Siding with evil
Poor little Russia, being picked on by big bad Ukraine and their incompetent leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Poor little misunderstood Vladimir Putin. At least, that’s what Trump, in the land where up is down, black is white and the sky is paisley, would have you believe.
While Trump laughed and joked with El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele, who says he won’t return the unlawfully “disappeared” Kilmar Ábrego García, he had time for other evil pronouncements. Trump can multitask, you see. Though he sometimes confusingly included Putin in the blame, Trump doubled down on the lie that Ukraine started the war. When asked about President Zelenskyy, Trump said, “When you start a war you’ve got to know you can win the war. You don’t start a war against somebody that’s 20 times your size and then hope that people give you some missiles.”
Trump then also claimed that “millions and millions of people have died” as a result of the Russia-Ukraine war. That is a lie, of course. While I caution that the some estimate the actual death toll is as high as a million thus far, according to figures released by Kyiv, U.N. statistics, and open-source data published by BBC Russia, the total death toll of Ukrainian and Russian soldiers, as well as Ukrainian civilians, stands at 158,341 as of March 31, 2025.
As long as Trump was outraging the world of common sense by siding with evil, he had time to side with more evil. It turns out that El Salvador’s president Bekele claims he hasn’t got the power to return Kilmar Ábrego García. So I guess since both El Salvador and the United States lack the power to return Kilmar Ábrego García, nothing can be done? Are you kidding me?
I think the message is clear, and it’s a sad one. I regret that I believe Mr García is no longer alive, and neither “leader” has the courage to admit as much. Either that or they collaborated backstage and concocted this appalling fiction that neither man possesses the power to return him for reasons that are beyond the reach of sanity. If the “president” of the United States and the dictator of El Salvador can’t do it, who in the name of Christ can?
It sends a chilling message. Trump will not help the innocent and he will not blame the guilty. He laughs and jokes with the man who can return Kilmar Ábrego García while Mr García’s wife watches. While Ukraine struggles for their lives Trump blames Ukrainians for the war. In a few months of horror we have progressed from Orwell to Kafka. And the nightmare of the Trump “presidency” has only just begun.
Robert Harrington is an American expat living in Britain. He is a portrait painter.