Where Are the Republicans to Stop Trump’s Dismantling of the US?

While his supporters list many of his accomplishments, including ordering his Church to provide sanctuary and aid for people attempting to escape fascist terror, Pope Pius XII (Eugenio Pacelli, 2 March 1939 through 9 October 1958) may forever be remembered in history by his detractors as the Pope who relinquished the power of his voice as the leader of the Catholic Church by not speaking out forcefully in the face of Italian fascism and German Nazi tyranny in the ongoing Holocaust.

Though British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain (May 1937 until May 1940) may have believed that by signing the Munich Agreement on 30 September 1938, ceding the German-speaking Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia to Nazi Germany he would quench Hitler’s expansionist desires, he will forever be remembered as the man who enabled Germany’s colonial conquest of a continent.

One of the many differences between President Donald Trump and both Pope Pius XII and Neville Chamberlain – in addition to Trump’s lack of integrity, morals, and good intentions – is his direct collusion with the forces of tyranny and destruction.

The Case of Ukraine

Prior to the US and other western governments imposing economic sanctions on the Russian government over its invasion of eastern Ukraine and annexation of Crimea, Donald Trump’s first secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, CEO of ExxonMobile corporation, negotiated an estimated $500 billion agreement with dictator, Vladimir Putin, and the Russian petroleum industry. Putin presented Tillerson the highest honor for a civilian in 2013 with the Russian Order of Friendship Award.

Since taking office after the resignation of Boris Yeltsin on December 31, 1999, Putin stands among the richest people in the world.

The term useful fools (Russian полезные дураки, tr. polezniye duraki) refers in Russian to a person perceived as a beneficial mouthpiece for policies they do not fully understand, and who are contemptuously exploited by leaders for a goal or cause.

Though often attributed to Vladimir Lenin, controversy surrounds its actual coinage. It seems very clear, however, that Donald J. Trump has and will continue to serve as Vladimir Putin’s and other demagogues’ useful fool in the scope of international relations (and domestic issues), since he knows either nothing, does not fully understand foreign policy issues, and quite possibly does not want to know. In his refusal to take daily intelligence briefings or delve deeply into these issues, he demonstrates his lack of interest in learning.

In addition, Trump said during his first term, and by all indications he still would “certainly look at” pulling the United States out of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) because, as he stated, it is “obsolete” and “is costing us a fortune.” The alliance came together following WWII to thwart Soviet Russian aggression.

Far before his rise to the Presidency, Donald Trump served and continues to function as Russia’s agent orange by carpet bombing our democratic institutions. He performs as Putin’s puppet. In this position, Trump attempted to attach his own strings to Ukraine’s President Zelensky to weaken that nation in its hot war against its Russian invading neighbors, but also to advance Trump’s own 2020 political objectives.

Remember how Trump threatened to withhold armaments from Ukraine unless their president investigated the son of Trump’s Democratic rival for the US presidency, Joe Biden. By Trump throwing Ukraine into the world spotlight and under the proverbial bus, the House of Representatives impeached him on charges of “abuse of power” and “obstruction of justice,” while the Senate gave him a pass without ever calling a witness.

At a joint press conference in Helsinki, Finland between Putin and Trump, when asked by a reporter, Jonathan Lemire of NBC news, whether he thought Putin interfered in the 2016 US presidential election, Trump rejected all allegations of Russian interference in his favor.

Regarding Putin’s actions in Ukraine in his attempt to incorporate the entire country under the Russian sphere, Trump was downright giddy with praise:

“I said, ‘This is genius,’” Trump said on a right-wing podcast when out of office in 2022. “Putin declared a big portion of…Ukraine…as independent. Oh, that’s wonderful.…I said, ‘How smart is that?’ And he’s going to go in and be a peacekeeper….We could use that on our southern border. That’s the strongest peace force I’ve ever seen. There were more army tanks than I’ve ever seen. They’re going to keep the peace all right. Here’s a guy who’s very savvy…I know him very well. Very, very well.”

