demagogue on 20/2/2025 at 05:26
Trump is running a mob boss style protection racket on Ukraine for sure, also the textbook gaslighting, but what got to me was after...
Quote Posted by Starker
* Lord Dampnut calls Zelensky a dictator, blames Ukraine for starting the war.
Not even 2 hours later he sent a (
https://newrepublic.com/post/191718/republicans-donald-trump-king-congestion-pricing) tweet declaring himself king with a picture of him as king.
As they say, every accusation is a confession with tfg.
Edit: Oh also, on the 2nd part of that bullet point, aside from being pretty vile & flagrant Russian propaganda, on Russian tv one insider commentator was apparently noting how many talking points from Trump's recent tweets & speeches came directly from the 1.5 hour talk Trump had with Putin last week (I can't find the link to it just now). Putin basically gave him the script to read, and they were ecstatic about how precisely he kept to it. It's all so very transparent for them, no hesitation letting the truth out, and they can't hide their glee. Of course anytime anyone ever asks Trump about his calls with Putin, he (
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMAESNgO8W4) squirms out of it faster than you can say kompromat quid pro quo.
Starker on 20/2/2025 at 10:09
More inane drivel from the US president:
Quote:
(
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvgwddmjyvzo)
Donald Trump says he believes Russia has "the cards" in any peace talks to end the war in Ukraine because they have "taken a lot of territory".
The US president told the BBC he trusted that Moscow wants to see an end to the war, which Russia started when it waged a full-scale invasion almost three years ago.
[...]
Trump has attempted to make an issue out of Zelensky's popularity, claiming the Ukrainian president had only a 4% approval rating. But BBC Verify reports that polling conducted this month found 57% of Ukrainians said they trusted the president.
[...]
It really hurts him that Zelensky is more popular, apparently.
lowenz on 20/2/2025 at 10:24
Quote Posted by demagogue
Trump is running a mob boss style protection racket on Ukraine
That's his mindset, and his voters wanting to lie about that obvious thing.....and lie and lie and lie and being more and more happy lying because they finally can do it boundlessly with immense satisfaction.
How to deal with millions of liars when we protect the freedom to lie as a form of human expression?That's the real question for the West and the idol of democracy.
demagogue on 20/2/2025 at 16:32
The ICCPR (the international treaty for civil & political rights like free speech) actually prohibits war and hate propaganda in Article 20, and what's happening now, just like what was happening in Europe in the 1930s, is pretty much the reason why.
For reference I'm linking to the actual terms of the (
https://bsky.app/profile/camcopp.bsky.social/post/3lihc24cmcc25) protection racket deal that Trump offered. It's so flagrantly the deal of a strongman bully, the kind of language old school colonial powers would use rolling their troops and cargo ships in to openly take resources from a region that even
they started feeling was too cringe already by like the 1920s and definitely by the 1940s.
heywood on 20/2/2025 at 17:14
I think the suggestion that the US would deploy troops to protect Ukraine is not a serious one. Anyone who thinks Trump would put US troops in a hot war wish Russia is delusional IMHO. As we can see now with NATO, even when we have a treaty obligation to defend an ally, he will not be bound by it. The United States under Trump cannot be counted upon to provide protection to anyone.
Inline Image:
https://media.makeameme.org/created/i-am-altering-f18ea45438.jpgI wouldn't assume the offer of financial assistance is something they can count on either, considering one of the very first things Trump did in office was to stop all foreign aid payments. I'm thinking this offer is nothing but a poison pill and the negotiation is a sham. What he really wants to do is end the sanctions on Russia, and he's just doing this so he can blame Zelenskyy for not negotiating and continuing the war.
demagogue on 20/2/2025 at 19:36
I've also been making a series of posts on Bluesky that keep hardening the idea over time, and that is that people should stop calling this Munich 2, where Neville Chamberlain and Hitler (& other people, but those were the two that mattered) were agreeing to carve off the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia to Hitler, and they should start analogizing it to the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact between Hitler & Stalin's proxies to carve Poland in half, the west to the Nazis and the east to the Soviets.
And I think that for two reasons.
(1) At this point it should be clear that Trump is not playing the role of bumbling Chamberlain, who was at least acting in good faith (either fatalistically or naively) sincerely trying to keep Europe out of war and as many of the people out of Nazi control as he could get away with. In this scenario, Trump is much more closely playing the role of Hitler/Ribbentrop, relishing the destruction of the country he's helping to carve up and even making a regime change in the western part as a condition of agreement that puts it in the control of Z-nazi vatnyks. He's still gaslighting with Chamberlain-like language, but increasingly he's not even bothering with that and letting his Hitler-side show openly, and it's clear gaslighting, it's just a matter of how long it takes people to catch on.
