History will stand in judgment. Will Risch stand up for Ukraine or bow to Trump? | Opinion
It wasn’t that long ago when leadership counted for something, when Idahoans could expect their leaders to speak out boldly and strongly for their state and their nation.
While we cannot expect partisans to stand up and speak against their own party very often, it’s happened a few times in American history, and Idaho’s own Frank Church is a perfect example of a Democratic United States senator who differed publicly with his party’s powerful President Lyndon B. Johnson about U.S. involvement in the war in Vietnam.
Today, under the regime of President Donald Trump, file the Frank Church example away in the “History Not Likely to Repeat in Idaho” folder. Republicans seem to spend most of their time figuring how to pirouette around Trump’s daily excursions into madness and inhumanity.
Two examples of how slavish Idaho’s congressional delegation is to Trump and Putin occurred on the floor of the Senate recently. Democrat Minority Whip Sen. Dick Durbin introduced a resolution condemning Russia’s mass abduction of 20,000 Ukrainian children from their parents and families. These kidnappings caught the attention of the International Criminal Court in The Hague, which issued a warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin’s arrest in March 2023 on war crimes charges.
Sen. Bernie Sanders, D-Vermont, also introduced a resolution calling on Putin to end the war in Ukraine immediately — which he started, by invading Ukraine.
What problem could there possibly be with resolutions stating facts that even Republican Sen. Jim Risch, chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee no less, agreed were true? After all, this is the Risch who traveled to Ukraine in June 2022 and was interviewed by KTVB in Boise when he returned. Risch was adamant.
These were his exact words then: “Ukraine can win this war, but only if we help get it what it needs, before it needs it. ... I will continue to do everything in my power to ensure the Biden administration uses the authorities Congress has given to provide President Volodymyr Zelensky and Ukrainian defense forces exactly what they need to end this conflict. Ukraine must win this fight.”
Now that Trump is in office and has reneged on American support for Ukraine, has anyone heard Risch repeating his words of support for Ukraine? These days, Risch opposes simple resolutions calling on Putin to cease and desist, and condemning Putin’s abduction of Ukrainian kids.
Resolutions like the ones Durbin and Sanders introduced are common in Congress, offered by members of either party to express a sense of the chamber regarding a domestic or foreign policy issue. They do not have the force of law as much as they carry with them the “soft power” of the United States. The resolutions would have applied the moral authority of the United States Senate to efforts to convince Donald Trump he cannot and must not forsake those Ukrainian children and their parents. He must help Ukraine defeat Putin or, for starters, bring him to the negotiating table.
Risch objected to the two resolutions by using one of the oldest tricks in the bag of politicians who try to convince us they lay claim to the truth — “if you only knew what I know.” (You can see Risch’s objections on YouTube.)
He referred vaguely to the resolutions interfering with the current state of negotiations as though an agreement was around the corner, even though Trump had just dressed down Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office, with media coverage Trump called “good for TV.”
That’s also when Trump put U.S. aid to Ukraine on hold and withdrew our intelligence gathering from Ukraine, hardly a moment that looked close to the deal Risch fabricated out of whole cloth. Even if a deal is in the works and it’s announced after this column goes to print, what harm could possibly come from the Senate condemning the abduction of 20,000 Ukrainian children by Putin?
Risch’s opposition to a resolution that could have borne the names of Democrats and Republicans in a bipartisan show of support for Ukraine is a great example of the loss of credibility of the U.S. Senate. If the Senate passed such a resolution, it might just have registered with Trump that his failure to support Ukraine at this perilous moment is a bridge too far. This is the U.S. Senate, once the penultimate legislative body in the world, now reduced to the equivalent of a Republican Party caucus circling the wagons to protect a manic and unhinged president who appears to have sold out to Putin and his Russian army.
And Risch is the loyal errand boy for Trump.
Republicans like Risch, in this case, will do handstands to remain in Trump’s favor. They know how quickly Trump will send his MAGA Idahoans to Risch’s doorstep and, worse yet, how Elon Musk could descend on Idaho to finance a Republican alternative to Risch. But Risch is in his 80’s, having served four years into his third six-year term. Isn’t that enough? If he runs again in 2028, he’d be approaching 90 when finishing his fourth term.
Why not turn statesman in these next two years and go out in a blaze of glory? He could pull off a move like Sen. Mitch McConnell’s, when McConnell recently voted against several of Trump’s most unqualified Cabinet members.
Reporting on the daily grind of Congress is here today and gone tomorrow, but history is read tomorrow and forever engraved in the annals of a nation and state’s past. Any Republican member of the Senate could secure a unique and courageous place in history as the senator who pushed over the first domino, the senator who stood up against Putin’s reign of terror and Trump’s servile devotion to the man.
What will it be for Idaho? A photo of Risch in the history books with his back to his Idaho constituents running toward Trump with his tail between his legs, or might he distinguish Idaho and his own career in ways his modest record of achievement in public office to date will never accomplish? Surprise us, senator!