At Least Now We Know the Truth

[Rideback]

There you go again, shooting the messenger when it's the message that counts. Bolton may have been part of the Rep team that initiated the Iraq War but that doesn't negate his foreign policy creds. What did you disagree with Ken?

[dorankj]

Yeah, FAFO, genius strategy! John Bolton? Ha, you’re such a clown.

[Rideback]

John Bolton's take:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3R_N-H1UUQo

[Rideback]

Ukraine is a sovereign nation. It's not Trump's decision to force a sovereign nation to surrender to an aggressor who has stated multiple times that it wants to OWN Ukraine. Ukraine's people have fought to the dirt and still are because they know that being OWNED by Russia will become the worst kind of life, or death. Ukraine's people know what life is like after Russia because they have lived it for decades before they gained their sovereignty.

Likewise, Putin has already said, in no uncertain terms, that Ukraine will only be the first that Russia will invade. He has his eye on other EU nations. So you see Ken, Ukraine's fall would never be the end of this war, it would only empower Putin to take aim at the next domino. The reality, Ken, it's the opposite of what you're thinking.

Forcing Ukraine to end the war only gives the green light to Putin. I believe Putin when he says he will move against other European countries, you should too.

[mister_coffee]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. "Peace in our time." We've heard it before.

You assume that Russia's nukes actually work. Let's just say I have my doubts and it is plausible to me that none of them are in working order.

The fact that multiple "red lines" of Russia's were crossed over the past three years and still no nukes being used tells me there is more to the story.

[dorankj]

He’s stopping a unwinable war with a nuclear power! You have zero plan to stop spending 100s of billions, 100s of thousands of deaths and slowly escalating to nuclear war and WWIII. It’s really too bad that such a weak imbecile who was to totally compromised and corrupt to Ukraine (Biden) was elected and Putin saw his opening and invaded. It’s unacceptable that Biden had zero ability (or desire?) to end the killing and billions spent and find any solution other than drip escalation slowly (so far more died). But now someone is finding solutions and talking to both sides (absolutely necessary unless you want to fight Russia outright?) and keeping us entangled for Ukraines protection without escalating to NATO and article 5 (required troops to fight). It’s a really smart solution to a 3-year stalemate costing billions and so many deaths. Zelensky is just to puffed up because he’s been treated like a rock star (he’s just a sitcom comedian, NOT Patton!) and interacting with a senile corrupt mor*n.

[Rideback]

I'd be curious to know what American values Ken thinks Trump upheld in today's conference. Trump didn't even know what rare earth was that he was supposed to be dangling as a carrot and instead called it 'raw' earth.

[just-jim]

.
PBS news tonite - Brooks and Capehart - views on the White House debacle…..

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/brook ... -zelenskyy
.

[just-jim]

.
Snyder interviewed on PBS news, tonite, on the subject. Excellent.

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/histo ... ffice-spat
.

[Rideback]

observations by Tim Snyder. Five failures
https://snyder.substack.com/p/five-fail ... val-office

[mister_coffee]

... so like when China apparently released a biological weapon against the United States in 2019 and 2020?

I don't think there is much hope for America until people like Ken come to their senses and take responsibility for the harm they have done to themselves and their fellow citizens. I'm not holding my breath.

[PAL]

Poor Ken.

[dorankj]

They “ended” with abject failure and retreat, not securing any return for our country. Trump is going for a Marshall style plan just like after WWII. The dictator thugs attack when weak leaders are in charge!

[Rideback]

For Ken it doesn't seem to matter that supporting Ukraine against an aggressor isn't supporting 'forever wars', it's the act of an ally, identical to our entry and support of allies in WW2.

After 9/11 we called upon our allies to help and they responded immediately. Not one asked for a thankyou like Trump did of Ukraine nor did one ask for repayment of their military effort, like Trump asked of Ukraine.

It was Rep President Bush that started the war effort in both Afghanistan and Iraq. It was the Dem Presidents Obama and Biden that ended them. Anyone can knash their teeth at how any war ends, but the fact remains that it's the Dem Presidents ended the Iraq and Afghanistan actions.

But you go right ahead and keep on saying everything's ok Ken because your President stood up for your values, it sure says a whole lot about what your values are.

[mister_coffee]

If you watch video of that whole disaster it is pretty obvious that Donald Trump is not right in the head.

Also: "raw earth"? WTF? He can't even form the words anymore.

[dorankj]

We know the truth about you guys and your support of forever unwinable wars that get millions killed and fuel the military industrial complex!

