The invasion and the destructive war launched by Russia against Ukraine risks doing collateral damage to the United States, where the former American president is now caught up in his past sympathies for the aggressor, Vladimir Putin, and — above all — by his contempt for the Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelensky, who has since become the hero of an unexpected resistance of the former Soviet republic.
And this gap between the strong man of the Republican Party and theestablishment of his political training, suddenly exacerbated by Moscow’s unjustified attack on Ukraine, could favor a dropout of the populist, hope several of his detractors. “It is very difficult to say whether the Republican Party will succeed in getting rid of Donald Trump [dans la foulée de la crise russo-ukrainienne] “, summed up in an interview with Homework political scientist Simon Gilhooley of Bard College in New York State. “But it is clear that there is currently a contradiction between Trump’s positions and the plurality of support expressed by Republicans for Ukraine, a plurality which suggests that the former president is not leading conservative opinion on this question. »
Last week, a sweeping survey by the Pew Research Center found that after more than 20 days of Moscow’s merciless attacks on kyiv, 49% of Republicans believe their country is not doing enough to Ukraine, against 38% among the Democrats.
Americans also agree that Vladimir Putin is the main person to blame for this tragedy, at more than 66%; the Ukrainian president is only held responsible for this war by a low 3% of Americans, according to a Reuters-Ipsos probe launched in early March.
Trump against the grain
The words of Donald Trump the day after the outbreak of this war necessarily come to contrast with this reality. In the early hours of the attack, he called the Russian invasion “smart” and Vladimir Putin a strategic “genius.” Remarks condemned by several Republican Party leaders, including former Vice President Mike Pence, who earlier this month told a group of donors that “there is no room in [le] Left [républicain] for Putin’s apologists. Pence, who could embark on the Republican nomination for the 2024 presidential election, also said he was “very inspired” by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, in addition to going to the border a few days later. Ukraine and Poland to meet refugees forced into exile by Kremlin bombs.
The image of a warlord standing up to the powerful Russian army that Mr. Zelensky has forged for himself since the start of the conflict is not to help Donald Trump who, in 2019, had tried to intimidate the leader of Ukrainian state to obtain compromising information about his political opponent Joe Biden. At the time, Trump threatened to withhold military aid to Ukraine to force Zelensky to cooperate. A blackmail whose scope becomes even more embarrassing in view of the current crisis.
For the Republican political strategist Karl Rove, a former adviser to George W. Bush, the invasion of Ukraine by Russia has now upset the Republican posture in terms of foreign policy. It revives the “tradition of conservative internationalism adopted by Presidents Ronald Reagan, George HW Bush and George W. Bush” against the doctrine ” America First by Donald Trump, which has taken the form of “populist isolationism” on the international scene, he believes.
“Republican members of Congress, candidates and commentators who echo [cet] isolationism and defenders of the Kremlin are finally no longer synchronized with the voters” of the political formation, he wrote last week in the pages of the wall street journal. “Trump will lose his grip on his party and on the public and appear as Vladimir Putin’s puppet”, adds for his part the Democratic strategist Michael Trujillo, quoted by The Hill.
A rift summed up Sunday by Republican congressional leader Mitch McConnell, who called the “Putin wing of the Republican Party” defined days earlier by Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney “lone voices” to mock supporters. of the Russian president in political formation. “The vast majority of the Republican Party, both on Capitol Hill and across the country, is totally behind Ukrainians and urges [Joe Biden] take action more quickly,” McConnell said. “So there may be some lonely voices on the side; I wouldn’t pay much attention to them. »
It is this attention that Donald Trump sought last week, issuing a bizarre statement as Volodymyr Zelensky emotionally implored the US Congress to do more to help Ukraine. In essence, the former American president presented himself as the one who had contributed the most to the strengthening of NATO. A surprising declaration coming from the man who, at the beginning of the war, described the Atlantic Alliance as a “paper tiger” and who, during his presidency, multiplied the gestures aimed at weakening it.
These contradictions are nothing new for the populist, especially in a crisis, but they remain consistent with the character, believes Todd Belt, program director at the Graduate School of Political Management at George Washington University, joined by The duty. “He is on the wrong side of his party on this issue, but he has also been in this position before on issues such as the Iraq war, free trade and immigration. And I don’t think the situation in Ukraine will cause a lasting rift between him and the party. And he adds: “One thing is true in American politics: foreign policy issues don’t last very long in the minds of voters. And they are easy to deflect. »