There is not a lot of complexity to the ongoing war in Ukraine. In early 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin amassed tanks and troops at the nation’s eastern and northern borders. He created a pretense under which he might present his country as protecting separatists operating in a portion of Ukraine occupied by Russia eight years prior. And then he swept in, aiming to quickly subjugate the Western-allied nation and its president, Volodymyr Zelensky.

It didn’t prove to be that easy. Ukrainian forces, with support from the United States and other European allies, were able to disrupt and then stall Russia’s invasion. For more than two years now, the conflict has been at a near-impasse, with Russia holding an expanded segment of eastern Ukraine but little more.

For many Americans and many in the U.S. government, Putin’s initial failure was a remarkable success. Here was an allied, democratic nation fending off — at least for now — an authoritarian regime bent on Ukraine’s subjugation. But asked to pick between autocracy and democracy — and particularly when asked to pick between Putin and a traditional American ally — Donald Trump chose Russia.

He immediately embraced Putin’s conceit that the separatists needed Russian protection, calling it “genius” and “smart.” He figured that it was “very smart” for Putin to annex an entire country for the price of “$2 worth of sanctions.” And then, as Putin’s genius invasion ground to a halt, Trump soon began elevating skepticism about Ukraine’s odds of success and the utility of continuing to back the effort. This argument trickled out into the broader MAGAverse.

The conflict is ongoing. And speaking to a podcaster this week, Trump identified the culprit: Zelensky.

“It’s so bad what they’re doing with the money,” Trump said, referring to the Biden administration and what Trump presents as profligate spending. “The billions and billions of dollars. I think Zelensky is one of the greatest salesmen I’ve ever seen. Every time he comes in, we give him $100 billion. Who else got that kind of money in history? There’s never been.”

“And that doesn’t mean I don’t want to help him because I feel very badly for those people,” he continued. “But he should never have let that war start. That war’s a loser.”

Trump noted that the country had been tremendously damaged by the conflict — a conflict that, again, was a function of Russian aggression.

“This should have been settled before it started,” he insisted. “It would have been so easy if we had a president with half a brain, it would have been easy to settle.” At another point in the interview, he claimed not for the first time that, should he win the presidency in November, he would quickly and easily bring the war to an end.

The response to Trump’s latest comments have understandably focused on his assertion that Zelensky “should never have let that war start.” Even in the context of Trump’s long-standing obsequiousness to Putin, it’s hard to understand how Zelensky would have prevented having his nation be invaded. He could, in theory, have taken the approach that many Trump allies have since endorsed: simply agreeing to cede some or all of Ukraine to Russia, a move that would have prevented the damage incurred to the country’s buildings but amplified the damage done to its sovereignty.

It is generally understood that Trump’s promises to bring the war to a rapid end would likely mirror this approach. Were the United States to withhold aid to Ukraine to afford Trump a political victory — a phrase which might sound familiar from his 2019 impeachment — the result would presumably be a capitulation on Zelensky’s part in favor of Putin. The United States doesn’t have leverage over Russia beyond the threat of our directly engaging in the conflict, something no president would threaten — particularly if that president were Donald Trump. We do have leverage over Zelensky, which a president could threaten — particularly if that president were Donald Trump.

Trump’s suggestion that it’s somehow Zelensky’s fault that his country was targeted by Russia has some familiar undertones. It is the case that the weaker kid could have avoided being beaten by the bully, for example; the weaker kid simply needed to hand over the dollar as requested. There are any number of other examples of blaming victims of assault for being victimized, of course, like that the victims are simply awestruck at being in the presence of a celebrity. The subtext of abuse and the excuses of abusers here are unavoidable.

We don’t know how often Trump and Putin have spoken since the full-scale invasion got underway in 2022. It’s likely that it has been at least a half-dozen times, according to reporting from The Washington Post’s Bob Woodward. It seems very possible that, given Trump’s ear, Putin might have offered up the sort of history-adjacent rationalization that he has presented elsewhere, including to Trump’s ally Tucker Carlson.

