Trump welcomes Putin, abandons liberal democracy Donald Trump’s Oval Office ambush of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky (with a strong assist from J.D. Vance) was embarrassing and shocking in perhaps equal proportions. The convicted felon now occupying the White House got there with the approval of not even half of American voters (and only 64 percent of them) and with a little help from a “friend” of his and an enemy of democracy: Russian president Vladimir Putin. Trump immediately set about surrendering U.S. leadership in the post-WWII order. He has in fact already dismantled it. As obsessed as Mr. America First is with winning, the real winner of the 2024 presidential elections was Putin, writes Franklin Foer in The Atlantic. The Oval Office shouting match was a fist-pump moment for Putin signifying his “ultimate victory,” the moment when “the United States, became his most powerful ally.” Except Foer’s conclusion is only true if one accepts (as the felon-who-would-be-king does) that Trump is the state. The other half of U.S. voters would strenuously disagree. But we do not control the levers of federal power nor speak for the United States in international fora. That is a problem we struggle to remedy. “Donald Trump does not speak for me” on a tee-shirt is little consolation to the people of war-torn Ukraine Trump has abandoned: Because the Trump administration has cut off arms to Ukraine, it will exhaust caches of vital munitions in a few months, so it must hoard its stockpiles, limiting its…