Even many who’ve come to expect Donald Trump to kowtow to Russia’s Vladimir Putin were taken aback on Friday afternoon, when the Republican president announced an agreement to import Russian diesel fuel to the United States despite his own country’s sanctions policy. The Treasury Department soon after said it had unilaterally decided to lift existing sanctions on Russian diesel exports.

Trump didn’t stop there. On Friday night, he offered his effusive thanks to the Russian dictator; on Saturday afternoon, he called on Ukraine to get a new president; and on Saturday night, he proceeded to trash Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy publicly while defending Russia’s desire for peace despite all evidence to the contrary.

If there were any lingering questions about whose side he’s on, the American president removed all doubt in recent days.

The response from members of Congress was swift and ferocious, especially from Democratic leaders, who were practically apoplectic about Trump betraying his own country’s foreign policy by striking a deal that will pump money into Moscow.

It didn’t help that the apparent agreement was for a relatively paltry amount of diesel fuel. “[M]y first printable reaction to the announcement was, 300,000 tons???” economist Paul Krugman wrote by way of his Substack newsletter. “That’s a bit over 2 million barrels. America consumes approximately 4 million barrels of distillates — diesel (mostly) and heating oil — every day.”

“So Trump is betraying an embattled democracy, demonstrating our faithlessness to the whole world, seriously damaging whatever is left of America’s leadership in the world, for the sake of maybe 12 hours’ worth of diesel,” Krugman continued. “Really?”

Just as notable was the reaction from some prominent Republicans.

For example, four Senate Republicans — Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Thom Tillis of North Carolina and John Curtis of Utah — joined a group of Democrats over the weekend to call on the president to “immediately reverse course” on the decision. Around the same time, Republican Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania announced plans for a discharge petition that would force a vote to block the White House policy.

Even Trump’s former vice president, Mike Pence, publicly urged the administration to “rescind” Trump’s new agreement.

Of particular interest, however, was a point Tillis emphasized. NBC News reported:

Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., told NBC News’ “Meet the Press” on Sunday that President Donald Trump’s decision to ease sanctions on Russia to allow it to release diesel fuel to the global market may be breaking the law.

“I do believe there’s a legitimate case for saying the president’s not following the law,” Tillis said.

I won’t pretend to be a lawyer, but in 2022, after Russia launched an unprovoked war in Ukraine, Congress easily approved a bill that banned Russian oil imports, and then-President Joe Biden signed that legislation into law. The point was not only to penalize Russia — a petrostate that is little more than a gas station with a military — but also to deny Putin the resources to fuel the deadliest and most destabilizing European conflict since World War II.

That law is still on the books. There’s been no effort to rescind, amend or revise that law since its approval.

When Politico asked the White House for a response to Tillis, Team Trump referred the outlet to an item the president published on Sunday about an “energy ceasefire” between Russian and Ukraine.

It was an odd response, in part because the ceasefire doesn’t appear to exist, and also because, even if it did exist, the administration can’t simply ignore federal law in the event that two foreign countries agree to stop attacking each others’ energy infrastructure.

The controversy, in other words, is just getting started, as is the fight over whether Trump’s deal actually proceeds. Watch this space.

The post As Trump sides again with Putin, even Republicans are joining the backlash appeared first on MS NOW.

Author: Source Author

From MS Now.