Conservatives must speak up.
Conservatives must speak up.
C onservatives once believed that character is the foundation of effective self-government and that public office is a trust to be honored rather than a prize to be exploited. The opposite is also true: corruption and self-dealing are the hallmarks of failing nations and kleptocratic dictatorships like Russia.
It used to be that Republicans said these things loudly and often, usually while a Democrat was explaining why a scandal was really only a misunderstanding. But now, the GOP must decide: will that principle apply to our own side in addition to our enemies or does it not apply to anyone? By that standard, the past few years have been grim, and the past few weeks a disaster.
Start with Athens. Kimberly Guilfoyle, the president’s now-outgoing ambassador to Greece, is in the middle of a growing scandal. On Tuesday, the White House finally asked her to resign. But it took multiple Wall Street Journal reports, which included the detail that, just before her confirmation hearing, she asked a Trump donor to pay a $100,000 credit card bill in a way she thought was untraceable, and had promised him access to high-level administration officials. Her problems do not stop there. The State Department’s inspector general has opened a formal investigation into her use of private planes and helicopters, acceptance of huge improper gifts, and close ties to foreign energy and construction companies hoping for her help. The fact that Guilfoyle has constantly urged EU leaders to work with those companies that have bankrolled her lifestyle is surely no coincidence.
This self-enriching lifestyle mimics from the president’s own actions over the past two years. In a federal disclosure of his financial holdings Trump filed in June, he reported profiting by more than $1 billion from new crypto businesses after he loosened regulations on the industry. The majority of investors in Trump’s meme coins have lost most of their investment. According to recent polling, six in ten Americans now believe Trump is illegally profiting from the presidency or that his self-dealings are — at the very least — immoral. Only two in ten believe Trump is not profiting from his position.
Then there is the diesel deal with a murderous dictator. A few weeks after Trump signed a Russian sanctions law meant to choke off the energy revenue that pays for the war in Ukraine, he announced a deal with Vladimir Putin to buy Russian diesel. He said Russia would supply more than 300,000 tons this month, with 500,000 more in November, and another 4 million to follow. This means U.S. consumers will be paying up to $4 billion to help finance Russia’s increasingly bloody war on Ukraine, despite the congressional mandate in 2022 that the U.S. import no more oil products from Russia.
With more than 2 million soldiers killed and wounded on both sides and millions of Ukrainian civilians dead, wounded, or forced to flee their homes, the completely unjustified Russian invasion of a fellow democracy has gone on far too long. Now Trump, after promising dozens of times on the campaign trail that he would end the war in “24 hours,” is making decisions that will prolong it or even help Russia win. Sadly, the horrific diesel deal is unlikely to reduce the price of the fuel by more than a few cents, and only temporarily. But the damage to Ukraine and NATO, whose other heads of state almost uniformly distrust and dislike Trump, will be long-lasting.
Trump’s motive is no mystery. With midterm elections only weeks away, he is concerned about the price consumers are paying at the pump. As always, Trump seeks to shift the blame to others. But it was Trump’s decision to attack Iran without first securing the Strait of Hormuz that caused oil prices to explode, not Ukraine’s defending itself. Ukraine’s strikes on Russian refineries have left Russia struggling to supply its military invasion. Ukrainian pressure was working, and Washington has now offered Moscow a way out of it, paid with American dollars.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Russia would repay the deal “with further terror and perfidy.” Anyone who knows Putin’s history knows this is true. Senator Richard Blumenthal (D., Conn.), a cosponsor of the sanctions law with my friend the late Senator Lindsey Graham, said Trump’s actions make America complicit in Putin’s war. The diesel deal was announced while Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner were meeting with Ukrainian officials about a peace proposal. As I’ve mentioned before, Steve and Jared are at best rookie diplomats with scant qualifications. But you have to feel sorry for them when their own boss pulls the rug out from beneath them. And now, Elon Musk has intimated that Trump told him recently to reduce Starlink availability to the Ukrainian military, for whom it is vitally important. One wonders, though, if there were . . . other motivations.
And then there is the wedding. ProPublica reported that Donald Trump Jr.’s three-day wedding celebration in the Bahamas in May was heavily funded by Umar Kremlev, a Russian oligarch who heads the International Boxing Association and has very close ties to Putin. He covered hundreds of thousands of dollars of Trump Jr.’s wedding celebration expenses, including the rental of a private island and a massive fireworks show. Bettina Anderson Trump confirmed the generosity, calling it a gift from a “dear friend.” The couple may actually believe that, despite having only known Kremlev casually for a few years. One gets the impression that friendship in the Trump administration is more about the size of one’s bank account than anything else.
No matter what, the son of a sitting president accepting lavish hospitality from a Putin intimate is the kind of arrangement that would have had every Republican on Capitol Hill demanding subpoenas had the surname been Biden or Clinton. The New York Times called it an extraordinary flouting of ethical norms. A retired FBI official told ProPublica that a man who pays millions for your wedding expects something in return. That is exactly right. It is why such gifts were unthinkable in earlier administrations of both parties, and it puts a decidedly bad taste in every voter’s mouth a few weeks before the midterms. Excellent Republican candidates across the country are going to pay the price.
These episodes from just the past two weeks, on top of the widespread practice of self-enrichment over the past two years, are now a feature of the Trump administration. Americans of both parties have noticed. The recent cratering of Republican candidates across the country, including many in GOP strongholds, indicates there is something big moving the political needle — despite huge ad spending in their behalf by GOP committees and Trump’s various PACs.
Appearances matter in a republic because trust is its fundamental working capital. Voters can forgive a lot, including mistakes, bad luck, and even bad policy. What they cannot forgive is the overwhelming sense that the people they elected to serve them are instead benefiting handsomely through shady self-dealing while they struggle to make ends meet. Conservatives, of all people, should say so plainly, and say it now, even if it incurs the president’s wrath.
Shame is not a partisan emotion. It is the reflex that tells public servants when they have drifted too far. An administration that has lost any capacity for shame or self-control will soon completely lose the confidence of the voters who put it there. Unfortunately, the GOP is about to see how ugly that can be.