Podcast #274: David Frum on Donald Trump’s Betrayal of Ukraine

HOST: Welcome to the Quillette Podcast, which is usually hosted on alternate weeks by me, Jonathan Kay, and by Iona Italia. Quillette is where free thought lives. We are an independent, grassroots platform for heterodox ideas and fearless commentary.

And this week, we’ll be talking about Ukraine—a subject that is at the top of the headlines thanks to the bizarre diplomatic spectacle that took place at the White House on Friday during a visit from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. As many listeners know, Zelenskyy was upbraided during that meeting by U.S. Vice-President J.D. Vance, who contended that Zelensky has been insufficiently grateful to America for the assistance it’s provided to Ukraine during its ongoing campaign to defend itself from Russian military aggression.

Meanwhile, the United States blocked a resolution to censure Russia at the United Nations. And Donald Trump, who seems more interested in ingratiating himself with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin than with protecting Europe from the Russian army, is apparently determined to leverage the situation as a means to acquire Ukrainian mineral rights. The entire situation is shocking to those of us who have taken it for granted that America, especially Republicans, would stand up against Russian military expansionism.

With me to discuss this is Canadian-American Atlantic magazine journalist David Frum, who formerly worked with me at the National Post newspaper in Toronto, and, more famously, as a speechwriter for George W. Bush.

As you will hear, we also talk more generally about political cultism—the Trump cult in America, and its progressive equivalent in Canada. Specifically, we will talk about the strange saga of Canada’s so-called unmarked graves, which began in 2021 with lurid announcements to the effect that the remains of more than 200 Indigenous children had been discovered on the grounds of a former residential school. Those claims proved to be unsubstantiated, yet nonetheless propelled Canadian progressives into a lengthy social panic that saw the country’s leaders, including Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, denounce their own nation as a genocide state. And yet, those same progressives have now gotten up from their knees and are now rapturously celebrating Canada in hyperpatriotic terms, in response to Trump’s tariff plans and his dark jokes about turning Canada into the 51^st state.

David and I conclude with a discussion of what a journalist’s role should be in a world where political constituencies, on both sides of the Canada-U.S. border, and on both ends of the political spectrum, have become deeply tribalized and detached from reality.