It’s certainly understandable that many millions of Americans have focused on Springfield, Ohio, after the debate between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris. When Trump repeated the ridiculous rumor that Haitian immigrants in Springfield were killing and eating household pets, he not only highlighted once again his own vulnerability to conspiracy theories, it put the immigrant community in Springfield in serious danger. Bomb threats have forced two consecutive days of school closings and some Haitian immigrants are now “scared for their lives.”
That’s dreadful. It’s inexcusable. But it’s not Trump’s only terrible moment in the debate. Most notably, he refused to say — in the face of repeated questions — that he wanted Ukraine to win its war with Russia. Trump emphasized ending the war over winning the war, a position that can seem reasonable, right until you realize that attempting to force peace at this stage of the conflict would almost certainly cement a Russian triumph. Russia would hold an immense amount of Ukrainian territory and Vladimir Putin would rightly believe he bested both Ukraine and the United States. He would have rolled the “iron dice” of war and he would have won.
There is no scenario in which a Russian triumph is in America’s best interest. A Russian victory would not only expand Russia’s sphere of influence, it would represent a human rights catastrophe (Russia has engaged in war crimes against Ukraine’s civilian population since the beginning of the war) and threaten the extinction of Ukrainian national identity. It would reset the global balance of power.
In addition, a Russian victory would make World War III more, not less, likely. It would teach Putin that aggression pays, that the West’s will is weak and that military conquest is preferable to diplomatic engagement. China would learn a similar lesson as it peers across the strait at Taiwan.
If Putin is stopped now — while Ukraine and the West are imposing immense costs in Russian men and materiel — it will send the opposite message, making it far more likely that the invasion of Ukraine is Putin’s last war, not merely his latest.
Trump’s grudge
But that’s not how Trump thinks about Ukraine. He exhibits deep bitterness toward the country, and it was that bitterness that helped expose how dangerous he was well before the Big Lie and Jan. 6.
Recall Trump’s first impeachment and the “perfect” phone call between Trump and Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Ukraine had been locked in a low-intensity conflict with Russia since Russia’s 2014 invasion of Crimea and intervention in the Donbas, a region in eastern Ukraine, and Ukraine was in grave need of American military assistance. In his July 25, 2019, conversation with Trump, Zelenskyy said Ukraine was “almost ready to buy more Javelins from the United States for defense purposes.”
Trump responded almost like a mob boss. He needed a little something in return. “I would like you to do us a favor,” he said, “though because our country has been through a lot and Ukraine knows a lot about it. I would like you to find out what happened with this whole situation with Ukraine, they say CrowdStrike … I guess you have one of your wealthy people … The server, they say Ukraine has it.”
Recognizing that Joe Biden might be a formidable opponent in 2020, Trump also asked Zelenskyy to investigate the Biden family. This attempt to convince a foreign government to investigate a domestic political rival garnered the most attention and outrage about the exchange, but I want to focus on Trump’s first request, for Zelenskyy to find “the server.”
In that moment, Trump vocalized one of MAGA’s strangest conspiracy theories: that it was Ukraine, not Russia, that interfered in the 2016 presidential election, and that part of the proof was located in a mythical CrowdStrike server in Ukraine.
At a critical moment in world history — when an American ally was seeking arms to help defend itself against a hostile great power — Trump responded with a corrupt and lunatic request: that Zelenskyy grant Trump a series of personal demands, including a demand that Zelenskyy couldn’t possibly meet, to find a server in Ukraine that did not exist.
Open to manipulation
Trump was conducting American foreign policy on the basis of his personal grievances, not American interests. Even worse, his negative attitude toward Ukraine isn’t rooted in a grand strategic vision; it is rooted in his personal pique over Ukraine’s nonexistent participation in a fictional conspiracy. It was an astonishing display of corruption and unfitness.
Trump’s defenders note that he did not get his way. The administration ultimately approved the Javelin missiles and Zelenskyy never had to investigate the Bidens, nor did he have to go on a server hunt. But that hardly vindicates Trump’s initial demand, and it’s cold comfort when contemplating a second Trump term.
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Those Trump defenders who are honest enough to acknowledge that Trump is self-interested and erratic try to turn his liability to an asset. They claim that world leaders are thrown off-balance by Trump, and that they’re more cautious as a result.
But there’s a difference between “crazy like a fox,” when there is a method to the apparent madness, and Trump’s instability. He’s deranged in the most predictable (and thus manipulable) ways. In last week’s debate, for example, Trump’s memorable rant about Haitians eating pets was triggered by obvious bait from Harris.
Trump’s reluctance to say the plain truth — that a Ukrainian victory is in America’s national interest — demonstrates that he is still a prisoner to his own grievances, and there is no one left who can stop him from doing his worst.
David French is a New York Times columnist.