filter — perhaps because it was only his first of two impeachments.

It’s really that simple. His tone can be explained by personal history more than anything else. Back in 2019, Donald Trump’s presidency — already under siege after a brutal midterm election in the House — was derailed by what he considers to be a spurious impeachment attempt by the Democrats. Trump was arraigned for improperly “interfering with the 2020 election” by pressuring Zelensky to probe the details of Hunter and Joe Biden’s financial entanglements with their government — entanglements we now have every reason to believe were indeed significant and deeply corrupt, certainly on Hunter’s part.

Meanwhile, the first three years of Trump’s administration had already been partially derailed by the absurd and sinister “Russiagate” hoax, involving politicized national security greybeards, the mainstream media, and the Democratic Party in a joint plot to hamstring Trump’s mandate from Day One with widely believed claims of being on the take from Russia, who engineered his victory via “disinformation.” (It was “Russiagate” more than anything else that fueled the original “Resistance,” the belief that he was an illegitimate president fit to be undermined rather than obeyed because he “didn’t really win.”) But it wasn’t Russia per se that did anything to him; it was Russia’s being used as a club against him that dogged his first term in office. You and I may hate Putin, but as far as Trump is concerned, they have no particular beef.

So forgive me if I doubt that Trump is just negotiating like a “great dealmaker” or playing the geopolitical game of a chessmaster by keeping Americans and Europeans alike shockingly off-guard with his intemperate public rhetoric. I’ve always believed him to be a much simpler man than that, and in this, at least been proven correct every time: He says things like this because this is how he feels right now. I think his attitude toward Ukraine accords with his lifelong priors, yes: Trump regards most countries as being essentially parasitic upon the United States, taking advantage of our purported self-inflicted economic “weakness” in the modern era (hence his pronounced contempt for NATO and the EU); he also reflexively disdains “weak” Ukraine vis-a-vis the historically “strong” Russians, who dominated his imagination as a youth. But more importantly, Trump hates Zelensky and Ukraine because they have become a totem for all the forces that tormented Trump for years.

That is why I also ask you to forgive me if I suspect Trump is incapable of seeing straight when it comes to America’s long-term national interests in Ukraine, as compared to his private resentments there. (This is a man whose ideal vision of government, after all, seems to be one he inherited from his mentor Roy Cohn.) I have always doubted him on this score, which is why I have always doubted his ability to serve the national interest when it conflicted with his own. Nothing Donald Trump has done this week has persuaded me otherwise.

Donald Trump’s Dislike for Ukraine Is Deeply Personal