‘Total Moral Inversion’: National Review Rips Trump for Working on a ‘Sweetheart Deal’ for Putin

Heikki Saukkomaa/Lehtikuva via AP

National Review, the flagship conservative magazine, ripped President Donald Trump over his rhetoric on the war between Ukraine and Russia, accusing him of a total moral inversion and working on a “sweetheart deal” for Vladimir Putin in an editorial published on Thursday.

Trump has launched a series of attacks on Ukraine and its leader, President Volodymyr Zelensky this week. In a Truth Social post on Wednesday, Trump deemed Zelensky a “Dictator,” and falsely accused him of starting the war as well as being responsible for “MILLIONS” of resulting deaths.

In its editorial, National Review characterized Trump’s words — and especially the blame he’s heaped on Ukraine for the outbreak of hostilities three years ago — as “breathtaking.”

“Uh, Ukraine didn’t fire Russian missiles at itself or direct a Russian armed column at its own capital in 2022. There’s moral equivalence, and then there’s a total moral inversion,” observed the editorial board. “You don’t need to portray Ukraine as a shining city on a hill to acknowledge that it is much more committed to democracy and the rule of law than is Russia, whose malign autocratic leader Trump never thinks to call ‘a dictator.'”

“Needless to say, Ukraine is not the problem here. As far as the Kremlin is concerned, its sins are its existence as a sovereign state with a national identity distinct from Russia’s, and its failure to roll over and accept its assigned role as a defenseless satellite state of Mother Russia,” it added, arguing that “Ukraine has been subjected to a level of violence and criminality that reflect Russia’s utter contempt for the laws of armed conflict.”

“It is certainly true, as we noted the other day, that Ukraine isn’t going to get all of its territory back or join NATO,” concluded the editorial. “Acknowledging this is cold-eyed realism; humiliating and undercutting an ally, perhaps with worse to come in the form of a sweetheart deal for Moscow, is not.”