Daniel Wolfram
A scathing editorial claims Trump is courting Vladimir Putin at the expense of his late friend.
The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) editorial board released a scathing verdict Sunday on Trump’s diesel deal with Putin.
They did not hold back in the editorial, in which they accused Trump of selling out his late friend in Congress and catering to a vicious dictator in Russia.
The WSJ accused Donald Trump of betraying the late Senator Lindsey Graham and breaking his word that he would enforce sanctions on Russia because of its invasion of Ukraine.
A bitter betrayal
The board wrote that “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.”
This stems from an executive order from Trump waiving tariffs indefinitely against buyers of Russian energy. That move goes against Graham’s bill that had passed through the Senate weeks before by 86 votes to 11.
The directive also froze penalties against Russian officials, banks, and the shadow fleet used to dodge trade bans. Trump offered little explanation. He stated only that “the issuance of such a waiver at this time is in the national interests of the United States.”
Courting the Kremlin
The White House claimed that enforcing these sanctions would derail peace negotiations. The WSJ flatly disagreed. The editors countered that “the opposite is true, and Mr. Trump is now Mr. Putin’s best friend in the world, after perhaps China’s Xi Jinping.”
Russia did not seem to hold the same belief as Trump that softening sanctions would bring peace. On Friday night, Russian forces launched “one of the largest attacks” on Ukrainian power plants, hitting over 15 generation and transmission sites.
Trump stood by his strategy on Sunday. He posted online that he did not “want to do anything that will drive, foolishly, Russia away from the bargaining table.” The board pushed back hard, noting that “he’s been courting Mr. Putin this way for two years, to no avail.”
The WSJ urged lawmakers to take action. The editors called for “a bipartisan reckoning” after the midterm elections over Trump’s “budding alliance with the Kremlin against Ukraine, Europe and American interests.”