Donald Trump once emerged from a meeting with Putin and declared to the world that he equated Putin’s word about Russia’s 2016 election interference with that of America’s intelligence officials. It’s not a stretch to think that Trump might similarly accept an assertion from Putin that Zelensky forced him to invade against his will.

At other points since the invasion, Trump has insisted that Putin would never have invaded had Trump remained president. He claims to have had conversations in which Putin indicated that Ukraine was “the apple of his eye,” to use Trump’s phrasing, but Trump told him hands off. So Putin kept his hands off — until Joe Biden was president and … Ukraine let Russia invade?

None of this makes sense unless we view this not through the lens of geopolitics but through the lens of Trump. To Trump, the powerful do what they want and the less-powerful are expected to acquiesce. No more, no less. So it is with Ukraine. So it is with everyone else.

DURHAM, N.C. — Former President Bill Clinton campaigned for the first time alongside the Democratic ticket Thursday, appearing with Gov. Tim Walz and reprising his role as “explainer in chief” to make the case to North Carolinians to elect Kamala Harris on the first day of early voting here.

“I don’t know how many more elections I’ll be involved with. And I’m too old to gild the lily. Heck, I’m only two months younger than Donald Trump. But, good news for you is I will not spend 30 minutes swaying back and forth for you,’ Clinton told cheering supporters in a gymnasium at a community recreation center. “I will not clap off beat. Nor will I pretend to be a conductor, because we got a race to win. And we have to win it. I’ve been doing this a long, long time, and I can honestly say that this time I am not here running for anything anymore except for my grandchildren’s future.’

Clinton appeared with Walz as part of a multi-state tour by the former president targeted at mobilizing rural and Black voters. Democrats are spending the final weeks of the race looking to blunt the GOP’s dominance with rural voters and shore up their own advantage with Black voters as polls show Trump has made slight — but meaningful — gains with them. Walz also has been on a multi-day campaign swing through rural parts of the swing states, touting his own background and connection to places where Democrats have ceded political ground to Republicans over the years.

“When I volunteered to help Kamala Harris and Tim Walz, I told them, I said, ‘Send somebody else to the big places, somebody that needs the TV coverage,’ ‘ Clinton said Sunday at a Harris campaign office in Albany, Ga. “I said, ‘Send me to the country. I know where I belong.’ ”

Walz introduced Clinton Thursday as “a son of the South,” noting Clinton’s upbringing in Arkansas. While Walz delivered his stump speech, Clinton watched seated on stage — at times with his chin in his hands, at times leaning back in a grin as Walz criticized Trump.

“I could have sat here for another hour listen to him talk because he reminds me of home,” Clinton said of the Minnesota governor.

Wesley Harris (D), a North Carolina state representative running for state treasurer, said Clinton was the “perfect messenger to be able to go into these parts.” While Biden-Harris policies have improved the economy on the “macro level,” Harris said, some rural voters still feel left behind.

“They just want someone to understand what they’re going through,’ Harris said, calling it the party’s “biggest disconnect’ as it reaches out beyond the big cities. ‘I think the biggest economic message we need is empathy.”

Clinton dedicated much of his remarks to acknowledging concerns voters have about the economy, and explaining the conditions that led to the current rate of inflation. Democrats have long valued Clinton for his ability to speak about economic issues with simplicity and compassion. Former president Barack Obama memorably deemed Clinton the “explainer in chief.’

“It’s unfair to pretend that we could have been the only country in the world that would have escaped this inflation problem, and [Harris is] actually trying to do something about it,” he noted, directly addressing one of Democrats’ top vulnerabilities with voters.

He touted his credentials (“I know a little something about this. I did have that job for eight years”) and acknowledged inflation is a problem for Democrats (“Why aren’t we voting for the Democrats? A lot of people say, well, there’s been too much inflation. That’s right’), before walking supporters through what he described as the contributing factors.

He ticked through covid’s impact on the supply chain, the basics of supply and demand, and Biden and Harris’s work to lower inflation, drawing applause when he said the Federal Reserve has lowered interest rates. “There’s still some residual inflation that we all have questions about, especially in food prices and fuel prices,” he acknowledged.

