Is Trump’s Embrace of Russia the Greatest Betrayal in American History?

The convergence of pro-Kremlin policy, tech giveaways to rivals, and rising domestic repression is a five-alarm warning that we ignore at our own peril…

Many of us have long suspected or even predicted that Donald Trump would betray America, gut our democracy in favor of a police state, and align us with Russia. You know, the country that the Financial Times reported this week tried to launch multiple terrorist attacks against the United States and Europe over the past year.

We’re now there.

It’s the most under-reported story of the year, perhaps of the century: under Trump, the United States is abandoning advocacy of democracy (shutting down Voice of America, etc.), abandoning our democratic allies in Europe, and for the past year has abandoned Ukraine to the tender mercies of the Butcher of Moscow.

At the same time, Trump’s building ties to Middle Eastern dictatorships, adopting Russia’s explicit worldview, trashing civil and human rights at home, and now handing to China our most valuable military-potential technology.

In other words, we’ve been betrayed by Donald Trump and the people around him in ways that would have made Benedict Arnold blush.

A few weeks ago, Trump presented Ukraine with a so-called “peace deal” that was apparently written, in first draft, by Moscow. This week, he told that nation they have “until Christmas” to hand over more than 20% of their country to Putin and surrender their own military abilities forever, leaving them vulnerable to Russia’s next attack.

Trump’s brain trust just produced a new National Security Strategy (NSS) for the United States that largely abandons Canada and Europe while embracing a racist, neofascist worldview straight out of Putin’s rhetoric.

As the National Security Desk writes:

“It abandons allies, misidentifies threats, emboldens aggressors, erodes deterrence, and even drives allies to consider nuclear proliferation.”

Alexander Vindman, the former Director of European Affairs for the United States National Security Council (NSC), wrote:

“The prevailing sentiment among European observers was that this document represented not only the closing chapter of decades’ worth of cooperation between the United States and Europe, but also that Washington may soon actively sabotage the political and economic systems of the European Union through the promotion of ‘patriotic parties’ and far-right figures. Amidst an ongoing impasse over a potential peace agreement in Ukraine, representatives of the Russian government claims that the document is ‘consistent with our vision.’”

David Rothkopf, a former senior national security/trade official in the Clinton administration, was equally blunt in an article published by The New Republic:

“Indeed, the document, released by the White House on Thursday, reads as if it were dictated by the Kremlin, much as our recent ‘peace proposal’ for Ukraine turned out to have been. Or, perhaps more accurately, it reads like the product of a collaboration between Vladimir Putin and Stephen Miller, the deputy White House chief of staff for nativist hate.”

Russia expert Olga Lautman called it “Russia’s return on investment for interfering in the 2016 election,” and it sure looks like she’s right. An earlier article by her titled “America’s Foreign Policy Now Aligns With Russia” noted:

“The NSS does not merely ‘shift priorities.’ It flips seventy-five years of American policy on its head and declares political war on Europe’s democratic institutions while elevating the far-right parties in Europe that Russia has been cultivating for more than a decade. Trump’s team packaged this as a vision for a ‘new’ transatlantic relationship, but the core message is unmistakable, and that is to weaken NATO, fracture Europe, isolate Ukraine, and empower nationalist movements that are openly friendly to Moscow, with every paragraph carrying the same cold, transactional, subservient logic that has defined Trump’s relationship with Russia for decades.”

Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman, rarely one to engage in hyperbole, wrote of this document in an article titled “Is This the End of the Free World?”:

“The language is astonishing. Europe, the document warns, faces ‘the stark prospect of civilizational erasure.’ Why? Because ‘it is more than plausible that within a few decades at the latest, certain NATO members will become majority non-European.’ I don’t know why they bothered with the euphemism: ‘non-European’ clearly means ‘nonwhite.’

“But there’s hope, the document declares, thanks to ‘the growing influence of patriotic European parties,’ by which it clearly means parties like Germany’s neo-Nazi AfD.”

Meanwhile, Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea are working together to destroy Ukraine, the gateway to Europe, and fielding armies of bots to fill social media and other venues with pro-Trump and anti-democracy rhetoric.

And the world’s richest man and recipient in billions in American government contracts, Elon Musk, the architect of the destruction of America’s soft power via USAID, this week called for the abolition of the European Union itself.

Finally, to the shock of the western world, Trump “cut a deal” to let Nvidia sell some of their most advanced chips to China after our military and intelligence experts have explicitly warned of the danger that this could accelerate that country’s move toward seizing Taiwan and threatening us with World War III.

Add to that Trump’s bellicose and murderous actions against Venezuela that could lead to us engaging in warfare in our own hemisphere, and you have the formula to tie up our military while bringing about the final end of American influence in the larger world, exactly as Putin and Xi want.

NATO chief Mark Rutte yesterday urged the West to prepare for war “like our grandparents endured,” adding:

“Conflict is at our door. Russia has brought war back to Europe. And we must be prepared.”

Trump could use such a war — as has been done before by presidents Wilson and Roosevelt — to gut civil rights in America and imprison the people he sees as his “threats” or political enemies.

And try to call off or steal the elections of 2026.

These developments, combined with the naked brutality of ICE that was revealed by this week’s report from Amnesty International, are shocking. American democracy is being gutted from within, our foreign policy is realigning away from Europe and toward Russia and China, all while dictators and corporate oligarchs openly bribe Trump and members of his family.

Where is our media? Where is the GOP? Democratic politicians are speaking out, as are some commentators, but elected Republicans and the majority of the corporate media are “business as usual.”

This is a five-alarm fire for democracy, both here and around the world.

Pass it along and help wake up our country.

Louise’s Daily Song: “How Could We Let the Betrayal Happen?”

The song that was inspired by this article is here.
My reading this article as an audio podcast is here.
My newest book, The Last American President: A Broken Man, a Corrupt Party, and a World on the Brink is now available in bookstores nationwide.
You can follow me on Blue Sky here: https://bsky.app/profile/thomhartmann.bsky.social