Imagine President Ronald Reagan saying, “Mr. Gorbachev, build that wall.” Crazy, right? And yet here we are, a president indulging in obvious lies while abandoning America’s allies and ending the isolation of Russia imposed for invading a neighboring sovereign nation, and his MAGA faithful swoon with adoration. In the course of a day, Trump has not only forsaken NATO and Ukraine, but decided to become the fifth member of the Gang of Four, Russia, China, North Korea and Iran.

Even as American and Russian negotiators sat down together on Tuesday for the first time since Moscow’s full-fledged invasion of Ukraine nearly three years ago, Mr. Trump has signaled that he is willing to abandon America’s allies to make common cause with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.

As far as Mr. Trump is concerned, Russia is not responsible for the war that has devastated its neighbor. Instead, he suggests that Ukraine is to blame for Russia’s invasion of it. To listen to Mr. Trump talk with reporters on Tuesday about the conflict was to hear a version of reality that would be unrecognizable on the ground in Ukraine and certainly would never have been heard from any other American president of either party.

Trump asserted that Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky has an approval rating of 4%, a lie so laughable that it seems impossible for even the most ardent Trump sycophant not to call bullshit. But that lie is trivial in comparison to his fantastical reimagination of the war where Ukraine started it rather than Russia doing the invading.

In Mr. Trump’s telling, Ukrainian leaders were at fault for the war for not agreeing to surrender territory and therefore, he suggested, they do not deserve a seat at the table for the peace talks that he has just initiated with Mr. Putin. “You should have never started it,” Mr. Trump said, referring to Ukrainian leaders who, in fact, did not start it. “You could have made a deal.”

The sheer insanity reflected in this assertion is beyond belief. But there’s more.

Mr. Trump has long seen Mr. Putin as a compatriot, a strong and “very savvy” player whose effort to bully Ukraine into making territorial concessions was nothing short of “genius.” Mr. Putin, in his eyes, is someone worthy of admiration and respect, unlike the leaders of traditional U.S. allies like Germany, Canada or France, for whom he exhibits scorn.

Indeed, Mr. Trump has spent the first month of his second term stiffing the allies, not only leaving them out of the emerging Ukraine talks but threatening tariffs against them, demanding they increase their military spending and asserting claims over some of their territory.

The argument is twofold, that the cost of being the defender of Europe is too high, and, as Vice President Vance argued in a speech that shocked and appalled Europeans at the Munich Security Conference, were not sufficiently welcoming to the return of neo-Nazis to governance.

This record explains, in part, why all of Germany’s mainstream parties refuse to go into any sort of coalition government with the AfD, even as it is polling in second place in this month’s federal elections. Vance may seem to think it’s the responsibility of democracy to embrace any party or point of view; it’s worth wondering what he might have said if, instead of the AfD polling at around 20 percent, an antisemitic and anti-democratic Muslim Brotherhood-style party was drawing a similar percentage of voters.

This “pivot” would have been unthinkable in the past, as the United States held itself out as the beacon of democracy to the world, established its influence through the use of its power and wealth to help other countries, whether by the promise of defense or the eradication of disease and hunger, in order to establish a safer world where the Russian and Chinese quest for territory and domination would not have free rein.

But now, Trump blames Ukraine for starting a war by not willingly giving up its sovereignty and territory to Russia. If Putin told Trump to either give him the eastern seaboard or face a war, would Trump drop to his knees and say, “Oh yes, Vlad. Anything you want, Vlad”? Maybe so.

Mr. Trump vowed during the campaign that he could end the Ukraine war in 24 hours, which he has failed to do, and in fact said he would bring peace to Ukraine even before his inauguration, which he also failed to do. After a nearly 90-minute phone call with Mr. Putin last week, Mr. Trump assigned Mr. Rubio and two other advisers, Michael Waltz and Steve Witkoff, to pursue negotiations.

The concessions that Mr. Trump and his team have floated sound like a Kremlin wish list: Russia gets to keep all of the Ukrainian territory it illegally seized by force. The United States will not provide Ukraine with security guarantees, much less allow it into NATO. Sanctions will be lifted. The president has even suggested that Russia be readmitted to the Group of 7 major powers after it was expelled for its original 2014 incursion into Ukraine.

By falsely demonizing Ukraine, smearing our European allies and sucking up to Putin, Trump has reduced the United States to a sniveling toady to Russia, thrilled to give Putin whatever he wants, only to empower Putin to do it again with Latvia and Poland. Except that will implicate NATO and should compel the United States to put boots on the ground in defense of our NATO allies. Europe has already figured out that Trump is not only unreliable, but likely to spurn America’s obligations to NATO should he ever be in the position of having to defend Europe against Putin.

This damage has already been done, and the United States has burned generations of international good will so that Trump’s bizarre adoration for Putin can blossom. Once trust has been broken, it’s hard, if not impossible, to gain it back. In one day, Trump broke trust with Europe and Ukraine, and shared hugs and kisses with Russia. And yet, his fans don’t seem bothered by this, inter alia, at all.