President Donald Trump’s deal with Moscow on its diesel exports and his praise for Vladimir Putin are just the latest in a string of Russia-related news that has sparked public criticisms from Republicans weeks ahead of a midterm election that increasingly favors Democrats.
Trump has said he is working with the Russian president to release the country’s diesel supplies into global markets, upending years of sanctions in a bid to ease fuel prices before the Nov. 3 elections. The move has prompted European officials to warn · that increasing Russia’s diesel sales will boost Moscow’s war effort in Ukraine.
The president’s moves amount to an unwanted October surprise for some Republicans in tough races as their party struggles to maintain its slim majorities in the House and Senate.
“We need a president who is up to the task of leading the free world,” Republican Representative Don Bacon of Nebraska said on social media. “Let’s be honest. Trump is and always has been weak on Putin.”
Bacon, who has frequently sparred with Trump, is retiring and his Omaha-area district is expected to flip into Democrats’ hands.
Senator Susan Collins of Maine, who is in the race of her political life, joined three other Republicans and three Democrats in a letter Sunday complaining Trump is ignoring a 2022 law barring Russian oil imports . They demanded he change course immediately.
“The United States should not provide Putin with a financial lifeline while Russia continues to kill Ukrainian civilians,” the senators wrote.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Trump earlier praised Putin for agreeing to export diesel and he demanded Volodymyr Zelenskyy halt attacks on Russian oil refineries. Trump also suggested Zelenskyy consider stepping aside as Ukraine’s president, saying the country needs a leader “who can make a deal” with Russia.
There’s been no shortage of other Russian entanglements that have embroiled the White House in recent weeks, including the wedding celebration for the president’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., on a rented island paid for by a Russian oligarch allied with Putin.
According to ProPublica, which first reported the arrangement, Umar Kremlev covered hundreds of thousands of dollars in wedding expenses, including renting the private Caribbean island.
Republican Senator John Curtis of Utah, a moderate elected in 2024, demanded the Senate investigate and subpoena the president’s son. Trump said his son told him he would reimburse the oligarch.
“A toaster is a wedding gift. A private-island party paid for by a Putin-connected oligarch is something else,” Curtis said in a social media post last month.
Balkan Visit
Just weeks later, the New York Times reported two of Trump’s top political advisers took time off of the midterm campaign trail to travel to a Balkan territory to provide election advice to its Putin-allied government. That government has spent more than $4 million on lobbyists and operatives with connections to Trump and Republicans.
Trump mused on social media he might fire the aides, adviser Chris LaCivita and former White House Deputy Chief of Staff James Blair, if there was any conflict of interest. He later said he saw no conflicts with their work.
“They are independent people,” the president told reporters last week. “They don’t work in the White House. They’re not sitting around a cabinet table or anything like that.”
The two were on the ground for about 48 hours to advise on voting machines used in the elections, a person familiar with their travel said.
Blair took a leave of absence as deputy White House chief of staff to serve a top role at MAGA Inc., Trump’s super PAC, where LaCivita is also an adviser. Trump has said Blair will return to the White House after the election.
Sanctions
Trump’s outreach to Russia comes just weeks after Republicans were celebrating a new law named for the late Senator Lindsey Graham to sanction countries that buy Russian oil. Graham had repeatedly called such sanctions the key to bringing Putin to the negotiating table to agree to end the war with Ukraine, which is in its fifth year.
Three of the four Republican signatories of the Sunday letter — Collins, Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski and Thom Tillis — voted to acquit Trump in his first impeachment trial, when the then-Democratic House charged he illegally withheld aid to Ukraine to pressure Zelenskyy to announce an investigation into Joe Biden and his son, Hunter.
Collins, now in a tough reelection fight, said then she thought Trump had learned “a pretty big lesson.”
Some Republicans including Representative Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, who is in an increasingly competitive reelection race, and Bacon plan to force a vote on a new bill to block the import of Russian oil, but they would likely have to find the votes to override a veto.
Other Republicans have defended the president, suggesting he’s trying to find a way to end the Russia-Ukraine war while lowering diesel prices for US consumers.
Diesel and heating oil prices have become a key pain point for Republicans, especially in key Senate battlegrounds like Alaska and Maine and farm states in the Midwest that are heavily reliant on diesel.
Some Republicans and Trump had eyed other moves to try to bring down prices ahead of Election Day, with several candidates and senators proposing Trump temporarily block diesel exports, a move Trump ultimately decided against.