“Suppose my neighbor’s home catches fire, and I have a length of garden hose four or five hundred feet away. If he can take my garden hose and connect it up with his hydrant, I may help him to put out his fire … I don’t say to him before that operation, ‘Neighbor, my garden hose cost me $15; you have to pay me $15 for it.’ ”
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt said those words at a press conference on December 17, 1940. He was trying to justify what would become the Lend-Lease Act, a piece of legislation that would enable the United States to send millions of dollars of weapons to European allies to help in their fight against the Nazi regime.
More than 80 years later, Congress would pass the Ukraine Democracy Defense Lend-Lease Act of 2022. Its unanimous support in the Senate and near-unanimous support in the House of Representatives demonstrated to the world that we would stand with our allies against autocracy, tyranny and invasion, and that we had not abandoned those fundamental principles that Roosevelt had laid out.
Nearly three years have passed since that bill was signed into law, and the United States is now firmly against lending hoses. (As a matter of fact, the broad cuts to U.S.A.I.D. have affected firefighting operations abroad.) We have always been selective about how many hoses we offer and to whom, but what we have seen from the White House is entirely new.
Last Friday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy arrived at the White House to sign a deal that would give the United States access to Ukraine’s valuable minerals. What did the Trump administration offer in return? Nothing. They made it clear that the minerals deal was payback for U.S. aid to Ukraine. The shameful nature of this deal should be obvious, and it is exactly the type of thing that Roosevelt cautioned against.
What happened next, however, dwarfed any possible apprehension about the deal. Having invited Zelenskyy to the Oval Office, President Trump and Vice President Vance proceeded to berate a man simply because he dared to ask for help. They ganged up on him and gave him no chance to respond.
Worst of all, what they were yelling were Kremlin talking points and dangerous propaganda. They claimed that Ukraine would be nothing without U.S. aid, that Zelenskyy had never once expressed thanks towards the United States, that Ukraine had started the war, that the United States spent $350 billion in aid when they had in fact spent less than half of that, and that Ukraine had absolutely no chance to win this war. Zelenskyy put it best when, in an exasperated tone, he said, “I heard it from Putin”.
It is impossible to describe the disgraceful nature of the Oval Office meeting, which will forever live in infamy. It is impossible to describe how deplorable it is to ask a leader whose country is on fire why he isn’t wearing a suit. It is impossible to describe the despicable statements that Trump made in support of Vladimir Putin. It is impossible to describe how abhorrent the conduct of Trump, Vance, Secretary Rubio, and the other U.S. officials in the room was that day.
There is one thing that can be said. In the past several weeks, it has become clear that the United States of America is no longer Roosevelt’s “arsenal of democracy.” If anything, the Trump administration is transforming us into an arsenal of autocracy.
