How Trump Saved Ukraine Aid
Republican support for assistance to Kyiv was circling the drain. Then the former president proposed making it a loan and rescued it.
It’s been clear for a long time that, despite all the populist proclamations, Donald Trump’s view on aid for Ukraine aligns with the establishment position: the cash must flow, one way or another. That’s not what his supporters want to hear, but after this weekend, there’s no evading it.
On Saturday, the House passed a massive aid package, shepherded against the opposition by Speaker Mike Johnson with House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries. It had the support of all Democrats but just less than half of Republicans and includes billions of dollars in “economic assistance” for Ukraine in the form of “forgivable loans.” That is to say, it’s money that doesn’t have to be repaid. It’s a farce, and everyone knows it.
But here’s the key detail missing from all the right-wing outrage on Twitter now: Johnson collaborated with the Democrats in the House to ram through this package at Trump’s behest.
The “loan” was Trump’s idea, and Trump told Johnson to get behind it. That’s why Johnson, for now, acts like he is bulletproof amid calls from other Republicans for his defenestration. Johnson knows that the leader of the party is in his corner. Indeed, as demands for Johnson’s head rang out, Trump defended the speaker in an interview with radio host John Fredericks.
“I think he’s a very good person,” Trump said, and declined to criticize him over Ukraine funding.
That was a lifeline for Johnson.
“Trump’s comments could help stave off a conservative rebellion against Johnson as [Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.)] continues to take aim at the Louisiana Republican’s policy decision, accusing him of supporting Democrat priorities,” Axios reported. And Johnson is doing just that—with Trump’s approval. Indeed, the D.C. insiders at Punchbowl News called Joe Biden the “winner of this Congress” on Monday.
Again, if you’re online—an awful place to be—you’re probably following people who either don’t know why all this is happening or don’t want to mention it. It’s easier to blame Johnson than tell hard truths, even though this should be an easy one to tell. All the evidence is right there.
The story starts in February, when Trump wrote on Truth Social that no money “in the form of foreign aid should be given to any country unless it is done as a loan.”
Within days, GOP senators were in contact with Trump about the proposal. Lindsey Graham swiftly swung behind the idea, calling on his colleagues to “listen to President Trump” and fall in line. Meanwhile, Trump quickly began publicly pitching a forgivable loan for Ukraine.
“Give them the money, and if they can pay it back, they pay it back,” he said at a South Carolina rally. By early March, Graham was openly confident that the deal was all but done.
In an interview with “Meet the Press” on March 10, Graham explained how Trump—not Johnson—conceived of the loan idea and said that Trump would soon meet with Johnson about it. “Trump told you he’s gonna reach out to the speaker?” asked host Kristen Welker, confirming Graham’s statement.
“Yes,” Graham replied.
Johnson met with Trump at Mar-a-Lago on April 12. Johnson was already under fire at that time, but Trump rescued him.
“I stand with the speaker,” Trump said at a Mar-a-Lago press conference with Johnson beside him. Trump added that Johnson was “doing a really good job.”
Two days after Trump and Johnson met, as Graham said they would, Johnson announced that he would aggressively push for an aid package, one that would include a loan for Ukraine.
The Wall Street Journal confirmed that Trump and Johnson not only discussed the details of the aid package when they met, but that Trump blessed it. Per the Journal:
a high-profile visit by Johnson and a small but politically significant change to the package helped convince Trump of the case for the Ukraine measure, according to people familiar with the former president’s thinking. That cleared the way for Johnson to move ahead with the bill without sparking the powerful former president’s ire.
The “change” was implementing Trump’s forgivable loan idea.
The Journal also connected one more important dot: Trump dined in New York City with Polish President Andrzej Duda, who told reporters that he was confident that the push for more aid to Ukraine would succeed. Duda has also been lobbying the Biden administration for more aid and weapons to Kyiv.
Duda’s outlook and goals are inconsistent with an “America First” perspective. So he is not someone Trump would be in agreement with. Right?
Wrong.
The day after their meeting, Trump argued on Truth Social that Ukraine’s security is in our national interest and demanded Europeans match the amount of money the United States has given “to help a Country in desperate need.”
Instead of diplomacy, Trump called for more money to prolong a war that has already left a generation in ashes.
This is the kind of betrayal that you’d expect the right to ferociously denounce. But the right completely failed to criticize Trump.
On Feb. 15, just after Trump unveiled his loan policy, Tucker Carlson blasted . . . Lindsey Graham as the author of the proposal.
“Lindsey Graham’s latest scheme is convincing Republicans that it’s somehow better to loan Zelensky $60 billion, rather than give it to him,” Carlson wrote, without mentioning Trump once.
After the package passed, the official Human Events account tweeted an excerpt from an interview between Trump allies Darren Beattie and Jack Posobiec. “If you want to know what politics looks like without Trump, study the face, study the weak sad face of Michael Johnson,” it said.
But that framing was inaccurate. Johnson acted with Trump’s guidance, not without it. In fact, Trump doubled down on defending Johnson on the same day Human Events tweeted that clip.
Others sought answers in wild theories, something I recently wrote about.
Greene, for example, suggested Johnson was being blackmailed. That just wasn’t true. But not a single “populist” politician from Missouri to Ohio was willing to say the obvious out loud.
The best way to understand Johnson is through the lens of Remirro de Orco, a condottiero who served under Cesare Borgia during the Italian Wars. Machiavelli uses Remirro as an example of how and why leaders must work through proxies.
In “The Prince,” Machiavelli gives an account of how Borgia deployed Remirro to subdue a province. Remirro was effective but extremely ruthless in the prosecution of his duties. The people feared and hated Remirro, and Borgia feared that hatred might be reflected upon him. So, one day, Borgia had Remirro, his loyal soldier, cut in two pieces, his halves placed in public for all to see. Now Borgia could wash his hands of the blood Remirro had spilled in his service. “The ferocity of the spectacle left the people at once satisfied and stupified,” Machiavelli wrote.
Johnson, like Kevin McCarthy, Ronna McDaniel, and many others have acted as Trump’s “Remirro,” loyal up to the moment they are bisected to deflect blame from the duke. Johnson has Trump’s favor now, but I wouldn’t be surprised if that changes the moment that he is no longer useful.
There’s a futility in writing these stories. People don’t want to hear it. But I think this one is egregious enough that something has to be said. The Journal noted that before Trump intervened to rescue the package, support for aid to Ukraine was “deteriorating among GOP voters.” Put another way, instead of driving home the nail in the coffin of foreign aid, Trump—not Mike Johnson or Lindsey Graham—single-handedly saved it.