From Resignation in Protest to Campaign for Congress
She was 'horrified' when President Trump berated Ukraine's president on camera in the Oval Office. She thought the president's peace overtures amounted to 'appeasement.' But when she came under pressure to stop calling Russia the 'aggressor' for invading its neighbor, it was just too much.
Bridget A. Brink, a career foreign service officer, resigned in April as ambassador to Ukraine in protest of Mr. Trump's approach to the war. After serving five presidents of both parties for 28 years, she had finally been confronted with a policy she could not defend. Now she is speaking out and taking her opposition to the president to a different level by deciding to run for Congress.
'I decided to leave because I opposed the policy and I opposed, specifically, the pressure that was being put on Zelensky, on the Ukrainians — and while we were letting the Russians off the hook,' Ms. Brink said in an interview on Tuesday, referring to President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine. 'I fully support pushing for an end to the war. But peace at any price is not peace, it's appeasement. And history has showed us that appeasement only means more war.'
Ms. Brink said that the State Department made clear the dramatic switch in approach through the language it adopted after Mr. Trump took office in January. Instead of calling the full-scale invasion of 2022 and the continuing assault on Ukrainian cities 'Russia's brutal war of aggression,' as it previously did, the new wording was 'the Russia-Ukraine war,' she noted. That, she said, was a false equivalence that defied reality.
'I couldn't in any good conscience change the way I talk about it,' she said. 'I tried to find ways that I could thread that needle. I did try. But I failed. It was impossible to do. And I realized that I couldn't both serve my country the way I knew I had to do it to be consistent with the policy and stand by my own principles.'
Having spent the past nearly three years helping to defend a young democracy under attack, Ms. Brink said she has come home to help defend an older democracy she believes is at risk. On Wednesday, she will formally announce her campaign as a Democrat for a House seat in her home state of Michigan.
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