Recently, Trump’s Secretary of State Marco Rubio and his aids met in Saudi Arabia with a Russian delegation led by Foreign Minister of the Russian Federation, Sergey Lavrov, to discuss a possible agreement to end the Russian-Ukraine war. This occurred without inviting anyone from Ukraine to attend the talks.

Earlier, at a meeting in Brussels of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, an alliance of 57 countries and the European Union, which coordinates military assistance to Ukraine, though he eventually walked back his comments, he stated that in any peace settlement, Ukraine will have to give up some of its territory to Russian and will not be admitted into the NATO alliance.

When Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky objected to being denied attendance at the conference in Saudi Arabia, Trump increased tensions by accusing Ukraine of starting the war and Zelensky of being a dictator:

“Ukraine should have never started it [the war]” that has killed tens of thousands of Ukrainian citizens, he said on February 18, 2025. The next day he labeled Zelensky as “a dictator without elections.”

No matter how Trump spins it, our alliances with partnering nations have increased the security of all these nations, not the least being the United States. The only occasion in which the Collective Defense Article 5 of the NATO treaty has been applied (when one signatory country has come under attack, all others enter for mutual defense) was following the dastardly assault against the US on September 11, 2001.

NATO countries joined the US in going after Al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan. Officials in NATO countries then did not quibble about who would pay their fair share of the costs and who would not. They had a job to perform for their mutual benefit.

No NATO country has ever asked the United States to be reimbursed financially for assisting us in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Trump, however, has recently demanded $500. million in Ukraine’s rare earth minerals in payment for past U.S. financial and military weapons aid.

While all nations have an obligation to assist in their financial commitment to NATO and to their own militaries, our alliances involve and concern much more than money. When Trump verbally attacks our long-standing and vital alliances while simultaneously imposing rigid tariffs on their products, he jeopardizes the national security interests of the US, and emboldens his friend and mentor, Vladimir Putin, in corrupting and eventually toppling the liberal world order.

Donald Trump, in word and deed, rains down upon the liberal world order as a torrential monsoon thunderstorm filling the world with deadly toxic waters and lowering the oxygen count on all those trapped within. Trump’s so-called “America First” policies create an America suffocating and drowning alone, isolated, friendless, and ultimately, defenseless.

Where Are the Republicans?

Democrats in Congress are leading the charge in alerting the people to the extreme dangers posed by the Trump administration. Being the minority party in the House and Senate, losing the White House, along with the extreme right-wing swing of the Supreme Court, the Democrats’ power has been greatly diminished.

Like former Pope Pius XII and Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, members of the Republican Party have been virtually silent by acting more like co-conspirators than as Senators and Representatives of a separate and coequal branch of the United States government. In their failure to speak up against Trump’s words and actions, the Republican legislators have relinquished their power and responsibility to check and balance the unprecedented excesses of the current executive branch.

“Enabler” is the term given to those who fail to act in stopping those who perpetuate abuse.  “Passive bystander” or “bad Samaritan” is the name for people who are conscious of bad actions developing around them but fail to intervene.

I often wonder how Trump’s enablers can sleep at night and get back up in the morning still willing to degrade and prostrate themselves by supporting those who attack our democratic institutions and seriously dismantle our country’s standing in the world.

Each time anyone enables an abusive action, they keep perpetrators and themselves further from the truth and from help, and they diminish themselves and their integrity more than just a bit.

Why does Trump eagerly respond as if he were Putin’s puppet? Does Trump simply respect and is attempting to emulate Putin’s dictatorial powers? Or is Putin carrying some sort of incriminating evidence over Trump?

No matter what, Trump could not be any more aligned with Putin and his agenda to return Russia to its former empire and weaken the Western alliance if Trump had been a secret Russian agent.

For what is true in AIDS education and activism holds true for all forms of politics: “Silence = Death.”

So, where are the Republicans with any backbone?