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How Trump Just Became Our Modern Benedict Arnold: Political Guru

David Rothkopf sounds the alarm on Trump’s stunning betrayal of Ukraine.

Benedict Arnold may have some competition for the title of America’s most infamous traitor, according to one foreign policy expert who says President Donald Trump’s latest moves to help Russia amount to a historic “betrayal” of the United States.

Daily Beast Chief Global Affairs Columnist David Rothkopf laid out the president’s controversial actions over the past few weeks. Trump, 80, waived sanctions on Russia, allowed the importation of Russian diesel, demanded that Ukraine stop striking Russian oil refineries, claimed President Volodymyr Zelensky “doesn’t want to end this war, and probably never did,” and told Ukrainians to “get a new president.”

Meanwhile, Ukraine claims the U.S. has restricted its access to Starlink, the satellite internet network it needs to fight Russia, and has described lapses in intelligence-sharing that have left it without advance warning of deadly Russian strikes. Zelensky also said in an interview Sunday that Trump is trying to force his country to surrender.

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Benedict Donald

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David Rothkopf

“The timing of this is associated [with] Russia being in a pinch, and because Trump is in an electoral pinch,” Rothkopf said on The Daily Beast Podcast. “And those things coincided and have produced what is really one of the most extraordinary acts of betrayal of the United States by any public official ever, and in that I include Benedict Arnold.”

Revolutionary War turncoat Arnold was a major general in the Continental Army who defected to the British and commanded forces against the troops he once led. In the U.S., he is remembered as a traitor.

Trump’s deference to Russian President Vladimir Putin puts him in a similar category, Rothkopf said.

“I think that he has—or, at least until recently, he has—tried to present the idea that he was not completely under their thumb. And I would say, as of the past week, that’s over. The whole idea that we won the Cold War? Over. Donald Trump is subordinate to taking orders from Vladimir Putin,” Rothkopf told host Joanna Coles.

“You know those stories that came out after World War II, that there was some Japanese guy and he was living on an island for 20 years and he thought the war was still going on and he was still fighting it? Well, here is this KGB guy, Vladimir Putin, who... still believes in the old Soviet Union, feels the end of the Soviet Union was the worst thing that ever happened in history. He said that. And he wants to restore Russia to Soviet glory and Soviet dominance and achieve Soviet goals,” Rothkopf said.

“That is what they’re doing. Donald Trump is weakening the U.S. military; he’s weakening our institutions; he’s weakening our democracy; he’s undermining our standing in the world; he’s weakening our alliances; he’s weakening our economy. Now, in addition to doing all of these things, which are kind of on Vladimir Putin’s to-do list for Don, he’s now doing this thing of overtly helping Putin and overtly blaming Ukraine for the illegal Russian aggression and war crimes that have taken place against Ukraine.”

Rothkopf then discussed the potentially alarming implications of reporting that Russia is supplying Iran with upgraded drones and intelligence on U.S. targets in the region.

“We’ve seen so many instances where he’s sort of fawned over Putin, said he trusted Putin more than he trusted the intelligence community,” Rothkopf said, recalling the 2018 Helsinki summit between the two, after which a Daily Beast poll found that nearly half of Americans felt Trump’s comments had been “treasonous.”

“So we’ve seen this coming, and we’ve said, ‘Oh, he’s leaning in a bad direction.’ But he’s gone past leaning now,” Rothkopf continued. “And he [has] also minimized. He said... if Russia is giving any help to Iran, it’s not that much, and they won’t give more if I have my way—which acknowledges that they actually are giving aid to Iran. And that’s kind of the most extraordinary part of this. We’re in a shooting war with Iran, and the president of the United States is helping our enemy attack us. Holy s--t!”

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The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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