For months, Donald Trump has held out the promise of a speedy end to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine if he were in power.
Trump didn’t quibble with Orban’s account. The pair enjoy a mutual admiration based on their shared autocratic tendencies. Orban endorsed Trump for president. Trump returned the favour, calling Orban “fantastic” and “the boss”. Together, they are Boss Bros. Trump isn’t even asked to commit to war. He has a choice between dishonour and giving aid. He chooses dishonour. Not to avoid war, not even to save money. The money is not a genuine concern. We know that because, while he likes to talk like a scrooge about American taxpayers’ money, in office he was a spendthrift, even before COVID.He took national debt as a proportion of the US economy to its highest since World War II.
In his State of the Union address this week, Joe Biden tried to sound the klaxon as loudly as possible. His opening words: “In January 1941, Franklin Roosevelt came to this chamber to speak to the nation. And he said, ‘I address you at a moment unprecedented in the history of the Union.’ Hitler was on the march. War was raging in Europe.
Second is that Trump himself is said to have invoked Hitler in his pantheon of Boss Bros. According to John Kelly in his Sciutto interview: “He said, ‘Well, but Hitler did some good things.’ I said, ‘Well, what?’ And he said, ‘Well, rebuilt the economy.’ But what did he do with that rebuilt economy? He turned it against his own people and against the world. And I said, ‘Sir, you can never say anything good about the guy. Nothing.