No More, Please!
I bet in about three months, the media and analytical community will go on a breathless splurge, speculating about whether Trump might actually give Ukraine nuclear weapons. They will report about how frustrated Trump is with Putin for not ending the war, how this time its different, and how Trump is poised to make Russia pay by giving Ukraine nuclear weapons. Seriously, we will be told, even though Trump has made such threats countless times before and never followed through, this time it will be different.
Of course its not and he won’t.
The fact that Trump has constantly deceived people about his willingness to help Ukraine and hammer Russia did not prevent this last week from seeing the most extreme example of Trump will Help Rearm Ukraine Syndrome (Or THRUSH). People got extremely excited
on Monday, when it was stated that Zelensky was going to visit the White House on Friday and that Trump, who was increasingly angry with Putin, was all set to send US-made Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine. Trump himself deliberately fanned the flames of the speculation by discussing whether he might send the missiles and talking about what a powerful weapon they would be for Ukraine.
This announcement supercharged a public discussion about how Trump was really pivoting to Ukraine, how we now done with Putin, and how the tooth fairy really existed and was going to leave money under the pillows of everyone alive on the globe.
At this point the usual group of suspects, Trump backers who claim to support Ukraine, started up a gleeful chorus. Their man Trump had had enough and was going to act (disregarding the fact that they had been telling us for months that Trump was going to drop the hammer on Putin and support Ukraine). Maybe the most oleaginous was
Marc Thiessen in The Washington Post. Thiessen has been providing Trump for cover ages as the President screws Ukraine. What Thiessen does is write constant columns about how, this time things will be different. How Trump was really angry with Putin and really wanted to help Ukraine and now he would take action. This time it would be different, Trump knew what Putin was and would not be fooled! Predictably, on Thursday this week, Thiessen sang his favorite song once again.
For those not on Twitter, Thiessen insulted me there yesterday (I do not follow him and have never interacted with him previously—he took it upon himself to make a nasty charge). So I put together this detailed thread about his constant deceptions regarding Trump and Ukraine. Putting it together showed the depth and length of this deception operation.
Thiessen was not alone of course. All the major media was rife with speculation about Trump sending Ukraine Tomahawks or even just billions extra in weapons—speculation that was deliberately being fanned by the White House.
And then in hours, once again, reality returned with a terrible thud.
First, on Thursday afternoon Trump and Putin spoke on the phone for a long time (Trump boasted about that) and reached a common understanding on the way forward. Crucially, they came up with a concrete plan to meet in Budapest in about two weeks. Trump was almost giddy when he reported the call. Btw, if you want more,
I did a detailed analysis of the call in this post.
Zelensky, who had been deceived ahead of time into thinking that he might get Tomahawks, thus had to come into the Oval Office on Friday to meet a Trump who was all set to humiliate him again. And humiliate he did. The Ukrainians were seated like little boys across from Trump and the President offered them no support, but actually lectured them about how he had just discovered that the US could not spare any Tomahawks at all. The pictures were grim.
And once the meeting was over, the stories came out about just how destructive it had been.
First, Trump went public to say no new weapons for Ukraine, instead it was time for Ukraine to sacrifice its own territory to appease Putin.
So the official position of the US is now “blood makes borders”. Good to know.
For the Ukrainians this was terribly deflating. Indeed, the more the details came out about the meeting and Trump’s earlier phone calls with Putin, the more terrible it seemed. One report was that far from saying he would be happy with the line freezing where it is,
Putin actually asked for the cessation of more Ukrainian territory before he would agree to a deal. Amazingly, it seems that people around Trump immediately started amplifying Kremlin demands, using Russian talking points. Other stories said that the meeting with Trump and Zelensky became emotional, as Trump dropped the hammer on the Ukrainians.
And at the end—people are still speculating whether in the end Trump might send Ukraine Tomahawks. Please end this charade now.
www.reuters.com
apnews.com
www.rferl.org
phillipspobrien.substack.com
