As we all know, Donald Trump sat down with George Stephanolpoulos this week and trashed some gold star parents, while indicating that he, too had made many equivalent sacrifices, mainly in the form of having been successful. That was pretty outrageous and showstopping and got a lot of attention, as it should, but the show went on, and Trump had more to say about other subjects.
George Stephanopoulos had some questions for Donald Trump about foreign policy, which also deserve a bit of attention. Specifically, he wanted to know about the unusual Ukraine plank in the GOP platform. For those who need a refresher on that plank:
The Trump campaign worked behind the scenes last week to make sure the new Republican platform won’t call for giving weapons to Ukraine to fight Russian and rebel forces, contradicting the view of almost all Republican foreign policy leaders in Washington.
snip
Inside the meeting, Diana Denman, a platform committee member from Texas who was a Ted Cruz supporter, proposed a platform amendment that would call for maintaining or increasing sanctions against Russia, increasing aid for Ukraine and “providing lethal defensive weapons” to the Ukrainian military.
“Today, the post-Cold War ideal of a ‘Europe whole and free’ is being severely tested by Russia’s ongoing military aggression in Ukraine,” the amendment read. “The Ukrainian people deserve our admiration and support in their struggle.”
Trump staffers intervened, and nixed that language:
Trump staffers wrote an amendment to Denman’s amendment that stripped out the platform’s call for “providing lethal defensive weapons” and replaced it with softer language calling for “appropriate assistance.”
As this was the only thing in the GOP platform that Trump staffers seemed to care about, Stephanopoulos tossed Trump what should have been a softball question to clarify what the campaign has in mind, asking,
Well, why did you soften the GOP platform on Ukraine?
His answer is typical Trump and revealing. A transcript is below. T = Trump; S = Stephanopoulos:
T: I wasn’t involved in that. Honestly. I was not involved —
S: Your people were.
T: Yeah, I was not involved in that. I’d like to — I’d have to take a look at it. But I was not involved in it —
S: Do you know what they did?
T: They softened it, I heard. But I was not involved.
S: Yeah, they took away the part of the platform calling for provisions of lethal weapons to Ukraine to defend themselves. Why is that a good idea?
T: It’s — look, you know, I have my own ideas. He’s not going into Ukraine, okay, just so you understand. He’s not gonna go into Ukraine, alright? You can mark it down. You can put it down. You can take it anywhere you want —
S: Well, he’s already there, isn’t he?
T: Ok, well he’s there in a certain way. But I’m not there. You have Obama there. And frankly, that whole part of the world is a mess under Obama with all the strength that you’re talking about and all of the power of NATO and all of this. In the meantime, he’s going away. He take — takes Crimea. He’s sort of, I mean —
S: But you said you might recognize that.
xThis exchange between Trump and @GStephanopoulos is quite something on Ukraine: pic.twitter.com/JqVZU4qAtp
— Sopan Deb (@SopanDeb) July 31, 2016So to summarize, first, Trump declares he knows nothing. He’s “heard” some things, but he would have to take a look at it to even know what Stephanopoulos is referring to. He insists repeatedly that he had nothing to do with the plank being inserted. He really wants to argue that his staffers did something so significant without his knowledge or authorization? Such leadership!
Next, when asked by Stephanopoulos how leaving Ukraine defenseless against Putin is a good idea, Trump enters the alternate reality that inhabits his head which he seems to refer to as “my own ideas”, declaring that Putin won’t go into Ukraine. We can mark his words; believe him.
Stephanopoulos gently reminds Trump that Putin has actually invaded Ukraine before, fairly recently, in fact, and Trump says,
well, yeah, sorta, I guess. But I’m not in Ukraine. And OBAMA is. And Obama messed things up And NATO has all that power But Putin’s gonna go away And take Crimea.OK, I don’t know how Stephanopoulos was able to finish the interview in the face of so much crazy nonsense. What do you say to someone who is so completely untethered from reality and who has been nominated by one of the two major political parties in the US to assume the highest office of the land and have responsibility for our foreign policy?