His comments last night reveal a perspective that’s more hawkish than many have given him credit for.
In a noteworthy development that went overlooked — for understandable reasons — during last night’s debate, former president Donald Trump rejected Vladimir Putin’s terms for an end to Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine.
Many of Trump’s statements on the war have centered on the view that Putin never would have invaded if he were president, that he can end the conflict within a day of returning to the White House, and that European nations need to step up to provide more to Ukraine.
In the absence of more policy specifics, the consensus media narrative — and messaging from the Biden camp — has been that Trump would leave Kyiv out in the cold and press Ukraine to give territory to Russia as part of a cease-fire deal. The proponents of that view have also cited Trump’s comments, during a campaign rally in February, that he would tell Putin to do whatever he wants to do to NATO allies who are delinquent on their defense-spending commitments.
But Trump’s remarks about the war in recent months increasingly undercut the narrative that he would give in to Putin’s demands. The former president has articulated a vision that’s increasingly supportive of Ukraine. Notably, in April, he paved the way for the House to pass legislation approving more funds to support Kyiv’s war effort when he posted a message that called Ukraine’s survival “important to us.”
His comments last night continue to reveal a perspective that’s more hawkish than many have given him credit for. During an exchange on foreign policy, CNN’s Dana Bash asked Trump if he thinks it’s “acceptable” that Putin would end the invasion only if Ukraine cedes Russian-occupied territory and drops its NATO membership bid. Trump, at first, answered indirectly, repeating some of his talking points about how he would have deterred Putin, then making a broader attack on Biden’s foreign policy and his handling of Afghanistan and Iran.
After Biden responded, accusing Trump of encouraging Putin to invade, Bash posed her initial question to Trump once again: “Are Putin’s terms acceptable to you, keeping the territory in Ukraine?”
“No, they’re not acceptable,” Trump responded. “No, they’re not acceptable.”
He added that Biden has “given $200 billion now or more to Ukraine,” and that Zelensky gets another $60 billion whenever he visits the U.S. (Congress has so far authorized about $175 billion in funds related to the war, with some of that going directly to Ukraine.) “He’s the greatest salesman ever,” Trump said of the Ukrainian president. “And I’m not knocking him. . . . I’m only saying, the money that we’re spending on this war, and we shouldn’t be spending, it should have never happened.”
That’s neither a pledge to cut off U.S. arms deliveries to Ukraine, nor a pledge to keep them going. But an essay that his former national-security adviser, Robert O’Brien, wrote in Foreign Affairs magazine this month sheds some more light on this question. “Trump’s approach would be to continue to provide lethal aid to Ukraine, financed by European countries, while keeping the door open to diplomacy with Russia — and keeping Moscow off balance with a degree of unpredictability. He would also push NATO to rotate ground and air forces to Poland,” O’Brien wrote, also calling on the European Union to admit Ukraine “immediately.”
In foreign-policy circles, O’Brien is viewed as a close-to-certain appointee to another top national-security post, such as secretary of state, in a second Trump administration. Trump shared the essay on his Truth Social account last week.