President Donald Trump has spent the past five days doing favors for Russian President Vladimir Putin, but with the midterm elections just three weeks away, Republicans are left with the political fallout.
The 80-year-old U.S. president is renewing his scandal-plagued relationship with the reviled Russian dictator as American voters begin casting early ballots, and Axios reported that his moves haven't gone over well on Capitol Hill, where GOP senators called the arrangement a “betrayal” and “a gift to our adversary.”
After a phone call with Putin, Trump announced a deal Friday to let millions of tons of Russian diesel flow onto global markets, loosening sanctions meant to cut off Moscow’s war funding. The next day, he tore into Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky over Kyiv’s strikes on Russian refineries and called for Ukraine to replace its leader.
On Sunday, Trump caught Zelensky off guard by declaring an immediate “energy ceasefire.” Russia has kept hammering Ukraine’s power grid since then, with no visible consequences from Washington. On Monday, Trump brushed aside months of intelligence-based reporting that Russia had been giving Iran information on U.S. military assets, and on Tuesday, he doubled down on the diesel deal and waved off concerns that the money could fund Russia’s war machine.
The White House stood by the deal, despite GOP skepticism.
“The President’s diesel deal will help lower prices for farmers, truckers, and families across the nation as he simultaneously urges both sides of the Russia-Ukraine conflict to stop strikes against refineries, which are driving up costs and hurting American consumers,” spokesperson Anna Kelly said in a statement.
Energy analysts doubt the deal will do much to lower fuel prices, which spiked because of the Iran war. Meanwhile, the U.S. is breaking from its NATO allies just as Russia steps up a campaign of sabotage, cyberattacks and drone incursions across Europe.
A January YouGov poll found that 81 percent of Trump’s own 2024 voters view Putin unfavorably, but Trump stood by the Russian leader anyway on Monday.
“I think, actually, Putin wants to make a deal more than Zelensky,” he told reporters.
The timing is bad for a party already watching its polling numbers sink, and losing control of Congress could stall Trump’s agenda and open his administration to years of investigations and subpoenas.
The president doesn’t seem worried. In a Truth Social post Tuesday, Trump wrote: “I’m not running in the Elections, I’ve already won, IN A MASSIVE LANDSLIDE.”