Vice President JD Vance mounted an intellectual defense of his boss Donald Trump’s brazen criticisms of Ukraine’s war effort against Russia in the form of a lengthy diatribe on X.
In a 403-word tweet, the vice president accused British historian Niall Ferguson of espousing “moralistic garbage” and engaging in “historical illiteracy.”
Ferguson had rebuked Trump for his comments on Ukraine, which include calling Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky a “dictator” while erroneously blaming him for the three-year conflict.
Ferguson contrasted Trump’s words with those of former President George H.W. Bush in August 1990: “This will not stand. This will not stand, this aggression against Kuwait.”
“Future history students will be asked why this stopped being the reaction of a Republican president to the invasion of a sovereign state by a dictator,” Ferguson wrote.
Vance’s long-winded rejoinder used language more complicated than the simple style favored by Trump.
“This is moralistic garbage, which is unfortunately the rhetorical currency of the globalists because they have nothing else to say,” Vance wrote.
Vance asserted that the war never would have happened under Trump and that Europe and Ukraine have never had “any pathway to victory.”
“What is Niall’s actual plan for Ukraine? Another aid package?” the Yale Law graduate continued. “Is he aware of the reality on the ground, of the numerical advantage of the Russians, of the depleted stock of the Europeans or their even more depleted industrial base?”
He slammed Ferguson’s Bush quote as “irrelevant history,” saying it was “from a different historical period and a different conflict.”
After several thorough paragraphs defending Trump’s approach to Ukraine, Vance concluded with fawning praise for his boss.
“President Trump ran on this, he won on this, and he is right about this,” Vance wrote. “That interest—not moralisms or historical illiteracy—will guide President Trump’s policy in the weeks to come. And thank God for that.”
The vice president’s post struck a far more cerebral tone than Trump’s Wednesday social media attack on Zelensky.
“A Dictator without Elections, Zelenskyy better move fast or he is not going to have a Country left,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “I love Ukraine, but Zelenskyy has done a terrible job, his Country is shattered, and MILLIONS have unnecessarily died.”
Trump has so far left Zelensky and Ukraine out of America’s peace talks with Russia to end the war that began when Russia, unprompted, invaded Ukraine in Feb. 2022.
The apparent sidelining has created worry for Ukraine and its European allies.
