President Donald Trump made an announcement Monday aligning him more firmly with Ukraine’s defense against Russia’s invasion than ever before.
The US will send weapons to Ukraine through NATO, the president said during a meeting in the Oval Office with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte. Trump also laid out a new deadline for Russia — threatening trade consequences, including secondary sanctions, if a peace deal isn’t reached in 50 days.
Even before the weapons announcement, which the president had telegraphed last week, the hawks were celebrating.
Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina previewed the announcement Sunday as a “turning point” and added, “The game, regarding [Vladimir] Putin’s invasion of Russia, is about to change.”
Trump’s tougher tactic toward Russia – albeit with a 50-day deadline that’s much more generous than the “two weeks” he floated earlier this summer – follows days of him expressing newfound skepticism of Putin’s intentions, after years of equivocations and a curiously kid-gloves approach to Russia.
But the timing is also far from ideal for Trump, politically speaking. He is already dealing with a backlash from the MAGA base over his administration’s botched handling of files related to Jeffrey Epstein. And the base in recent years has steadily moved away from Ukraine.
It’s too soon to know for sure how this new show of support for Ukraine will play. Will it be like the recent US strikes on Iran, when an initially skeptical MAGA base quickly embraced Trump’s move? Or could it be another mark against Trump with his base?
It’s complicated. It seems quite possible MAGA could again come on board with Trump’s approach, in large numbers – as they often have in similar situations. But some of the skepticism of Ukraine is pretty deep-seated.
The most recent data show most of the Republican Party base thinks the US government is doing “too much” to help Ukraine.
A March poll from Marquette University Law School showed 59% of Republicans agreed with that sentiment. An earlier poll from Gallup pegged that number at 56%. Only about 1 in 10 Republicans wanted the US to do more.
A poll from Reuters and Ipsos around the same time showed Republicans opposed continuing to send weapons and financial aid to Ukraine, 63-34%.
A big reason why: Republicans just don’t seem to think there is much at stake for the United States in Ukraine.
Pew Research Center polling from March showed just 25% of Republican-leaning Americans were “extremely” or “very” concerned about Russia defeating Ukraine. Just 29% worried that much about Russia going on to invade other countries. And just 40% regarded Russia as an “enemy” (down from 69% after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022).
The Reuters poll also showed 58% of Republicans tended to agree with the statement that “the problems of Ukraine are none of our business, and we should not interfere.”
Those numbers suggest most of Trump’s base would not be on board with a hard pivot toward Ukraine.
But that Reuters poll also hinted at how things could shift.
For instance, it showed only 17% of Republicans “strongly” agreed with the sentiment that Ukraine’s problems were none of our business. Just 27% strongly opposed continuing to send weapons and financial aid.
So most of those who sided against Ukraine weren’t completely firm in their views – and could seemingly adjust them.
And the data also point to how that could happen.
Trump’s argument for turning against Putin is essentially that he’s not a reliable negotiator or serious about the president’s much-desired peace deal. Trump last week decried the Russian leader’s “bullshit,” saying, “He’s very nice all of the time, but it turns out to be meaningless.” Trump has also criticized Russia’s ramped-up offensives in recent days and weeks.
Russia hawks and Trump’s critics have expressed apoplexy that it took him this long to come to that supposed realization. But it’s also an argument – Trump gave Putin a chance, but Putin failed to take advantage of it – that could land on the right.
The Pew poll, for instance, showed just 27% of Republicans said Putin was committed to a lasting peace with Ukraine.
The Gallup survey also got at this. Nearly half of Republicans (48%) were at least “somewhat” worried that peace deal would be too favorable to Russia, and 69% worried that Russia would violate the terms of any agreement.
In other words, there remains a lingering skepticism of Putin on the right that could come to the fore. Yes, only 40% labeled Russia an “enemy” in that Pew poll, but we’ve also seen that number much higher very recently.
Republicans’ views on the war and on Russia have turned on a dime before — always in the direction Trump guided them.
But it’s also not clear it would happen to the extent it did with the Iran strikes, when a CNN poll after they were launched showed 8 in 10 Republicans approved of Trump’s decision.
While many Republicans’ views on Ukraine appear soft, Trump’s non-interventionist allies have spent years cultivating skepticism of Ukraine and its president, Volodymyr Zelensky, often using disinformation. Remember the backlash to Zelensky’s Oval Office meeting in February, when Vice President JD Vance seemed to be baiting the Ukrainian president to create a scene, and MAGA turned sharply against Zelensky.
These segments of Trump’s base are likely more dug in against helping Ukraine than they were against striking Iran – a situation that sprung up rapidly and also allied the US with Israel.
To the extent Trump does land firmly in Ukraine’s corner, he’ll likely bring most of his base with him. But he’ll again be challenging a significant portion of his most ardent supporters to question whether this is what they voted for.
Stay tuned.
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