(2) The other reason it's more like R-M 2 than Munich 2 was because R-M 1 was a secret agreement between the Nazis and Soviets that the world only found out about later. In this case too, the agreement between Trump & Putin was not made at Munich 2, but well before in secret in the phone calls between Trump and Putin, certainly the 1.5 hour call last week, but I'm sure it goes further back to their multiple calls over the last four years. It's only at Munich 2 that Trump finally laid out what had already been agreed to by him and Putin long before.
So yeah, stop saying Munich 2 and starting saying Ribbentrop-Molotov 2.
Starker on 21/2/2025 at 15:43
Stop calling it aggressionOoh, we hate that expression!We only want the world to knowThat we support the status quoQuote:
(
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/20/world/europe/us-g7-russia-ukraine-war.html)
The United States is opposing calling Russia the aggressor in the war with Ukraine in a Group of 7 statement being drafted to mark the third anniversary of Russia's full-scale invasion, four senior officials from countries involved said on Thursday.
The American objections to the statement come after President Trump earlier this week blamed Ukraine for starting the war, which in fact began with Russia's attack on Ukraine.
One senior official from a Group of 7 country said that Canada had circulated the first draft of the statement to the other six member countries. That version, the official said, used language that retained the pro-Ukraine tone the group of allies adopted after the full-scale invasion of the country in February 2022.
The U.S. side went through that first draft this week and removed all references that could be interpreted as being pro-Ukraine, the official said. The result, the official added, was a neutral draft statement that made no references to Russia as the aggressor in the conflict, nor to Ukraine as the victim of the invasion.
[...]
Starker on 21/2/2025 at 20:25
Even the Kremlin and Russian state media are shocked by US rhetoric towards Ukraine:
Quote:
(
https://edition.cnn.com/politics/live-news/trump-administration-news-02-21-25/index.html)
The Kremlin appears to be surprised by how quickly US President Donald Trump has made concessions to his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin even before beginning negations to end Moscow's war in Ukraine, a former Russian deputy minister told CNN.
The Kremlin had expected Trump would make certain demands of Russia and Moscow was “preparing some sort of offers here and there to make what they call a deal,” said Vladimir Milov, Russia's former deputy minister of energy and a former adviser to the late Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny.
Speaking in exile in Vilnius, Lithuania, Milov told CNN's Kim Brunhuber that, based on what he's heard, “everybody in Moscow is totally astonished by now that they were given all the concessions they wanted, even before the negotiations started.”
[...]
Perhaps emboldened by the falling out between Ukraine and the US, Moscow's demands appear to be accelerating in the past few days, Milov noted, saying “Moscow is clearly encouraged by Trump's lack of willingness to impose any conditions on Russia.”
[...]
Quote:
(
https://www.thedailybeast.com/laughing-kremlin-insiders-say-trump-has-given-putin-greenlight-to-expand-the-war/)
U.S. President Donald J. Trump stunned the world by offering unprecedented concessions to Russia in its ongoing invasion of Ukraine on Wednesday—seemingly without getting anything in return. Before the formal peace talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin even started, Trump and members of his administration dismissed the idea that Ukraine could reclaim its territories that Russia currently occupies, slammed the door shut for Kyiv's hope of NATO membership, and refused to acknowledge Ukraine as an equal member in the peace process.
While Ukrainians and their allies were left in disbelief, Russian state TV and radio stations were full of elated propagandists, who grinned ear to ear and periodically broke out into uproarious laughter.
[...]
Solovyov rejoiced about an assertion by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth that the United States intended to disregard NATO's Article 5 in the event Europe militarily engaged with Russia. Political scientist Sergey Mikheyev said, “In this situation, we should make it clear for the Europeans: now we can really strike Brussels, London or Paris, because we can forget about Article 5. You can forget the notion that Americans would step in on your behalf.” Solovyov chimed in to add, “I like the way you think.”
[...]
While gloating about the Trump administration repeatedly reiterating its belief that Ukraine must concede certain territories to Russia, Solovyov sternly asserted that Russia does not intend to relinquish any of its conquests.
The same view reverberated across Russia's state media, with experts urging the military to advance quickly and take as much Ukrainian land as possible. After Putin's negotiations with Trump, they fully anticipate being able to keep the spoils and evade the consequences.
demagogue on 21/2/2025 at 22:12
It's a little too uncomfortably close to being a tell for the kompromat quid pro quo happening here, I think.
Like we love your slavish compliance, sure, but hold back a little, damn.
Make it at least look a little like it was your idea.
