6 days Ago
FRUSTRATED by his inability to end the Russian war against Ukraine on “day one” it seems that Donald Trump wants to take it out on the 240,000 refugees on temporary legal status in the United States. Last month, the President said he was considering revoking their status and deporting them back to the war zone. More than 400 refugees here have been sponsored by hundreds of New Hampshire residents.
The young children brought to our state are usually from families where their father is serving in the Ukrainian Army fighting the unprovoked invasion by Russia on Feb. 24, 2022. To turn our back on these folks is cruel, immoral, and a stab in the heart, since they are not here illegally, but were vetted as war refugees.
How can Mr. Trump negotiate a peace when his Secretary of Defense already gave up two key points of contention before talks even began? Russia’s Vladimir Putin has been concerned about Ukraine joining NATO and the possible use of American armed forces on the ground to keep the peace, as we do in South Korea. The Trump team conceded those points and then made it a trifecta by saying Russia gets to keep the four provinces it has taken over since 2022 in Ukraine.
How is giving Putin what he wants before talks even begin going to get you leverage for a deal? Trump needs to read Putin’s book on KGB negotiating techniques called “The Art of No Deal.” Leading the stellar team for the United States is Steve Witkoff, a fellow real estate tycoon. In an interview in late March, Mr.
Witkoff said after he met Putin “I liked him” and he didn’t “regard Putin as a bad guy.” Tell that to the millions of Ukrainians who have fled their country and the tens of thousands of dead and wounded at the hands of Putin’s army. A peace deal by the Trump-Witkoff team will mean a sellout of Ukraine.
Most Americans were in shock after seeing the airplanes retreat from Kabul, Afghanistan under President Joe Biden. That was a total disaster and a blow to America’s prestige. Biden’s poll numbers never recovered from the botched retreat.
President Donald Trump will face the same mess when thousands of Ukrainians are rounded up and shot after Putin’s puppies deliver him “peace.” What a message to send China on the weak American resolve to help a democracy resist outside aggression. The Trump sellout began in a big way on February 24, 2025, when the United Nations General Assembly took up a resolution condemning Russia for its invasion of Ukraine.
Apparently that invasion never even happened so we joined our longtime friends and allies Belarus, North Korea and Russia in voting against it. Are we now proud members of the autocrats’ Axis of Evil? What Republican could ever vote with North Korea? Voting against us were our new enemies: Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, and most of the world, who are not in a coma thinking Ukraine “started the war” as Trump put it. On March 8, 1983, President Ronald Reagan referred to the Soviet Union as “the evil empire” and began a push to collapse its economy.
Just two years after he left office Reagan’s dream came true and the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 freeing a number of countries from the bear’s claws. A young KGB officer named Vladimir Putin called that collapse “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century” and he pledged to rebuild the empire. President Trump betrays the memory of Ronald Reagan by siding with Russia, Belarus and North Korea.
As he sits at the Resolute desk, Reagan’s portrait is on the wall to Trump’s left. It is time to take it down and stop pretending he is a Republican who fights tyranny like Reagan did. A March 9 poll found that 65% of Republicans still believe we should continue aid to Ukraine until the end of the war.
Why then does our so-called Republican president beat on his friends and suck up to the dictators? He sounds like a tough guy when he says he will “take” Canada and Greenland by force if necessary even though they are allies and friends. What he doesn’t do is spar with a real tough guy named Vladimir Putin because, like most bullies, Trump is afraid he will get decked by a real dictator..
