Ideas

Trump Keeps Defending Russia

The president sees the Ukraine war through Kremlin-tinted glasses.

First published in The Atlantic on August 19, 2025

by Tom Nichols, The Atlantic
August 21, 2025 | reading time: 5 Min.
Donald Trump loves to speak extemporaneously, and usually, he makes very little sense. (Sharks? The Unabomber? What?) Trying to turn his ramblings into a coherent message is like trying, as an old European saying goes, to turn fish soup back into an aquarium. But he is the president of the United States and holds the codes to some 2,000 nuclear weapons. When he speaks, his statements are both policy and a peek into the worldview currently governing the planet’s sole superpower..

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