One of the most incomprehensible aspects of Trump’s foreign policy decision-making is his abject refusal to do lay any responsibility, any blame, on Vladimir Putin and Russia. Jay Nordingler wrote an insightful post about how Trump understands America’s position in the world relative to Russia, and his personal grasp of his role relative to Putin. It doesn’t explain why, but it does explain how.

William F. Buckley Jr. had a line about moral equivalence. He worded it slightly differently each time, but here is one version: “The man who pushes an old lady into the path of an oncoming truck, and the man who pushes an old lady out of the path of an oncoming truck, are not to be denounced evenhandedly as men who push old ladies around.”

In Trump’s eyes, however, the United States and Russia are two sides of the same coin, each the moral equivalent of the other.

Earlier this month, a Fox News host was talking with President Trump about the Iran war. The host said, “You think Putin is helping them?” (meaning the Iranians). Trump answered, “I think he might be helping them a little bit, yeah, I guess. And he probably thinks we’re helping Ukraine, right?”

Further on, Trump said, “It’s like, hey, they do it and we do it, in all fairness.”

First, it would be news if the United States were still helping Ukraine. Second, Trump’s instinct—on every occasion—is to defend or excuse Putin. Third, many of us will not accept a moral equivalence between helping Ukraine and helping the ayatollahs’ regime.

On the surface, the comparison has some merit. Russia invaded Ukraine (a point Trump refuses to acknowledge) just as we invaded Iran. But the merit ends there. Russia’s invasion was to take Ukraine’s territory and people as its own. Our invasion was, at least putatively, to end Iran’s threat to the United States and other nations as a rogue nation trying to become a nuclear power, fund and foster terrorism and oppress its people. Well, maybe Trump cared little about the oppression piece, and maybe he’s told so many stories as to what this war and refused to answer “stupid” questions from “low IQ” reporters trying to pin him down to a moderately comprehensible purpose, but it’s not to seize control of Iran like it was Venezuela.

But Trump’s response to Brian Kilmeade was devoid of any view of Trump’s United States as being the good guy in its actions. They do it. We do it. We both push around old ladies.

KILMEADE: You think Putin is helping Iran?

TRUMP: I think he might be helping them a little bit, yeah. And he probably thinks we’re helping Ukraine, right?

KILMEADE: And you are, right?

TRUMP: Yeah, we’re helping them also, and so he says that, and China would say the same… pic.twitter.com/0QWp173bm5

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 13, 2026

In Trump’s mind, he and Putin are equivalents. The United States and Russia are equivalents. There is no right and wrong involved. Neither nation is good or bad. It’s just about the exercise of power and both nations, as does China, are the same when it comes to flexing muscle.

As Nordlinger goes on to note, it’s not as if this wasn’t what Trump brought to the table when he was first elected president.

A sign of things to come came in December 2015, when Trump was running for the Republican nomination. On television, Joe Scarborough asked him about Putin. Scarborough made the simple point that Putin is the type to murder his critics and invade foreign countries. “Obviously, that would be a concern, would it not?” asked Scarborough.

Trump answered, “He’s running his country, and at least he’s a leader, you know, unlike what we have in this country.”

Not giving up, Scarborough said, “But again, he kills journalists that don’t agree with him.”

Trump answered, “Well, I think our country does plenty of killing also, Joe.”

If this sounds vaguely familiar, it’s the same rationalization used by the radical left, that the United States is every bit as awful and evil as its enemies, that our society is a failure and thus compels the embrace of wokism, if not communism. And this comparison did not elude Nordlinger.

Trump was elected in November. Shortly after being sworn in, he had a conversation with Bill O’Reilly like the one he had had with Joe Scarborough. (This was another television interview.)

O’Reilly said, “Putin is a killer.” Trump answered, “There are a lot of killers. We’ve got a lot of killers. What, you think our country’s so innocent?”

This was not a campus radical, mind you. This was the president of the United States.

Does Trump believe he’s Putin’s equivalent because he deeply desires to be a dictator wielding unquestioned control over one of three global superpowers? Is that what motivates Trump to view America as the moral equivalent of Russia, and him as America’s Putin?

It’s long been my view that Trump has two, and only two, motivations: self-aggrandizement and self-enrichment. He desperately seeks validation and recognition that he is important and not the old New York City joke of “The Donald,” shunned by polite society and laughed at by the rest of us as a dumb, dishonorable vulgar narcissist. No amount of gaudy gold glitz will make Trump anything more than the loud, tacky Queens boy who never understood why some people choose not to lie and cheat.

That he can’t see, or refuses to see, Russia as any different from the United States suggests that the primary reason he extols the “golden age” of America is that it comes at his hand, that he, and he alone, will “make America great again.” Because without Trump, we’re just another Russia in Trump’s head. But with Trump, we’ll still be Russia, but Trump will be Putin and isn’t that what really matters?