Sam Patten has worked for Maine’s last three Republican senators, including Susan Collins’ first electoral campaigns, is a former managing editor of The Maine Wire and is the author of “Dangerous Company: The Misadventures of a Foreign Agent.”
When Donald J. Trump was again elected president in 2024, I figured he had earned his second chance. Regardless of whether I had voted for him that year, in 2020 or in 2016, he and I shared an experience that made me more open to him than anyone in my family or most of my friends.
At the time, I was the managing editor of the Maine Wire — the conservative voice in our state’s media. Covering his second administration to the extent it affects Maine from this perspective, I strained at times to understand and explain why he was doing the things he was. The flurry of executive orders at the very outset, for instance, suggested a new kind of energy. Some of his appointments, like Marco Rubio to his array of jobs and Tulsi Gabbard as director of national intelligence, struck me as promising.
It only took me until Feb. 28 of last year to get physically nauseated.
Trump’s jocks v. geek style beat-down session on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office punctured any Christian notions I had of redemption. It was disgusting. But I was also so very tired of Americans feeling their politics. I resolved to carry on trying the best I could to be objective — all the while hoping for better.
Due to his erratic and, at times, nonsensical behavior, I’ve come to think of Trump as mad. I would not be surprised if more than a few of my fellow Republicans think the same way.
“Should I be glad he didn’t throw spaghetti at the wall?” a now former GOP congresswoman asked me rhetorically in 2016 when, making small talk, I gamely asked if she didn’t agree Trump had made more sense at a recent media event than he had previously. She’d had enough. She went on to lose her seat that year to a Democrat Volvo salesman.
I hit that point this past weekend, on a flight back from Ukraine.
At the end of last year, I left my job at the Maine Wire to work full time on a Ukrainian consultancy project. So far this year, I’ve spent more than four months in Ukraine and over this period things have gotten worse in terms of the war.
After more than four years of a Russian invasion, Ukrainians have now begun deep strikes into Russia, primarily targeting its oil sector. So, the news that last Friday Trump moved to lift sanctions on Russian diesel and struck a deal with President Vladimir Putin to import nominal quantities of it into the U.S., allegedly to alleviate spiking fuel prices, was a lot to take on the back of a trip throughout which Russian shelling of civilian sites was constant.
My common experience with Trump goes back to 2018-19 during the Russia-gate probe. Then I was charged with, and pleaded guilty to, the charge of being an unregistered foreign agent for a Ukrainian politician.
Compared with a foreign power deciding who gets elected to Congress and who doesn’t, my crime — drafting talking points and op-eds for my client — could be considered risible or quaint, depending on your perspective. But, having been prosecuted as part of a broader investigation of whether Trump colluded with Russia in his first election, I remain a felon. I never sought a pardon.
There is no credible argument supporting Trump’s decision on Russian diesel. The amounts involved will not give much relief to U.S. consumers — at best 20 minutes of domestic demand, some calculate. The real problem is the fact that the Strait of Hormuz is effectively closed; that is what is driving today’s prices at the pump. And whatever revenues Russia gets will be spent on its war effort, murdering Ukrainian civilians.
So why on God’s green earth is he doing it?
Maine’s Sen. Susan Collins is right to join three other Senate Republicans in demanding the president reverse this decision. It doesn’t mean he’ll listen.
For Republicans, Trump’s insane decisions have a way of increasing in their tempo right up to consequential elections. His taking out the well-respected and highly effective Texas senator John Cornyn to run the toadying and corrupt Ken Paxton, now runs the risk of the Republican Party losing the Lone Star State for the first time in two generations. Zero sense, yet loyalists must put and shut up.
One of the reasons I once gave Trump the time of day was the seemingly insane behavior of his enemies. The “lawfare” exercised against him was real. I experienced it personally. Instead of fixing the system, however, he made it worse.
Now, Republicans who harbor any chance of withstanding the blue wave that’s coming in three weeks’ time must sidestep — or counter — the leader of their party. Ask Paul LePage about his deported in-law. Or placeholder Darline Graham about her brother Lindsey’s legacy: a hardline sanctions bill on Russia that Trump now flouts.
Whether it’s corruption, nuclear-powered narcissism or full-blown insanity, speculating about the “why” is no longer entertaining. Trump supporters are often forced to overlook the weirdness and remember the bigger objective. But when the betrayals knock with such manic insistence at your door, it becomes difficult, if not impossible, to see the larger benefit.