Attendees expressed optimism that Clinton will be able to reach rural voters in their state in part due to his economic messaging.

“He was a wonderful president, and I think he’s also someone who brings the south vote out being a Southerner himself,” said Helen Wolstenholme, 64, from Cary, N.C. “I think in eastern North Carolina that’s particularly important.”

“He connects well to rural communities,’ added her son, Xan Wolstenholme-Britt, 24, a student at Duke Law School. ‘He speaks normally and people, people connect with him that way, so I think he’s a good surrogate to have to send into rural communities like they’re doing.”

Walz has also leaned into his rural background since joining the ticket. Speaking at a soybean farm in Volant, Penn., on Tuesday, he rolled out his and Harris’s plan for rural communities and touted his childhood in rural Nebraska, background as a hunter, and experience working on the farm bill as a member of Congress representing a rural district.

“I promise you this, Vice President Harris and I, when we win this election, we will have rural Americans back just like they’ve had our back,” Walz said to cheers, clad in a camo baseball cap and red and black plaid flannel.

Clinton spoke at the Democratic National Convention in August but has otherwise kept a low profile in the campaign until recently. Democrats have contemplated how much to embrace him as a campaign surrogate following the #MeToo movement that started in 2017, casting a harsher light on the sexual misconduct allegations that he faced at the height of his political career.

He was largely welcomed warmly by the crowd Thursday, but some younger attendees expressed skepticism about his return to the trail.

“I’m not excited about him,” said attendee Rebecca May, 27, who is planning to vote for Harris but said she preferred her more progressive campaign positions in 2020.

“I think that they need the younger vote to win this election. I think young people care about things like Monica Lewinsky, about the #MeToo movement, I think people — young people — don’t care for Bill Clinton,” May added.

Clinton campaigned for Harris on Sunday and Monday in Georgia, a battleground state with particular importance to the former president. He was the last Democratic presidential candidate to carry the state — in 1992 — before Biden flipped it four years ago.

In Georgia, Clinton focused on retail campaigning over large-scale events. He visited churches, McDonald’s and a fish fry, sporting a camouflage Harris-Walz baseball cap.

Among the smaller cities that Clinton visited was Albany in southwestern Georgia, a predominantly Black community in a heavily Democratic county. It was also a key site in the civil rights movement, giving birth to the Albany Movement against desegregation across the region in 1961.

Rep. Sanford Bishop, a Democrat who represents southwest Georgia, said Clinton’s visit was “very, very effective,’ proving Harris’s commitment to rural America and especially resonating with older voters who remember his presidency.

“[Clinton] struck gold with people who were listening and who have those nostalgic favorable feelings for Clinton and for the Clinton legacy,” Bishop said.

Clinton will also visit more politically divided territory. He is set to attend a get-out-the-vote event Sunday with Democrats in Nash County, N.C., which Biden won by just 120 votes four years ago.

Early voting began in North Carolina on Thursday and by mid-afternoon, with 81 of the 100 counties reporting, 209,644 ballots had been cast, according to data released by the state board of elections. With hours left to vote, the state blew past previous year totals for the first day of early voting other than the 2020 presidential election when 348, 599 voted on the first day.

The state is expected to release the day’s final tally on Friday morning. Voting persisted despite the widespread destruction from Hurricane Helene last month. Across the 25 counties declared federal disaster areas, the state was able to open 76 polling places, just four less than the 80 they’d planned to have.

Colby Itkowitz contributed to this report.

For months, Republican Senate candidate Kari Lake has speculated that her opponent, Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.), had used the courts to hide “something really, really bad” in his divorce from Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego. But on Thursday, an Arizona court unsealed most of the case file — revealing what one judge called “one of the most garden-variety divorce files I have ever seen.”

The records were made public following a 10-month-long legal battle between the Gallegos and the Washington Free Beacon, a conservative publication that filed a lawsuit earlier this year to unseal them. The partially redacted documents show Gallego filed a petition to dissolve the marriage on Dec. 14, 2016 — shortly before the birth of their son — claiming that his marriage was “irretrievably broken.”

