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POLITICS

History is Watching Us Betray Ukraine

Julio Vincent Gambuto
5 min readFeb 14, 2025

I wrote this piece after Trump’s call with Putin two weeks ago. It is even more relevant now. Today, in the name of the American people, our president and his vice president tried to berate President Zelensky in the Oval Office for not being grateful enough to the United States. The right will try to bend it, twist it, warp it and distort it, but it is a raw and unvarnished betrayal. Our president continues to side with the bully, the aggressor — and he threatens world peace in the process. Exactly no one voted for this.

There has been no shortage of moments in the last few weeks that have made me cringe. Watching an American president let an unelected broligarch in a t-shirt raid the executive branch with a laptop and a cadre of twinks was one thing. Talk of shuttering the Education Department another. I turned the TV off when he announced his desire to turn the Gaza Strip into Vegas. “The man is fucking nuts,” is what I said to my partner as I tossed the remote.

We all have our own lists. We all have our own moments that make us want to scream. In general, though, I have actively stepped away from the noise. When pushed, I come down on the side of the process: even though I don’t think he should have been even given the chance to run, he was elected by the American people. I had a vote. I cast it. So did everyone else. The electoral college is mind-boggling, but the popular vote was clear. Now, it wasn’t as close a contest as the myth-making will tell us and future generations, but he did win.

I come from a family of Trump supporters. We have spent the last ten years debating, yelling, laughing, drinking — mostly around Sunday dinner. I am used to being the only liberal at the table. I railed against the Iraq War. I argued forcefully for gay marriage. I pushed for gun control in the face of unspeakable acts of homeland terror. Then, of course, I ate humble pie when my hero Obama’s drone strikes killed civilians in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia. I wasn’t unfamiliar with defending the left when Trump descended the escalator, nor with conceding when I needed to.

But these years have tested me and my family — all of ours — in ways that have been heartbreaking. I’ve gotten burned. So I generally try to be unexpectedly reasonable when I engage now…

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Julio Vincent Gambuto
Julio Vincent Gambuto

Written by Julio Vincent Gambuto

Author + Moviemaker. Back to socials 2x/week. Connect at juliovincent.com.

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