The wrong side of history in more ways than one

David Pakman (0:00)

The president of the United States is now telling us that Russia has been fine in Ukraine, even though we have new Russian attacks that are killing children. Meanwhile, the administration is blocking defensive missiles from reaching Ukraine. And somehow the administration wants us to believe that Zelenskyy is the bad guy here. We also have repeated heckling of the president and vice president at their respective rallies.

And for some reason, Trump had to go to Kansas, a place that Republicans shouldn't really need help. Just 13, 14 days before an election, where Trump glitched, rambled about identifying a giraffe and then casually using an anti-Semitic slur. JD Vance was confronted about the Epstein files. He suggested the heckler maybe is an illegal immigrant.

And then a women's health event where things get so bizarre, including an incredibly awkward moment with Melania, that you really have to see it. Plus, we will speak to Maryland Governor Wes Moore today and a lot more. Let's do the show. Why not?

Well, I guess we're on the side of the dictators when it comes to Russia and Ukraine. This is getting really, really ugly and disgusting. Donald Trump has apparently decided that when it comes to Russia invading Ukraine, we're deciding with the dictator who invaded rather than the democracy that was invaded.

I really want you to understand how completely insane this has become. This is really not about whether you support sending billions of dollars in weapons overseas. This is really at its core, not about the military industrial complex, not about whether you think the United States should be involved in every foreign conflict. You can oppose all of that stuff. But there is a much simpler question here. When a dictator invades a neighboring democracy, kills civilians, tries to take over another country, whose side are we on as the United States? And Donald Trump's answer increasingly is we are on the side of the invading dictator Vladimir Putin. The latest reporting and it's so depressing to even have to report this is that the Trump administration is blocking the transfer of patriot interceptor missiles to Ukraine. Now you might even take the position we shouldn't be sending offensive weapons to anybody. OK, these are defensive weapons which we aren't sending to the invaded country. They are used to shoot down incoming Russian missiles. And what makes this so outrageous is that we're not necessarily even talking about the United States sending Ukraine our own missiles. We're talking about other countries that already have these American made weapons, wanting to send them to Ukraine. But because the weapons are American made, the United States has to authorize those transfers and Pete Hegset's Pentagon reportedly isn't authorizing it. Now meanwhile, Ukraine is running dangerously low on interceptors. And what is Russia doing?

Russia is continuing to attack Russians, Ukrainian cities. And yesterday, a Russian drone strike in the Kharkiv region reportedly killed six people, including three kids. One of those kids was a baby in a stroller. And the Trump administration is making it more difficult for Ukraine to get the weapons it needs to shoot down incoming missiles. Now, Secretary of State Marco Rubio denies that there's any deliberate policy to harm Ukraine. All right. I mean, listen, that that's a pretty carefully worded explanation subject to some opinion and interpretation. But the missiles aren't getting through and people are dying. And then there's what Trump himself is saying. We're going to get to it later. Trump actually said to reporters, Russia frankly has been fine on Ukraine. They haven't been doing much.

Russia is launching ballistic missiles at Ukrainian cities, killing civilians and children. And Trump goes, Russia has basically been fine. Now, meanwhile, Trump is attacking Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelenskyy, suggesting, oh, Ukraine needs to have someone else negotiating. Zelenskyy can't do it. So Zelenskyy is now the problem, not Putin, the guy who invaded the dictator. This is the pattern we've been watching for years. Putin invades Ukraine. Trump blames Ukraine for not making a deal. Russia attacks Ukrainian cities. Trump complains about Zelenskyy. Ukraine needs defensive weapons. Trump's administration gets in the way. And when there's an opportunity to put some pressure on Putin and for Trump to actually do something that might push Putin to make some kind of a deal, Trump finds a reason to put pressure on Ukraine instead. Now, I I'm anticipating some of the e-mails I'm going to get in response to this. Supporting Ukraine's right to defend itself doesn't mean you support endless war. And it doesn't mean writing a blank check to defense contractors. It doesn't mean refusing to negotiate. I want the war to end.

I want the killing to stop.

I want a negotiated settlement that is durable. But a settlement that rewards Putin for invading another country and leaves Ukraine defenseless isn't a brilliant peace agreement. It's Trump capitulating and it sends a message to every dictator watching who already suspects that the way to get in Trump's good graces is to do exactly what Putin has been doing, you know, kowtowing to Trump superficially and praising him and all this stuff. It sends a message to dictators that you can invade your neighbor. You can kill a whole bunch of people. And if you wait long enough, the US might come in and apply pressure on your victims to surrender to you. Peace through strength does not look like this. This is rewarding aggression. And the thing that I find so fundamentally disturbing is that this really shouldn't be a difficult moral question. You've got a dictator who invaded another country. You have a democracy that's trying to survive and persist. And you've got civilians in that democracy being slaughtered by the dictator. And under Donald Trump, the United States keeps finding itself on the wrong side. And it isn't because Americans have said, hey, you know what? We really like Putin. Let's be on Putin's side in this thing. And it's not because simply saying we support the democratic country in this fight means we have to support every war till the end of time. It's because Trump specifically over and over again is more interested in accommodating the aggressor than in protecting the victim. And at some point, we have to stop pretending this is a sophisticated foreign policy strategy that Trump has come up with. We're just choosing the dictatorship over the democracy. It should be seen as completely and totally shameful because it is completely and totally shameful. So we're voting for a lot of things this November. We are voting based on our assessment of whether the economic promises of the Republican Party have been met or delivered on. That's one thing that voters will be weighing in on. It's a referendum of sorts on that.