Lake and Gallego are locked in a heated race to replace Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I) — and one that could help determine the balance of power in the Senate in 2025. With polls showing Gallego leading, Lake and her allies have repeatedly sought to paint Gallego’s personal life in a negative context — running ads describing him as a “deadbeat dad” and alleging his divorce records contain a “massive story.”

In an interview with The Washington Post last year, Gallego attributed the divorce to his post-traumatic stress disorder from serving in the Iraq War. The documents, however, offer little insight into why the Gallegos’ marriage fell apart. Instead, the 465 pages that were unsealed Thursday by the Yavapai County Superior Court detail standard divorce proceedings, including the dividing of property and assets, as well as custody and child support arrangements. They also include no details of any illegal activity or infidelity and expressly state that no physical abuse had occurred.

Following the documents’ release, the Gallegos blasted Lake and demanded an apology “for lying about our family and the circumstances of our divorce,” the former couple wrote in a joint statement.

Lake, they added, “will stop at nothing to score a cheap political point — even if it means endangering the privacy and well-being of our young son.”

Caroline Wren, a senior adviser to Lake, said in a statement to The Post that “it’s bizarre that Ruben Gallego would demand an apology from Kari Lake for his appalling behavior.”

“Everyone knows Kari Lake had nothing to do with this lawsuit, which was filed by an independent media outlet, however we do find the revelations from the divorce records to be shocking, especially considering Ruben Gallego is spending millions on advertising claiming to want to protect women, yet he served his unsuspecting wife with divorce papers when she was days away from giving birth, and even demanded she pay his attorney’s fees!” Wren wrote. “If Ruben Gallego will turn his back on his pregnant wife days before she gives birth, he will turn his back on Arizona.”

It’s unclear whether Kate Gallego was completely blindsided as the Lake campaign has claimed. In Gallego’s petition to seal the record, his attorney acknowledged that Kate Gallego had not yet been served but said the couple had been “engaged in informal discussions about some of the substantive issues in this matter.” His attorney also added that Kate Gallego’s legal counsel stated that she would not oppose the motion to seal the files.

The Gallegos’ divorce was finalized in 2017. Last year, Kate Gallego publicly endorsed her former husband’s Senate campaign.

The former couple had gone to great lengths to keep the records private — with Gallego filing the petition for divorce in a county 100 miles away from Phoenix, where they lived, and asking a judge to seal the entire file. Divorce records in Arizona are typically open to the public. But a judge found that the privacy interests of Ruben and Kate Gallego — then, respectively, a new congressman and Phoenix City Council member — outweighed the state’s open records policy.

However, in January, the Free Beacon petitioned the court to make the records public, as they “reflect the character and behavior of a public figure holding and running for federal office,” according to legal documents. The Gallegos, in response, fought to prevent the release of the records entirely and, later, to redact portions of the divorce filings.

The legal battle continued through the appeals court. And, on Wednesday, the Arizona Supreme Court rejected a request by the Gallegos to keep the redacted records from the public sphere.

The Yavapai County Superior Court judge who had first ordered the records unsealed agreed to redact some parts of the divorce filings, including details about their son and financial information.

The rest, he ruled, ought to be public — though, he predicted in June that “everyone’s going to be rather deflated” by its contents after much hype.

GREEN BAY, Wis. — Vice President Kamala Harris chided Donald Trump on Thursday for his revisionist history on the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol — accusing him of “gaslighting” the American people with his recent assertion that it was a “day of love.”

As she attempts to broaden her appeal to Republicans and conservatives in the final weeks of the campaign, Harris has been calling on Americans to choose “country over party” by voting for her. Driving that argument, she has charged that the former president would endanger democratic institutions, seek to jail his opponents and endanger the Constitution.

She played a clip at her first rally this week showing Trump telling Fox News that he was more concerned about the “enemy within” — referring to Americans he described as “radical left lunatics” — than outside agitators. She has expressed disbelief that he went on in that interview to suggest that the military could rein in his political opponents. And at all her rallies this week — including here in Wisconsin — Harris has said Trump is “unstable” and “seeking unchecked power.”

