It is much closer to America last. It smells of political desperation. Of weakness. And it smells that way because it is. The idea that we should sacrifice our principles for a very short term political gain is repugnant.

Once upon a time we had a great president named Ronald Reagan, and he was great not because he was perfect* but because with Ronald Reagan you always had clarity of where we were trying to go. And that clarity at root was a moral clarity. He called the Soviets an “evil empire” even while his speechwriters repeatedly tried to strike that line out. He called on Mr. Gorbechev to “tear down that wall.” Watch it. Remember. Moral American leadership is both possible and necessary for the good of the world.

We are in our diesel predicament precisely because this president wants to buy things on the cheap. I supported him fully on the Iran operation given the administration’s public allegations of closeness to nuclear breakout and because the regime has killed, directly or indirectly, thousands of Americans over its life as well as been the root of all the evil in the Middle East since 1979. However that support was based on the reality that the Iranian problem was not a nuclear threat at its core, it was the regime itself. To deal with Iran ultimately requires regime change and Mr. Trump did not prepare the country for that, did not work to get the free world behind that goal, and was unwilling to pay the necessary price (send US troops into Iran, knowing that some if not many would not come home alive). Further, the military was clearly not prepared for the Iranian response, as evidenced by the effective closing of many of the U.S. forward located bases in that region. Mr. Trump has repeatedly acted with both the Ukrainian and Iranian situation as if these regimes are willing to make a deal. They are not and they will not, unless they are forced to. In both cases, the loss is now existential. We know the only way to get rid of the Iranian threat is a new regime, meaning that most of the IRGC tyrants would be killed. But it is also hard to imagine Putin surviving if Ukraine wins. Given that the only solution is victory. Mr. Trump (and Mr. Vance, as he led the negotiations) were played earlier this year when they agreed to a deal that gave Iran billions of dollars of sanctions relief. But the leopard doesn’t change its spots, and thus the Iranian conflict has dragged on. And Mr. Trump’s giving any sanctions relief to Russia will just further fuel Putin’s war machine.

Mr. Putin is accelerating the slaughter of civilians. These war crimes are the heart of his strategy, to do to Ukraine what he did to Aleppo, where they killed hundreds to thousands of civilians on behalf of Assad. As the WSJ noted in an editorial this morning:

On Wednesday 22 people, including five children, were killed in a Russian cruise missile strike on an apartment building in the city of Pryluky. The next day a glide bomb hit two buses in Kramatorsk, killing 33. After the diesel announcement, Russia launched glide bombs Saturday at a residential area of Zaporizhzhia, killing at least 20, including three children. Without a complete cease-fire, Russia will continue to torment Ukrainian civilians.

Mr. Trump’s public opinion** of Ukraine (or Russia or anything else for that matter) are both volatile and should not be given much weight. While most of us would like to believe that every word of the President represents his official position, that is often simply not true, and that is by design (Art of the Deal). So when a reporter asked Mr. Trump for his thoughts after Mr. Zelenski called him weak (not exactly what Mr. Zelenski said, but of course that his how the reporter framed it to Mr. Trump), like any red-blooded teenager on the school yard, Mr. Trump bowed up and said it was time for a new leader in Ukraine. As if a leader of a country in an existential fight for its survival, where daily the Russians kill dozens of his civilians, should be primarily concerned with dropping the price of diesel in the U.S. perhaps a nickel or a dime a gallon*** to help the president in the midterms, while giving his enemy precious foreign exchange to continue doing its execution of Ukrainian civilians? There is only one aggressor here, and the only thing that stands in the way of peace is Vladimir Putin. That same Putin that also is helping the Iranians in our war effort.

Mr. President, pick a side. Stop playing the middle; it is weak and unbecoming. You are making yourself very small. And by taking away moral clarity, you are Making America Last.

* He made many mistakes, including the Iran/Contra debacle and his inability to rein in spending, and his inability to get Robert Bork confirmed led gave us the disastrous Anthony Kennedy on the Supreme Court.

** I am very aware that what Mr. Trump says publicly is often not the reality of his policy. This is why I haven’t criticized him nearly as much as his comments on the Ukrainian catastrophe deserve. For example, when some TDS critics of the administration say that Trump is on Putin’s side, we are aware that Mr. Trump has continued to allow Ukraine the benefit of US intelligence for targeting, while allowing the use of more expansive bombing operations than Joe Biden did, and, while making Europe pay for US weapons (mostly a good thing, but I have no problem with us sharing a proportionate part of the cost as I believe it’s in the US interest for Putin to fail here), has allowed Ukraine access to many weapons that are helpful for the war effort. The idea that Trump supports Russia is simply preposterous based on Mr. Trump’s actions not his words. Nevertheless his words still matter, and some of his actions are unbecoming of America. Buying diesel from Russia while it is trying to bomb Ukraine into the stone ages is shameful.

***ChatGpt’s quick analysis of the volumes of proposed diesel (even if new to the market, which is hard to believe if they have diesel it isn’t going somewhere, and oh BTW Russia has its own internal diesel shortage and the farm harvesting season is here), the amount is likely to only drop the price about 1% given price elasticities.