Following Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, right-wing media glossed over former President Donald Trump's history of withholding aid and repeating Russian President Vladimir Putin’s talking points to claim the invasion never would have happened under Trump’s administration.
On Wednesday, February 23, Putin announced that Russia was initiating what he called a “special military operation” in Ukraine and proceeded to launch a series of missile attacks near the capital. Over the next week, Ukrainian forces prevented Russia from taking any major population centers, while U.S. and European allies announced targeted sanctions against Russian banks and oligarchs.
During the annual Conservative Political Action Conference held in Orlando, Florida, on February 26, Trump gave a speech during which he said Putin is “smart” and “playing Biden like a drum and it’s not a pretty thing to watch.” Trump went on to baselessly claim that Putin “made his decision” to invade after watching “the pathetic withdrawal from Afghanistan.” Trump also praised himself as “the only president of the 21st century on whose watch Russia did not invade another country.”
Trump’s claims that his supposed support of Ukraine prevented a Russian invasion run contrary to the facts. In reality, Trump repeatedly demonized Ukraine, accusing the country of interfering with the 2016 presidential election — an apparent Russian talking point taken up by the Trump administration — and pushing his lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, to run a smear campaign against the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, leading to her dismissal.
Most notably, Trump froze military aid that Congress had appropriated to Ukraine and withheld a White House meeting with President Volodymyr Zelensky until he promised to dig up dirt about Biden ahead of the 2020 elections, actions that resulted in Trump’s first impeachment. Even when his administration did provide military aid to Ukraine, such as when the U.S. sold Javelin missiles to the country in 2018 (a fact frequently cited by right-wing commentators in recent weeks), Trump himself actually opposed the actions until learning it could benefit America financially.
The right-wing figures conveniently overlooking these facts are often the same ones who ran interference for Trump each step of the way, stoking outrage over conspiracy theories involving Ukraine and decrying Trump’s first impeachment as a “show trial.” Now conservative media outlets are attempting to rewrite history to claim Trump prevented a Russian invasion rather than potentially weakening Ukraine’s ability to defend itself. Here is their rhetoric in action:
- During the February 28 edition of Fox News’ Hannity, Fox News contributor and former Trump White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany rhetorically asked, “Guess who did provide that lethal weaponry … ? It was President Trump that did that. He gave the Ukranians weaponry.” Later in the episode, Trump’s director of national intelligence, John Ratcliffe, said, “The question I am getting mostly here is, would this have happened in a Trump administration? And the answer is we know the answer. It didn't happen in a Trump administration because there was credible deterrence.”