The Charade of "America First"

Published with the generous permission of Steven Beschloss. Read all of his excellent writing in his America, America newsletter.

By Steven Beschloss

I will never get over July 16, 2018, the day that Donald Trump betrayed America and sided with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin in Helsinki. You likely recall that was during a press conference when he rejected the findings of the U.S. intelligence community and supported Putin’s insistence that he did not interfere in the 2016 presidential election. This disgraceful act followed a private meeting with Putin, after which he emerged looking battered and beaten (see the photo above).

“My people came to me—[Trump’s National Intelligence Director] Dan Coats came to me, some others—they said they think it's Russia," Trump said. “I have President Putin. He just said it's not Russia. I will say this: I don't see any reason why it would be."

We likely will never know exactly what was said in that private meeting, since Trump consistently refused the keeping of any detailed records of this and at least four other face-to-face meetings with Putin. But his willingness to publicly kowtow to Putin that day and indeed to slavishly praise him has been a consistent and shameful pattern. Calling Putin’s invasion of Ukraine “genius” and “savvy” stands as a particularly repellant expression of his sycophancy, his hostility to democracy and the charade of his so-called “America First” enterprise.

All this came careening back on Saturday after the Biden-Harris administration’s remarkable achievement—securing the release of three Americans and other prisoners unjustly held by Putin’s Russia—followed by Trump’s sour and traitorous comments. This complicated deal involved Russia releasing 16 prisoners while eight Russians were returned to Moscow, making it the largest exchange of its kind since the days of the Soviet Union. This included freedom for Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan (in custody for five years), Russian-American journalist Alsu Kurmasheva, along with a number of Russian dissidents held in Russian prisons.

The prisoner swap has been rightly defined by the president as a “feat of diplomacy,” involving Germany, Slovenia, Poland, Norway and Turkey. Particularly key was the willingness of American ally Germany and its chancellor Olaf Scholz, a Biden friend, to agree to release Russian assassin Vadim Krasikov from a Berlin prison to make the deal happen.

But of course that’s not how the pro-Putin, anti-American Trump saw it. "I would like to congratulate Vladimir Putin for having made yet another great deal. Did you see the deal we made?" Trump said during his rally in Georgia. “We got our people back, but boy we make some horrible, horrible deals.”

No praise for Biden. No criticism of an adversary that takes Americans hostage. Just congratulations for the Kremlin’s murderous boss.

Of course, Trump is surely mostly aggrieved that Biden and Harris—not he—got this done. In May, he claimed in a Truth Social post that Evan Gershkovich “will be released almost immediately after the Election, but definitely before I assume Office. Vladimir Putin, President of Russia, will do that for me but not for anyone else.”

Trump’s adoration for Putin, which he succeeded in spreading throughout the GOP, is nothing new. While running for president in 2016, during which Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort handed over internal polling data to a Russian operative, Trump praised Putin as being “a leader far more than our president,” referring to Barack Obama.

Let’s not forget that Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton had Trump’s number. During the third and final debate in October 2016, Trump said that Putin had “no respect” for her or President Obama. “Well,” Clinton said, “that’s because he’d rather have a puppet as president of the United States.” There has been plenty of reporting on Trump’s reliance on Russian money to recover after his multiple bankruptcies in the ‘90s.

Soon our focus will turn to the decision by presumptive Democratic nominee Kamala Harris of a running mate. The announcement of her choice may come as soon as today, with a joint event introducing the Democratic ticket tomorrow in Philadelphia.

But once again this weekend, Trump reminded us what’s at stake in this election—the increased danger that America faces if this convicted felon armed by the Supreme Court with near-total immunity gets back into office. This includes his continuing determination to serve the interests of Putin over those of a democratic United States—whether by trashing a prisoner swap to return Americans to safety, siding with Russia against Ukraine as our ally fights to maintain sovereignty and democracy, publicly adoring and joining forces with pro-Putin authoritarian types like Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, openly working to undermine the NATO alliance and even threatening NATO allies that he’d encourage Russia to “do whatever the hell they want” with them if they don’t pay enough.

Just this week the Foreign Malign Influence Center, which is the part of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence that counters foreign propaganda campaigns, warned that Russia remains “the predominant threat to U.S. elections” and that “Russian influence actors have undertaken distinct efforts during this election cycle to build and use networks of U.S. and other Western personalities to create and disseminate Russian-friendly narratives.” The agency had previously concluded that Putin’s propaganda campaign in 2020 focused on “denigrating President Biden’s candidacy and the Democratic Party” and “supporting former President Trump.”

While we haven’t yet heard detailed statements by VP Harris about her foreign policy plans, we have every reason to expect she will hew closely to the values and goals of President Biden. On the tarmac Thursday night, after the newly freed prisoners rejoined their families, Harris said, "This is just an extraordinary testament to the importance of having a president who understands the power of diplomacy… and strengthening alliances."

The VP has frequently met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and advocated for additional aid to his country. Here’s what Harris said in February at the Munich Security Conference, when Republicans in Congress were resisting support: “This is a moment where America has the ability to actually demonstrate through action where we stand on issues like this, which is, ‘Do we stand with our friends in the face of extreme brutality or not?’ And I say we stand with our friends.”

Permit me to share a few words from President Biden’s speech to the United Nations last September. I think they offer a useful summary of the values the Biden-Harris administration has upheld—and a stark contrast to what the pro-Putin, dictator-hungry Trump portends.

“The United States seeks a more secure, more prosperous, more equitable world for all people because we know our future is bound to yours,” he said. “Cooperation, partnership—these are the keys to progress on the challenges that affect us all and the baseline for responsible global leadership.”

As I noted in my essay a year ago, “A Matter of Values,” there was “no grinding, grueling America First talk, no thinly veiled aggression wrapped up in fake, flag-waving patriotism, no litany of violent invectives meant to fuel hostility and target the vulnerable, no effort to flaunt American (or his own) superiority on the world stage. This was a chance to share human values and advocate for expanding alliances.”

It’s exactly three months until the November election, an opportunity for American voters to reassert what it means to be American and what future we want. It’s only three months, but I’m impatient to get to November 5 and prove that the majority remains committed to democracy and a better life, not a downward slide into autocracy and chaos as Vladimir Putin applauds.