Edwin Eisendrath is the former CEO of the Chicago Sun-Times and Chicago Alderman who hosts It's The Democracy Stupid on Lincoln Square and a weekly radio show on WCPT820AM/ Heartland Signal. Subscribe to his Substack.
Donald Trump is facing a crushing reckoning at the polls. He is desperate. Vladimir Putin does not have voters, but even Russians, as experienced as they are with pain, have limits. This week, the two dictators came to each other’s aid.
Last Friday, the two spoke for an hour-and-a-half. Trump described it was a great conversation. He said Putin wants peace, and blamed Ukrainian President Zelenskyy for the continued carnage.
For years, Trump quietly abetted Putin’s war on the West. He didn’t object when Putin launched an unprovoked and illegal war in Ukraine, the biggest land war in Europe since World War II. He turned a blind eye as Putin launched a hybrid war across the continent- blowing up shopping malls, cutting communications cables, flooding border crossings with migrants, jamming GPS systems, and interfering with elections.
Trump famously asked Putin to help him win his first presidential race. According to a report of the Senate Intelligence Committee, chaired by then-Republican Sen. Marco Rubio, Russia did. Now Putin is allied with Iran and has provided the Revolutionary Guard with intelligence that helped kill Americans and destroy American bases in the region. Trump says that’s not important.
He hosted a summit with Putin in Alaska that succeeded only in giving the Russian dictator a propaganda boost at home. He ended U.S. government programs that tracked money laundering and sanctions evasion, helping Putin continue to fund his war. He launched his own assault on NATO with rhetorical attacks and real threats to invade a Greenland, part of NATO member Denmark.
Republican former Congressman Joe Walsh and I wrote about these and other ways Trump has assisted Putin.
Joe and I don’t see eye to eye on everything, but we are both clear about the threat Russia poses to world peace and human freedom, and about which side Donald Trump is on— the wrong one.
As we wrote, news was breaking about Donald Trump jr.’s wedding on a private island in the Bahamas. Within days, however, we learned that a Russian oligarch with close ties to Putin had paid for the party and for the rental of the island whole island for the party.
When the story broke, the Trump family explained that it’s no big deal he’s just a close friend and that they’d never heard of the guy. Later they said they would pay him back.
Sure.
War is not a predictable business. Putin thought he would conquer Ukraine in a matter of weeks. That was in 2022. Instead, according to a March piece in the Military Times, the war had already claimed about 325,000 Russian lives with another 875,000 wounded or missing.
A July report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies puts the carnage is even higher. They calculate Russian deaths at 450,000 and they put monthly casualties at 30,000, likely exceeding recruitment.
Another 650,000 Russians have fled abroad. The Military Times estimates the total cost of the war to be about $2.5 trillion. That cumulative cost is bigger than Russia’s annual GDP.
This would be a time to think seriously about regime change in Russia. Instead, Trump actively assisting Putin.
In August, CIA Director John Ratcliffe flew to Moscow. We know this not because the administration announced the trip, but because flight trackers discovered that a US Air Force Boeing C-17A Globemaster had left Riga and landed in Moscow. They posted video on social media. CBS News then confirmed the mission with sources. His plane was carrying a mobile SCIF, allowing him to stay in touch with Washington and to discuss classified information while in Russian airspace. Later, multiple media reports indicated that Ratcliffe went to Russia to warn Putin against attacking NATO.
Maybe. Or maybe he was warning Putin about domestic threats.
Earlier this month, news broke that Putin and Trump had reached an oil deal. Sanctions have made foreign assets of Russian oil companies essentially worthless to Russia. But … here’s the catch: they might be worth a lot to non-sanctioned companies. Putin knows this, and so he turned economic pressure designed to change his behavior into economic promise designed to change Trump’s. The deal transfers ownership of foreign assets of Russian oil giant Lukoil to entities that partner with Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff. The deal is paid for in part by U.S. taxpayers. It provides needed cash to a badly damaged Russian economy.
Now, just weeks after the announcement of that corrupt deal, any pretense of Trump’s being on our side rather than Putin’s is gone. This week, Trump lifted sanction on Russia diesel exports and said America would buy the fuel— direct payments from American taxpayers to Putin.
Yesterday, a day after the deal, Russia flew five glide bombs into residential buildings in the Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia, killing a dozen people including three children.
Donald Trump drove up diesel prices globally when he allowed Iran, for the first time ever, to close the Strait of Hormuz. He and his stooge Pete Hegseth, failed to protect American military bases from Iranian attacks that relied on Russian intelligence. U.S. bases took damage in Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the UAE, Iraq, Oman, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia.
American soldiers were killed on an American base in Jordan that lacked adequate protection from Iranian drones. The attacks in Bahrain damaged America’s main logistics hub in the region. That meant shifting logistics to the island of Diego Garcia 7,000 miles, away and contributed to the appalling conditions aboard Navy ships remaining in the region.
Americans are getting ready to vote, and we are angry. Donald Trump thinks that he can buy our votes. He told us if Republicans win, he will cut us $5,000 checks. His poll numbers went down. Now he’s trying to buy our votes with Russian oil. But the price of that oil is Europe’s freedom- the very thing one generation of Americans fought to preserve in World War II and another generation fought to safeguard during the long cold war.
Americans today are not going to allow Donald Trump to repudiate their sacrifice.
I am furious! Trump is a traitor. The Supreme Court gave this madman permission to destroy the country that I love. He has placed a permanent stain on the United States. America has fallen.
I’m worried that Trump will just let Putin take us over in a bloodless coup as long as Trump gets a cushy place to land with his ill-gotten financial thefts.