He successfully trolled trump by telling him the beautiful words trump has said many times. Appeasement, to use a somewhat archaic term (esp. as it’s attached to Chamberlain as per smithsb bit above.
I couldn’t figure how to write Lindbergh’s Des Moines speech in a similar manner that was so anti-semiotic, isolationist and pro-German.
Marcos said today, “This is not our war”. Just wait a year or two. Putin’s mapped out every bit of underwater cable and probably set it up with remote mines. The coalition coming to the white house tomorrow would be happy to settle for some kind of peace (in our time?). They’ve called it an illegal war yet are willing to let Putin out of it with a lot of territory.
I do not believe Putin fears or even considers Article Five. Will NATO East really band together, declare war and do land invasions and simultaneous Naval battles at Krondstadt in the North and Black Sea in the south?
This late idea of “Article Five like promises” look a lot like the treaty Ukraine signed when they gave up their nukes.
So fine, get some peace now if you can. Do not rely on the USA, even if things go south in a year or so.
The difference between Putin and Trump is that though both are inveterate liars, Putin is a master strategist and an accomplished, purposeful liar. Trump’s lying is completely incompetent and often downright comical. Its only purpose, ever, is to reaffirm that he’s smarter than anybody and never wrong.
I always imagine that Putin really enjoys toying with Trump, like dealing with a six-year-old that you happen to dislike quite a lot. Most of us wouldn’t be cruel to a six-year-old and enjoy playing him for a fool, but most of us have a conscience and aren’t former KGB agents.
It’s too bad that Keir Starmer refuses to speak to Putin about Ukraine. I’m less than impressed with his last visit to the white house and the couple times I saw the weekly “ask the PM” Q&A’s.
Yet, highly unlikely Putin can assuage him with what he wants to hear. “If I could speak English like Sir Starmer that I’d have taken over the world 15 years ago”. He will make Putin look really diabolical and evil, not invite him back into the G8 or GB to meet the King.
Yet if he didn’t before - he’ll have taken the cue from Putin to treat Trump as a six-year old. Macron can pull his punches and not crush Trump’s hand into bruising, yet feel free to do so with Hegseth and Marcos.
We’ll see if Trump has more than a few words for the group, and just passes on what Putin told him to say in a one on one with Zelensky.
(ETA: The BBC said today the New York Times reported (yesterday) Trump had invited European leaders, again yesterday)
At the Alaska summit, Mr Putin reportedly insisted Ukraine must surrender Donetsk and Luhansk in full, abandon its Nato aspirations and declare neutrality. He offered to freeze the front lines in Kherson and Zaporizhzhia
Give us more territory than we actually fought for - declare neutrality (that isn’t the same as demilitarizing unless something lost in translation)
(20 years ago) Mr. Trump, turn over the deed to the Plaza and Trump Tower, move out of New York and declare you will never have any political aspirations.
(2 days from now). Mr Putin, the Ukrainian Constitution doesn’t allow for illegal invasions. We request you pull all your troops back to the Azov and choke on some Chicken Kiev.
Comrade Trumpsky, we have big beautiful dossier of, how you say indiscretions, of certain irregularities, many years. We have electronic funds transfer traces, photographs, letters, audio transcripts, video tapes, receipts. You say kompromat, I think. You know all this, of course. Nice likeness, no?
Nice real estate portfolio you have accumulated. Almost oligarch level maybe. But they not so big dicks in Russia now. Heh, my little joke there. In exchange for irrevocable transfer to me of 51% controlling stake or the unequivocal support USA of our annexation of the rebel territory of Ukraine, we will organise the information to ischeznut. Never seen again. Trust me.
Putin, mate. I’m not giving up my condos. You can have Ukraine.
I just looked at Truth Social and he apparently started to tweet something about a retweet he had just posted about getting some prisoners in Belarus released. And got distracted, I guess.
I haven’t looked at that site for some time and, my god, it’s even worse than it was. Huge ads (mostly for dick pills, crypto and mypillow) between each post. They are certainly not spending money on making the place user friendly. Blech.
The Belarusian release of political prisoners has been in the news. Dunno quite how Lukashenko intends to curry favor by releasing them, yet better than keeping them locked up so, yay.
I doubt trumps truthy thing has spell checking or type ahead - yet in google “bela” brings up the country. And i had to look up “Belarusian” (also the name of their language and currency).
My theory is that the rooskies didn’t want to start a war while the pubbies were “in charge”: a naked effort to keep the republicans looking blameless, so that they might be in charge again. The russians want the eminently manipulable reps in office.
Trump has said meaninglessly that the war never would have happened if he were in office, and Putin knows just how to butter that idiot up. That is all it is.
I mean….technically, Biden could have deterred the war. It would have required just placing some US forces in Ukraine as a tripwire, and had far less cost to the US and the world and Ukraine than the cost of the actual invasion - an ounce of prevention being worth a pound of cure, etc. That’s my biggest gripe, that Biden tried to arm Ukraine after the invasion broke out as opposed to deterring it from happening in the first place. But yes, Trump and MAGA is addicted to blaming the victim and kissing up to oppressors.
Yes, he could have. It wouldn’t have been popular, but, like a vaccine, it would have averted a far worse and bigger problem. But anyhow, I won’t derail the thread, the deterrence issue might be better for a GD thread.
I’m struggling with this - did Biden know that Russia was about to invade? Or are you saying the U S should station troops in every country to deter R? How many troops should be stationed in each country to short-circuit an incident? A squad? A division?
I could say bela, bela