This. They really believe the whole thing is a grift by Zelenskyy, and that Biden took 10%
Thing is, he isn’t going to get a Nobel for a ceasefire that Putin inevitably violates.
If he could get a real end, one that didn’t screw over the Ukrainians, then he might actually deserve one (as much as I would hate it).
Trump wouldn’t win the Nobel Peace Prize if he brokered a REAL ceasefire anyway. He’s too despised. But he THINKS he will. Trump lives on praise and flattery - he is still, to this day, angry he never won an Emmy for “The Apprentice.” There is no higher honor than a Nobel Peace Prize. so he wants one.
Further, for those people the thanks and the respect that ARE offered are never enough because it gnaws at them knowing that it was compelled.
(Though for some of them, there’s also the notion that they are the rightful superiors and “betters” of everyone else and are owed worship by natural right.)
Because that’s what they expect “anyone” would do, because otherwise, as their leader once said of our own war dead, what’s in it for them?
I don’t think that’s quite fair. I think it’s quite possible if he got Russia to somehow agree to a retreat back to 2022 or 2014 borders, and/or peace in Gaza with meaningful progress to a 2-state solution then I could really see him getting it.
In fact, I wouldn’t even be against it personally: as much as I despise the man, if his approach to international relations somehow bore fruit, then sure, give the a-hole a prize.
Obviously this is all hypothetical though. He has zero understanding of anything, and his current approach towards both conflicts is the antithesis of peace.
Medal of Honor is in the race to the top in this particular topic… but “bone spurs”.
Alas.
No, an American war medal is not in the race to compete with a Nobel Peace Prize.
Oh PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE give it to Volodymyr Zelenskyy!
Groucho Marx might not want to belong to a club that would have him as a member, but I wouldn’t want to belong to a club that would have Henry Kissinger as a member. I’d be more honored by a Hugo or a Newbery or a bust of Greg Davies.
That aside, Trump absolutely wants one, and in his bizarre delusion thinks he deserves one. He likely also thinks he deserves a Newbery and a Hugo and the crystal cake stand from Bake-Off: by virtue of being prizes, they’re his.
Edit: oh, this is funny. I looked up the Wikipedia article on Nobel Prize controversies and came across this (bolding added):
Kissinger and me: so close in our analysis, yet so far apart.
Maybe I’m not being fair, since I never watched one minute of the show. But wasn’t his only line “you’re fired!” ?
I don’t see how even he could think he deserves an Emmy.
No, he’d say other stuff while leading up to mentioning which contestant was now fired, sure as he’d say yet other stuff beforehand — telling the contestants about the ‘impress me’ challenge they were about to undertake, or asking someone who’s just failed at a task why they did X instead of Y, and so on.
Because he seems to truly believe that he is incredibly skilled, talented, and knowledgeable about just about everything; in his own mind, the fact that he had a successful TV show surely means that he must have been the very very best TV celebrity, and so, he was truly deserving of fawning recognition of that “fact.”
Trump is Dunning-Kruger on steroids.
Just to note once again that for the most part this is just not logistically feasible. Russian and American calibers for example are substantially different enough to be a problem - a 155 mm American shell is not going to properly fit a 152mm Russian howitzer, NATO uses a standard 5.56x45mm small arm cartridge vs Russian 5.45x39mm. Retrofitting precision munitions for incompatible aircraft is also clumsy and not terribly effective - we know that because the Ukrainians have been trying to do it with Western help. We also know that many pilots trained in one standard set of combat aircraft have a great deal of difficulty adjusting to a rather different set in actual combat conditions when unconscious reflex comes into play. Again, this has come up with Ukraine.
Trump can aid Russia by easing sanctions (entirely likely, I’d guess), actually giving them funds (not likely, Trump is not generous) or intervening directly (I sure as fuck hope not - I’d say probably not, but you never know). But they can’t realistically re-arm them directly.
Oh yesyesyes. Trump’s head will surely explode then. 
It’s my understanding that the dipshit who attacked Zelensky for not wearing a suit is the boyfriend of Marjorie Taylor Greene. If so, I’d say that the man shouldn’t be criticizing anyone on their taste in anything unless it’s bacon. From the looks of him, they deserve each other.
Strangely, I stumbled on this in my YouTube feed.
It’s a segment from the PBS Newshour, first aired in 1994, debating whether NATO should expand into the former Warsaw states. Participants are Henry Kissinger and Jack Matlock, former ambassador to the USSR.
Matlock argues this will provoke the Russians, and anyway, we’d see them reorganizing their military with 10 years’ notice before they could do anything to Eastern Europe, with Kissinger saying that leaving Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic, and Slovakia out will make them a no-man’s land stuck in a tug of war between NATO and Russia.
They also discuss whether we would/should ever go so far as extending NATO to Ukraine, and Matlock outright states that we DID give Gorbachev assurance we wouldn’t grow NATO east beyond a united Germany; this is the first contemporaneous account of this I have personally seen.
I want to go on record that whenever I’m met with the argument “We didn’t let them put nukes in Cuba” my response is that if the Russians/Soviets hadn’t spent 50 years kneeling on the neck of every state in the Warsaw Pact, maybe they wouldn’t have jumped at the chance to join NATO.
I will note that I was 21 in 1994, and I remember thinking at that time that Russia and the West had put this sort of containment-ism behind us. But I was more interested in beer, bongs, and sex then, so…
I’m hoping it’s okay to post this here. It’s from a Facebook post of a MAGA defense of Trump and Vance.
Many of you probably watched what took place between Donald Trump and Zelenskyy tonight. Whether you’re a Democrat or a Republican, you might be thinking to yourself, Oh my God, Donald Trump just screwed up.