Campaigning in two Wisconsin cities, Harris touted her own combative performance on Fox News on Wednesday night as a show of her willingness to speak to people “no matter their political party” or “where they get their news.” She noted that on the same night, Trump had appeared at a Univision town hall where a 56-year-old self-described Republican said he was alarmed by what took place on Jan. 6, 2021, and wanted to give the former president the “opportunity to try to win back my vote.”

Trump responded by calling it “a day of love” and seemed to include himself when referring to those who entered the Capitol that day as “we.”

“There were no guns down there; we didn’t have guns,” Trump said. “The others had guns, but we didn’t have guns.”

In La Crosse and Green Bay, Harris said the Capitol riot — in which Trump supporters, trying to stop the affirmation of Joe Biden’s 2020 win, assaulted 140 police officers, damaged the building and destroyed government property — was a “tragic day” and one of “terrible violence.”

“The American people are exhausted with his gaslighting — exhausted … Enough,” Harris said. “We are ready to turn the page.”

Trump has repeatedly made false claims about the Capitol riot. During a recent appearance at the Economic Club of Chicago, he claimed that no one died as a result of the attack except Trump supporter Ashli Babbitt. Babbitt was one of five people who authorities said died as a consequence of the siege.

Trump’s assertion that no one who went to the Capitol on Jan. 6 had a gun is also false. It is still unclear how many in the crowd were armed before the riot occurred. But six men were arrested that day for having guns in the vicinity of the U.S. Capitol, and a seventh who arrived after the riot ended was arrested the following day.

While Trump’s conduct on Jan. 6 continues to be a major motivator for some voters, fewer Republicans have blamed him for the violence that day as time has passed. A majority of Americans said Trump bears responsibility for the attack on the Capitol, according to a December 2023 Washington Post-University of Maryland national poll. But the number of Republicans who said he was to blame immediately after the attack dropped by about half in 2023. Republicans were also less likely to believe that those who stormed the Capitol were “mostly violent.”

Harris’s criticism of Trump followed a week in which her campaign has tried to paint him as confused, incoherent and unstable. After Trump’s decision to end a town hall event earlier this week, instead directing that music be played for 39 minutes as he swayed and bopped along onstage while staring out at his audience, Harris’s campaign described him on X as appearing “lost, confused and frozen.”

In Green Bay, Harris also showed rally attendees recent comments Trump has made to appeal to women as part of her argument that he is seeking “unchecked power” over their lives. After recounting how Trump reshaped the composition of the Supreme Court by appointing conservative justices who helped overturn the Roe v. Wade decision that had guaranteed the right to abortion in America, Harris played a clip of Trump calling himself “the father of IVF” during an all-women town hall event. The crowd alternated between booing and laughing.

“What does that even mean?” Harris said while laughing about Trump’s claim, adding: “He has no idea what he’s talking about when it comes to the health care of women in America.”

Some in the crowd soon began chanting: “Lock him up!” Harris gave what is now her standard response to the line, which is to hold up her hand to halt the chants.

“The courts will take care of that,” she said. “Let’s take care of November.”

NEW YORK — Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump used his remarks at a Catholic charity banquet here on Thursday to skewer prominent Democrats, often in off-color terms.

He mispronounced Vice President Kamala Harris’s name and said she had “no intelligence whatsoever.” He made fun of her husband, Doug Emhoff, for an affair he acknowledged during a previous marriage.

He questioned the manhood of Harris’s running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, and Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), at the same time belittling transgender people. He tendentiously emphasized former president Barack Obama’s middle name of Hussein, as he often does at his rallies, and used profanity to disparage former New York mayor Bill de Blasio.

The only person off limits for Trump was himself.

“Tradition holds that I’m supposed to tell a few self-deprecating jokes this evening,” he said. “So here it goes. … Nope. I’ve got nothing. I’ve got nothing. There’s nothing to say.”

Trump’s remarks at the Al Smith Dinner — a storied white-tie affair benefiting Catholic charities — closed to a mix of applause and boos, in a room that Trump estimated as evenly divided for and against him. One person in the crowd audibly corrected his mispronunciation of Harris’s name.

