Foreign governments have now learned a disturbing lesson: If you target Democrats or put money in Donald Trump’s pockets, you might earn diplomatic benefits from the United States government.

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For example, Trump’s July 25th phone call with the president of Ukraine offered a horrifying glimpse into the ways Trump has drastically reshaped U.S. foreign policy — not by shifting it toward Republican principles, but by making it revolve around Republican politics and Trumpian self-interest. In the phone call, Trump responds to his counterpart’s request for military assistance with one of his own: “I would like you to do us a favor, though.”

Those 10 words underscore what has long been suspected: that the president is conditioning American diplomatic relationships on the degree to which foreign governments don’t just stroke his infamously fragile ego but also boost his political chances while simultaneously lining his pockets. American foreign policy has been co-opted by the Trump 2020 reelection campaign and by the Trump Organization. It’s the wholesale politicization of U.S. diplomacy. To secure a concession related to U.S. foreign policy, you don’t have to help the United States; you have to help Trump.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s side of the call is instructive. After Trump pressed Zelensky by saying “if you can look into it,” with reference to investigating Biden based on a debunked lie, Zelensky agreed to conduct an investigation. Then, without prompting, Zelensky volunteered the fact that he has stayed at “the Trump Tower.”

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Out of the hundreds of hotels in New York City, foreign heads of state and diplomatic missions seem to miraculously choose the one brand that will directly fatten the wallet of the president of the United States.

But the fallout from that phone call goes well beyond Washington and Kiev. From Abu Dhabi to Zagreb, the message has been received. Whatever they want from the United States, they now have confirmation about the best way to get it.

That’s why this growing scandal isn’t just about Trump pressuring Ukraine, or Australia, or Britain, or Italy to investigate his opponents and to discredit U.S. law enforcement and intelligence officials that dare investigate him. Foreign governments are constantly looking for ways to curry favor with the United States. But in the past, they knew that you couldn’t just bribe President George W. Bush or promise President Barack Obama that you would happily investigate Mitt Romney or John McCain in the hopes that the president might return the “favor.” Foreign governments understood that the bipartisan bedrock of U.S. foreign policy was about advancing the national interest, not the president’s political or financial interest.

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Now, however, Trump is likely to inspire improvisation from leaders who don’t wait until Trump asks them for a “favor” on a phone call. Foreign governments may be tempted to dig up debunked dirt on one of Trump’s political opponents or release a bogus document that Trump could use for his reelection campaign in hopes that he will reward them. And given how much Trump has tried to inoculate his supporters from the truth with a relentless disinformation campaign, even phony documents or discredited investigations could actually help Trump win. After all, according to a Monmouth University poll, 6 in 10 Republicans don’t believe Trump even mentioned the Biden investigation during his call with Zelensky. The White House released a rough transcript in which Trump mentions Biden by name three times. And Trump himself admitted it.

But the politicization of U.S. foreign policy won’t just tempt foreign regimes to freelance against Democrats. It will also create risks in the United States, where diplomatic priorities for the country are viewed through the all-consuming prism of partisan polarization. Trump is conditioning his supporters to believe that abuses of power and possibly illegal conduct are acceptable, so long as they hurt Democrats. But when geopolitical strategy is solely viewed as a subset of domestic electoral calculations, catastrophic mistakes are inevitable.

And still, urgent questions loom: What else is in that ultra-classified server that is being used to squirrel away conversations the White House wants to cover up? How else is Trump politicizing foreign policy? Has he pressured other governments to investigate Democrats?

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Republicans and Democrats are supposed to disagree about foreign policy. But we’re supposed to agree that the president can’t use American national security interests as a bargaining chip in a risky gamble to get reelected. Impeachment is the only way for Republicans to reassert that fundamental principle and to begin to clean up the damage from Trump’s corrupt, self-serving diplomacy.