For Donald Trump and his supporters, electoral success comes before solving two of the biggest crises facing the United States.
The Democrats and a good part of the Republicans agree to give themselves the means to manage the influx of migrants at the southern border and to help Ukraine resist the Russian invasion, but the crass partisanship of Donald Trump and its allies are likely to derail everything and transform these crises into tragic catastrophes.
From Ukraine to the southern border
In Ukraine, due to lack of equipment and ammunition, resistance to the Russian invasion is dangerously running out of steam. Vladimir Putin knows very well that time is on his side and that he only has to wait for Donald Trump to come to power in Washington to impose his conditions on a disarmed Ukraine.
However, supplying Zelensky’s troops is a good deal for the Americans, who help weaken their main strategic adversary without endangering their own military.
In Washington, Republicans say they want to help Ukraine, but in return they are demanding a massive increase in resources at the southern border.
They are not wrong to call for this increase, but it is becoming increasingly clear that they prefer to make political capital on the back of the deterioration of the problem rather than giving the Biden administration the means to mitigate.
Prolong the problem
The problems at the southern border are not new and both parties have their share of responsibility for the millions of unprocessed refugee applications and for the inadequacy of measures to intercept dangerous drugs at the border.
The irony is that the Biden administration is currently proposing the largest infusion of federal funds in a long time to tackle both problems simultaneously, but congressional Republicans refuse to support it.
For what? Quite simply because Donald Trump signaled his intention to campaign on the failure of the Biden administration in this matter and he openly warned Republican elected officials not to do anything to help the Biden administration strengthen the border.
Cynicism and tragedy
The height of cynicism is that Trump does not even hide the fact that he is the source of this blockage. On the contrary, he brags about it.
Meanwhile, Trumpists are calling for the dismissal of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas for his inability to contain the crisis, an inability that he himself attributes to the Republicans’ multiple refusals to increase his budgets.
This circus won’t solve anything. While Donald Trump raises the scarecrow of a border crisis that he claims he alone can fix, the border crisis will get worse.
Above all, while a majority of political forces in Washington still support the Ukrainian cause, the servility of Republican elected officials to Trump’s electoral imperatives risks leading, tragically, to the worst defeat scenario imaginable in Ukraine.