The dinner has historically featured good-natured ribbing by both parties’ presidential nominees after the third debate and is typically the last time the two presidential candidates appear together before the election.

But this year, Trump has refused another debate against Harris since their first faceoff on Sept. 10. And Harris did not attend, instead campaigning in Wisconsin and appearing at the banquet in a prerecorded video.

The three-minute clip featured comedian Molly Shannon playing her famous “Saturday Night Live” character Mary Katherine Gallagher.

“It’s time for a woman, bro,” Shannon yelled as she offered some advice to Harris: “Don’t lie.” To that, Harris responded, “Especially thy neighbor’s election results” — a reference to Trump’s false claims about the outcome of the 2020 presidential vote.

Shannon also urged Harris not to use the occasion to insult Catholics. Harris said she never would anywhere, adding, “That would be like criticizing Detroit in Detroit” — a swipe at Trump’s speech there last week.

Trump accused Harris of disrespecting Catholics by missing the dinner, receiving some applause. He pointed out that the last time a Republican nominee attended the dinner unopposed was 1984, when Ronald Reagan went on to win 49 states.

Disparaging both President Joe Biden and Harris, Trump said: “We have someone in the White House who can barely talk, barely put together two coherent sentences, who seems to have mental faculties of a child. … But enough about Kamala Harris.”

Trump did find one Democrat to make common cause with: the city’s indicted mayor, Eric Adams. Trump drew a connection between his own criminal prosecutions and Adams’s, suggesting they were both victims of criticizing the Biden administration. “Mayor Adams, good luck with everything,” Trump said.

Federal prosecutors charged Adams in September with bribery and campaign finance violations, accusing him of soliciting luxury perks and hiding foreign political contributions. He pleaded not guilty.

Trump has been charged in four separate criminal indictments, two from a federal special counsel and two from local prosecutors. There is no evidence of White House involvement in any of the cases. He was convicted in May of falsifying business records in a hush money scheme before the 2016 election. The special counsel is appealing a dismissal of charges of mishandling classified documents, with a sentencing scheduled for after the election. Two cases involving his interference in the 2020 election, one federal and one in Atlanta, were also delayed until after the election.

As he walked onto the dais, Trump was greeted with applause and a scattering of boos. Former first lady Melania Trump accompanied him, in a rare public appearance by his side.

Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan of New York sat between Trump and Schumer.

In 2016, Trump and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton attended the dinner. He drew boos and heckling when he insulted Clinton, calling her “corrupt” and accusing her of “pretending not to hate Catholics.”

Trump referred to that speech Thursday night, observing: “Man, was the room angry!”

Ammar Moussa, a spokesman for the Harris campaign, said in a statement Thursday that Trump “struggled to read scripted notes written by his handlers, repeatedly complaining that he couldn’t use a teleprompter. … The rare moments he was off script, he went on long incomprehensible rambles, reminding Americans how unstable he’s become.”

The dinner, first held in 1946, is named for Smith, a four-time governor of New York and the first Catholic to win a major party’s nomination for president.

In 2020, Trump and Biden attended the dinner virtually, which took place as the coronavirus pandemic gripped the nation. But that event had a more serious tone as the candidates made their pitches. Biden, who won that November, is the nation’s second Catholic president.

Trump’s appearance at the Al Smith Dinner was, in some ways, a reminder of his previous life in the New York elite as a real estate developer. (Trump was previously a registered Democrat.) During his speech, Trump spoke with nostalgia about attending the dinner with his father before he became a presidential candidate. He also recalled giving a check to Schumer. “I gave him his first check … and I was very proud of it, I don’t know about lately,” he said to laughs. “He was running and I said he’s a good man.”

Jim Gaffigan, who has portrayed Walz on “Saturday Night Live,” emceed the event.

The event included an eclectic list of attendees: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his wife, Cheryl Hines; House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.); Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwarzman; football team owners, past New York athletes and many others. New York Attorney General Letitia James, who led the civil fraud case against Trump, was also in attendance.