‘Trump Believes That the World Should Be Run by the Great Powers’

Mr. Edsall contributes weekly essays from Washington on politics and demographics.

Events over two days last month — Friday, March 6, and Saturday, March 7 — demonstrated President Trump’s willingness to sacrifice American interests in subservience to President Vladimir Putin of Russia.

On that Friday, the Washington Post reporters Noah Robertson, Ellen Nakashima and Warren P. Strobel revealed that “Russia is providing Iran with targeting information to attack American forces in the Middle East.”

The next day, Trump attended the transfer at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware of the flag-draped coffins of six U.S. members of the Army Reserve killed by a kamikaze drone strike at the Shuaiba port in Kuwait.

An inevitable, but unanswerable, question: Was the drone strike guided by information Russia provided to Iran?

CNN pointedly implied just that in a March 6 report echoing The Post’s findings: “Several Iranian drones have hit locations where U.S. troops have been in recent days. An Iranian drone struck a makeshift facility housing U.S. troops in Kuwait on Sunday, killing six U.S. service members.”

On March 7, the day he went to Dover, reporters asked Trump for his reaction to the disclosures about Russia’s support of Iran. The president responded, “If you take a look at what’s happened to Iran in the last week, if they’re getting information, it’s not helping them much.” He made no mention of the dead servicemen and women under his command.

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Thomas B. Edsall has been a contributor to the Times Opinion section since 2011. His essays on strategic and demographic trends in American politics appear every Tuesday. He previously covered politics for The Washington Post.

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