However, as a lifelong practitioner of martial arts, strategy, and philosophy, let me explain the difference between what you believe you witnessed and what actually happened.
Donald Trump has been under constant political persecution since the beginning of his first term. Over time, he has learned to be patient and calculated.
Tonight, Zelenskyy was invited to the Oval Office. However, both Trump and JD Vance knew exactly what Zelenskyy was going to do—he would use this opportunity, in front of the American people, to make a power play. Both Trump and Vance anticipated this.
When Zelenskyy began appealing to the emotions of the American people, JD Vance stepped in, accusing him of disrespecting Donald Trump. This was brilliant strategy. It’s important to understand that Zelenskyy is trying to gain access to NATO.
Trump knew this but could not allow it to happen. If Ukraine joins NATO, the U.S. would be bound by NATO’s collective defense agreement—an attack on one is an attack on all.
Now consider the larger implications: Ukraine and Russia despise each other. If Ukraine were to become a NATO member, any future skirmish between them would obligate the U.S. to enter into direct conflict with Russia. This would mean World War III. And if that happened, China would have to choose a side—they would almost certainly align with Russia.
So what you witnessed tonight was a setup. Trump and JD Vance knew that the only way to achieve peace was to strategically align, at least on the surface, with Russia. Why? Because Russia would never sign a peace treaty if Ukraine were admitted into NATO.
This is why Trump dismantled Zelenskyy’s argument. And when Zelenskyy, seeing his play failing, tried to backtrack and offer a treaty, Trump refused.
Zelenskyy’s real intent was clear—he would not agree to peace unless security guarantees were in place. But what was he actually saying? That NATO must accept Ukraine. However, Russia would never agree to peace, knowing that NATO, their historical adversary, would surround them.
Zelenskyy, Putin, and Trump all knew this. Zelenskyy, thinking he had Democratic support, believed he could make this bold move on live television. But Trump and Vance saw right through it and outmaneuvered him.
They knew that, in the short term, Democrats and the media would try to use this moment against them. But they also knew they had two years before midterms to prove their strategy was the right one. So they held their ground—brilliantly so.
Now, Zelenskyy will have no choice but to back down and accept Trump’s terms. But here’s the genius part—Trump is actually protecting Ukraine without dragging the U.S. into war.
By negotiating a mineral deal, Trump ensures that Americans will be involved in Ukraine’s mining industry. This prevents Russia from launching an invasion, because attacking Ukraine would mean endangering American lives—something that would force the U.S. to respond.
Trump played both sides like a master chess player. In the end, Zelenskyy will have no choice but to concede, because without U.S. support, Ukraine cannot win a prolonged war against Russia. And once U.S. companies have mining operations in Ukraine, Putin will be unable to attack without triggering massive international consequences.
Don’t underestimate Donald Trump. In this game of chess, he’s 10 moves ahead of everyone
I can’t begin to make sense of the convoluted logic of this. Especially the last line abound Trump being 10 moves ahead of everyone in a game of chess.
You are assigning way too much credit to the benevolent motivations of Marco Rubio; he isn’t there to reign in the worst impulses of Trump or be ‘the adult in the room’ driving the discussion. Despite his experience, he believes that he will have the opportunity to advance and perhaps even take over once Trump dives completely into senile incompetence, not realizing that being smart is not a virtue in this crowd. He will become a victim of his own avarice, and giving some vague whiff of legitimacy (such as it still exists) to non-MAGA Republicans who still refuse to turn away in the meantime.
Zelenskyy might actually be the most qualified hypothetical recipient of that prize, not only for his leadership of Ukraine but what that has done to blunt Putin’s ambitions of the ‘Greater Russia’ west of the Caspian and in the Baltics up north. Which means, of course, that he’ll never actually receive it since it is basically a lottery from which random names of leaders, terrorists, exploiters, and war criminals are drawn.
That entire post that you copied is a workshop in gaslighting. If anybody ever says something like “…as a lifelong practitioner of martial arts, strategy, and philosophy, let me explain the difference between what you believe you witnessed and what actually happened,” you should immediately sucker punch them and ask them why in their supposed vast wealth of experience they failed to see that coming.
Stranger
Think of how different current geopolitics would be if Zelensky had actually been the corrupt stooge TFG wanted him to be and did him a favor by inventing something on Hunter Biden in exchange for those Javelins back in 2019.
Seriously, I’m quite positive that the “perfect phone call” that got him impeached for the first time is at the top of the list of reasons TFG wants to ‘get even’ with Zelensky, the lives of Ukrainians be damned.
Agreed.
I don’t envy the other countries in the agreement. If they (quite justifiably) opt to stop sharing information on Russia with the US, the mutual mistrust is likely to seep into other areas of intelligence-sharing as well.
Trump has never learned to be patient.
Zelenskyy had no control over when the media would be involved.
They would have had lunch first if this had been serious. No one negotiates when they are hangry.
A Russian news agent was said to have been there.
Zelenskyy has thanked Trump numerous times.
He made it clear Russia might not respect a ceasefire and this was insufficient.
He was asked to give $500B of guarantees, for receiving far less in return.
Trump wanted to talk about Biden and how he and Putin suffered together unfairly because they had been accused of misconduct.
No one in Europe, NATO, Russia or Ukraine thought Trump’s proposal would bring lasting peace.
American businesses were recently operating in Ukraine when Russia occupied territory.
Russia feels it has a historic right to these territories.
It is true the US might not want to fund what it sees as a more European problem, hence this ambush.
Zelenskyy was not to blame, in retrospect wearing
a suit or having an interpreter might have been wiser, but would not have changed much.
You need peace to win a Peace Prize. Trump has no shot. Trump will see this as a victory. So will Putin. Few others will.