[Rideback]

Transcript:
https://foreignpolicy.com/2025/02/28/tr ... age_anchor

[Rideback]

Today, in front of the cameras was a display of intimidation, outright threats and lies this Country has never seen before.

'The Atlantic. By David Frum

'At least the Oval Office meeting held by President Donald Trump and Vice President J. D. Vance with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was held in front of the cameras. False friendliness in public by Trump and Vance, followed by behind-the-scenes treachery, would have been much more dangerous to the Ukrainian cause.

Instead, Trump and Vance have revealed to Americans and to America’s allies their alignment with Russia, and their animosity toward Ukraine in general and its president in particular. The truth is ugly, but it’s necessary to face it.

Today’s meeting gave the lie to any claim that this administration’s policy is driven by any strategic effort to advance the interests of the United States, however misguided. Trump and Vance displayed in the Oval Office a highly personal hatred. There was no effort here to make a case for American interests. Vance complained that Zelensky had traveled to Pennsylvania to thank U.S. ammunition workers, because, Vance charged, the appearance amounted to campaigning for the Democratic presidential ticket. “Let me tell you, Putin went through a hell of a lot with me,” Trump angrily explained. “He went through a phony witch hunt where they used him and Russia, Russia, Russia.”

Both the president and vice president showed the U.S.-led alliance system something it needed urgently to know: The national-security system of the West is led by two men who cannot be trusted to defend America’s allies—and who deeply sympathize with the world’s most aggressive dictator.

Through the Cold War period, Americans were haunted by the fear that a person with clandestine loyalties to a hostile foreign power might somehow rise to high office. In the late 1940s, the Alger Hiss case convulsed the country. Hiss’s accusers charged—and it later proved true—that Hiss had betrayed U.S. secrets to Soviet spymasters in the 1930s, when Hiss served as a junior official in the Department of Agriculture. The secrets were not very important; they included designs for a new fire extinguisher for U.S. naval ships. But Hiss himself was a rising star. The possibility that a person with such secrets in his past might someday go on to head the Department of State or Central Intelligence Agency once tormented Americans.

But what if the loyalties were not clandestine, not secret? What if a leader just plain blurted out on national television that he despises our allies, rejects treaties, and regards a foreign adversary as a personal friend? What if he did it again and again? Human beings get used to anything. But this?

It’s not hard to imagine a president of Estonia or Moldova in that Oval Office chair, being berated by Trump and Vance. Or a president of Taiwan. Or, for that matter, the leaders of core U.S. partners such as Germany and Japan, which entrusted their nations’ security to the faith and patriotism of past American leaders, only to be confronted by the faithless men who hold the highest offices today.
Putin's face head-on, next to a profile of Trump's face
The Putinization of America
Garry Kasnov

We’re witnessing the self-sabotage of the United States. “America First” always meant America alone, a predatory America whose role in the world is no longer based on democratic belief. America voted at the United Nations earlier this week against Ukraine, siding with Russia and China against almost all of its fellow democracies. Is this who Americans want to be? For this is what America is being turned into.

The Trump administration’s elimination of PEPFAR, the American program to combat HIV infection in Africa, symbolizes the path ahead. President George W. Bush created the program because it would do immense good at low cost, and thereby demonstrate to the world the moral basis of American power. His successors continued it, and Congresses of both parties funded it, because they saw that the program advanced both U.S. values and U.S. interests. Trump and Vance don’t want the United States to be that kind of country anymore.

American allies urgently need a Plan B for collective security in a world where the U.S. administration prefers Vladimir Putin to Zelensky.

The American people need to reckon with the mess Trump and Vance are making of this country’s once-good name—and the services they are performing for dictators and aggressors. There may not be a deep cause here. Trump likes and admires bad people because he is himself a bad person. When Vance executed his personal pivot from Never Trump to Always Trump, he needed a way to prove that he had truly crossed over to the dark side beyond any possibility of reversion or redemption; perhaps his support for Russia allowed him to do that. But however shallow their motives, the consequences are profound.

In his first term, Trump sometimes seemed a rogue actor within his own administration. The president expressed strange and disquieting opinions, but his Cabinet secretaries were mostly normal and responsible people. The oddball appointees on the White House staff were contained by the many more-or-less normal appointees. This time, Trump is building a national-security system to follow his lead. He has intimidated or persuaded his caucus in the House to accept—and his caucus in the Senate not to oppose—his pro-authoritarian agenda.

The good and great America that once inspired global admiration—that good and great America still lives. But it no longer commands a consensus above party. The pro-Trump party exposed its face to the world in the Oval Office today. Nobody who saw that face will ever forget the grotesque sight.'