On Monday, a longtime GOP insider warned that President Donald Trump is pushing the United States into an “axis of evil” alongside its greatest adversaries.
According to political commentator Charlie Sykes – who broke with the Republican Party over its embrace of Trump – new reporting by the Wall Street Journal on a potential summit between Russia, China, and the U.S. suggests that Trump has once and for all abandoned America’s allies in favor of its enemies, and he’s dragging the country with him.
In Sykes’ estimation, “It has been a very good week for Voldemort Putin.” Over a matter of days, Trump struck a diesel deal lifting some sanctions on Russia, restricted Starshield access for Ukraine, cut intel warnings of Russian missile launches against Ukraine for several days, canceled sanctions passed in honor of Lindsey Graham, demanded Ukraine dump Zelensky, absolved Russia for helping Iran fight the US, and pushed Europe to resume buying Russian gas.
While some media has characterized the matter as a “feud” that “threatens to strain the U.S. Ukraine alliance, according to Sykes, “This is bull—. The teachery is not a ‘feud,’ and the U.S.-Ukraine alliance is not ‘strained.’ It. Is. Dead. The reality,” he asserts, citing the Atlantic, is that “America is now an ally of Russia.”
What’s more, Sykes said, the Russians are well aware of it. “
On Saturday,” he notes, “Putin crony Kirill Dmitriev, who manages Russia’s sovereign wealth fund, reposted an AI-generated image of the American Eagle and Russian Bear standing together in opposition to Britain and Europe. The original post reads: ‘Things Have Changed…’ On his repost Putin’s buddy wrote: ‘Together.’ And now, the Wall Street Journal reports that Putin is floating a new Axis-of-Evil Summit with Russia, China, and the US to discuss the fate of Ukraine.”
As the Journal writes, “Such a summit — one without the involvement of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky — would be unprecedented and send alarm bells ringing in European capitals and beyond.” The Journal – owned by longtime Trump ally Rupert Murdoch – also issued a “blistering” editorial entitled “To Russia, With Love, Signed Donald,” writing, “President Trump’s assistance to Vladimir Putin keeps growing by the day, and in the latest example he stuck a shiv in the back of the legacy of the late Sen. Lindsey Graham. Mr. Trump offered no explanation beyond a statement that ‘the issuance of such a waiver at this time is in the national interests of the United States.’ The opposite is true, and Mr. Trump is now Mr. Putin’s best friend in the world, after perhaps China’s Xi Jinping. Meanwhile, the evidence compounds that Mr. Trump wants Ukraine to surrender on Mr. Putin’s terms.”
After the election, the paper declares, “there needs to be a bipartisan reckoning for Mr. Trump’s budding alliance with the Kremlin against Ukraine, Europe and American interests.”
For his part, Trump issued a statement claiming, “My decision on Russia is a very simple one. I am in the process of negotiating peace in the war between Russia and Ukraine, and don’t want to do anything that will drive, foolishly, Russia away from the bargaining table.” But according to Sykes, “No one — by which I mean no one on the planet, friend or foe — believed him.”