Trump’s mantra: let’s make a deal
To the Editor:
In answer to a reporter’s question at Mar-a-Lago on February 18 about the war in Ukraine, President Donald Trump said, as if he was speaking directly to Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky: “You could have made a deal.”
For three years now President Zelensky has been leading his country in an all-out struggle to preserve its freedom from dictator Vladimir Putin. And this is what Trump says, “You could have made a deal.” The word “deal” is Trump’s favorite term when it comes to dealing with others. He thinks deal-making is the fundamental human relation.
What is a “deal?” For Trump it’s a transaction, a trade: I get this in exchange for that (and I want to get a lot more than I give). Trump makes deals about commodities, property, power, mammon — all those worldly things that Jesus had in mind when he asked: “What will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his own soul?” Cunning, greed, selfishness mark the successful deal, and Trump rates himself the greatest of dealmakers. At Mar-a-Lago he mocked Zelensky: “A half-baked negotiator could have settled the war years ago.”
Here we have a free, democratic European country that on February 24, 2022, was attacked by 150,000 Russian troops, backed by tanks, artillery and aircraft. Putin’s goal? To take Ukraine’s capital, Kiev, in a Nazi-like blitzkrieg, kill Zelensky and make Ukraine a vassal state of Russia again. And what did Trump say? “It was genius …. Wonderful …. You’ve got to admit that’s pretty savvy.”
But what did Zelensky himself say? In those first desperate days of Putin’s invasion, when the U.S. offered Zelensky safe escape out of Ukraine, he said: “I need ammunition, not a ride.” I don’t know about you, my fellow Americans, but to me that’s heroism. Zelensky put his life on the line to keep his country free. And for three years now, through three freezing winters, his fellow citizens have been holding off Putin — at great sacrifice to themselves.
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In our own Revolutionary War for independence from England, a war that took us seven years to win, did George Washington try to “make a deal” with King George? No. He endured his own frozen winter at Valley Forge with his ragtag army, giving him time to train his men to fight. If Donald Trump had been around in 1778, three years into that struggle, when things looked grim, he’d have mocked George Washington: “You could have made a deal.”
When Hitler overran mainland Europe at the start of WWII and tried to bomb England into submission, did Winston Churchill “make a deal” with that monster?
Or, looking back 2000 years: Did Jesus, going hungry in the wilderness for 40 days, make a deal with the Devil when he was tempted three times? He said, “Be gone, Satan!” Trump would have stared in disbelief at Jesus: "You're a loser—you could have had the whole world!” But three years later, when conspiracies were afoot to have Jesus crucified, there was a sharp-eyed dealmaker on the scene who saw his chance: betrayal for 30 pieces of silver. His name was Judas.
Free and democratic Ukraine is fighting for its survival against a dictatorial beast, and our own president sees a sweet deal to be made. The devil’s own is devil-owned.
Burt Kornegay
Cullowhee
