Even Trump's top toady is warning this appalling move risks disaster

Something treacherous looms today on the Alaskan horizon.

As Presidents Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin meet to hammer out their version of a Ukrainian-Russian “peace” plan, it could portend one of the darkest chapters in the history of American foreign policy. That’s not hyperbole.

I don’t pretend to have the chops to analyze a matter so grave. So I’ll be turning to an expert in this space.

But first, let’s review the basics. Trump’s friendship with Putin is warm and longstanding, most revealed — speaking of dark chapters — by his shocking statement in 2018 at Helsinki that he trusted Putin more than 18 intelligence agencies of his own administration.

We also know of Trump’s bitter history with our courageous ally, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. In 2019 — just a year after Helsinki — Trump attempted to extort dirt about political rival Joe Biden in exchange for release of military assistance desperately needed by Ukraine. He was impeached for that.

Trump more recently scolded and attempted to humiliate Zelensky in a shameful scene that defiled the Oval Office. It’s an indictment of our times that it did not receive more universal condemnation.

But that’s just the common knowledge piece of the story. To do full justice to the background about Putin, Trump, Ukraine and American foreign policy, I’ve decided to call upon a real expert.

His deliberate words provide clear context to why summitry between Trump and Putin poses such a grave danger to the world:

Vladimir Putin is a thug. He is a murderer. He is not someone to be admired. He is someone who has jailed and killed journalists, political opponents. He bombed a schoolhouse full of children. This is not a leader, this is a gangster.

There is no moral equivalence between the United States of America and Russia. I don’t understand people who say, well, America’s not perfect, so who are we to criticize Putin? We are not in the same category.

When you give someone like Vladimir Putin a propaganda win by standing next to him and treating him like an equal, you empower every anti-democratic movement across the globe. You demoralize our allies and you send the worst possible message to the world.

Russia is not just another country. It is an active adversary of the United States. It interfered in our elections, it continues to attack our institutions, it backs brutal dictators like Assad, and it has invaded and illegally occupied parts of Ukraine and Georgia.

When leaders in our own country excuse or even praise Putin, it tells our allies they can’t count on us — and it tells our enemies they can walk all over us.

Donald Trump is a con artist … It’s time to pull off his mask so people can see what we are dealing with here. We must not hand the nuclear codes of the United States to an erratic individual.

We cannot have a president who looks at Vladimir Putin and sees a role model. This is someone who poisons his political opponents, assassinates defectors on foreign soil, and jails dissidents.

Some people say, well, Putin’s strong. He’s decisive. That’s like admiring the mafia for its discipline. The question isn’t whether he’s effective. The question is: What is he effective at doing? The answer is crushing freedom and destabilizing the world.

We know Putin lies. We know he manipulates. And we know that when you stand next to him and suggest he’s telling the truth over our own intelligence agencies, it does enormous damage. It weakens our democracy.
The people of Ukraine are fighting and dying to resist Putin’s imperial ambitions. If we abandon them now, we won’t just be betraying an ally — we’ll be inviting more aggression, more chaos, and more suffering around the globe.
Supporting Ukraine isn’t charity. It’s in our national interest. If Russia can invade and conquer its neighbors without consequence, what message does that send to China? To Iran? To North Korea?

There are leaders in the world today who do not believe in freedom. They do not believe in elections. They believe in power, fear, and control. Vladimir Putin is one of them. We should never make the mistake of treating him as anything else.

When our own leaders parrot Russian propaganda or downplay Russia’s crimes, they’re not just being naive. They’re helping our enemies.

The minute you stop defending truth, the minute you decide it’s acceptable to ignore facts or excuse tyrants because it suits your politics, you’re no longer leading. You’re enabling.

In these perilous times, I hope every American takes these powerful words to heart from a man who today is a leading voice on U.S. foreign policy.

That would be Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

Every word above is a direct quote from Rubio’s past public commentary over a 15-year period. He spoke them forcefully during his tenure as a U.S. Senator from 2011 through 2024, as well as his 2015-16 run for the Republican presidential nomination.

Now? Not so much.

Little Marco, as Trump called him during that campaign, has shrunken in stature to the sniveling, groveling member of Trump’s cabinet that we see today rendering a tragic parody of North Korean President Kim Jong-un’s sycophants. Rubio has sold his soul — in plain view of the world — to a degree that’s arguably unprecedented.

Now Rubio prattles about Trump being the peace president. He speaks with great restraint about Putin. The old Rubio fire applies now only to Zelensky.

But Marco Rubio’s real beliefs — his real words — cannot be erased by Trumpian revisionist history.

Unlike their author, they continue to stand for something important.