Mona Charen was a bona fide rightwing conservative and a syndicated columnist until Trump was elected in 2016. She then became an outspoken Never-Trumper and joined her fellow disillusioned Republicans–which some no longer are–at The Bulwark. The Bulwark is consistently most interesting blog that I read, offering the views of sadder-but-wiser smart people, disillusioned by Trump. Maybe I enjoy because I was in the same place 17 years ago.

In this column, Charen takes Trump’s defenders over the coals. This is not her full column. She also took aim at Washington Post columnist Marc Thiessen, who was one a staunch defender of Ukraine, but turned on a dime when he saw Trump’s disdain for Zelensky. Open the link and read it all.

She writes:

IN 2022, AFTER RUSSIAN TANKS ROLLED across an international border into Ukraine and missiles pierced the quiet of cities like Kharkiv and Kyiv, Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky earned worldwide acclaim for his courage and heroism. Famously, in response to an American offer of a safe exit, he replied “I don’t need a ride. I need ammunition.” Former President George W. Bush expressed what many were thinking when he declared that Zelensky was the “Winston Churchill of our time.”

But perhaps no one was more pro-Ukrainian than Sen. Lindsey Graham, who exulted in an arrest warrant the Russians had issued against him:

I will wear the arrest warrant issued by Putin’s corrupt and immoral government as a Badge of Honor. To know that my commitment to Ukraine has drawn the ire of Putin’s regime brings me immense joy. I will continue to stand with and for Ukraine’s freedom until every Russian soldier is expelled from Ukrainian territory.

Last Friday, after mad king Donald and his scheming viceroy, JD Vance, performed a tag-team ambush on Zelensky in the Oval Office, Graham sounded a different note. “A complete, utter disaster,” he told reporters, which is okay as far as it goes. But then it became clear that he had inverted victim and aggressor. He continued, “Somebody asked me if I was embarrassed about President Trump. I have never been more proud of the president. I was very proud of JD Vance for standing up for our country.”

Disgusting. A politician whose identity was forged as a hawk and staunch defender of liberty and democracy now praises the most powerful man in the world for sandbagging the beleaguered leader of a bleeding ally, a victim of aggression? That’s standing up for America?

There are still millions of Americans who value loyalty to the country and its values over loyalty to a party that lost all its values. Join us.Join

Ditto Marco Rubio, that gelding who has likewise transformed himself from a champion of freedom into an obedient toady to the man whose project is to destroy the Western alliance.

We live in an upside-down world where the far greater man, Zelensky, is being hounded to apologize to the gangster who behaved abominably.

Consider that even before the Oval Office debacle, Trump and his team had been grossly disrespectful and abusive toward Zelensky and Ukraine. Trump called him a “dictator” (though he declined to say as much about Putin) and lambasted him for failing to hold elections. (It is not permitted under Ukrainian law to hold elections during wartime.) He did not mention Putin’s failure to hold free elections for 25 years. Trump then repeated Putin’s propaganda that Ukraine, not Russia, had started the war. Secretary of Defense (God help us) Pete Hegseth pronounced that it would be unrealistic for Ukraine to win back its own territory. Vance told a European audience that he feared “the threat from within” far more than Russia or China. And then Trump proposed a “deal” that amounted to extortion, demanding the right to mine rare earth elements (which Trump called “raw earths”) on Ukrainian soil in return for . . . nothing. At first, Trump claimed that it was to compensate the United States for aid already donated, and though there were later iterations of the deal—all of which were blown up when Zelensky was ejected from the White House—the essential nature of the proposed agreement was clear. It was a shakedown. As Trump unguardedly admittedwhen he lost his temper, he regards Ukraine as a target for extortion because they “don’t have any cards.” Without the United States, Trump thundered, “you have nothing.”

It was the most shameful moment in American presidential history in at least a century. And while the focus of opprobrium should be on Trump and his smarmy understudy, a special shame also attaches to the explainer class of analysts who, without even the excuse of fearing voters, perform pirouettes on their principles.

AS RECENTLY AS JUNE 2023, Marc Thiessen had seen his role differently—that of guide to help MAGA types remain on side with Ukraine. He outlined an “America First Case for Supporting Ukraine,” arguing that “a Ukrainian victory would help deter China”; that a “Russian victory would further popularize the ‘decline of the West’ narrative, eroding U.S. alliances in Europe and Asia”; and that a Russian victory would “mean more nuclear states and more wars of aggression.”

But now, when the leader has pivoted, so has Thiessen.