Tag: russia
President Volodymyr Zelensky

Blaming Zelensky For Ukraine War, Trump Attacks Media And Spews Fake History

President Donald Trump is victim-blaming Ukraine after Russia carried out a missile attack on civilians at a Palm Sunday celebration in the city of Sumy, killing at least 34 people, including two children.

On Sunday night after the bombing, Trump said in an interview on Air Force One that the ballistic missile attack was “a mistake" and a “horrible thing”—even though a ballistic missile attack has to be directed and thus could not have been a benign error as Trump suggested.

But on Monday morning, Trump’s tone grew angry as he blamed former President Joe Biden and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky for the attack that Russia carried out, writing in one of his embarrassing Truth Social missives:

The War between Russia and Ukraine is Biden’s war, not mine. I just got here, and for four years during my term, had no problem in preventing it from happening. President Putin, and everyone else, respected your President! I HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH THIS WAR, BUT AM WORKING DILIGENTLY TO GET THE DEATH AND DESTRUCTION TO STOP. If the 2020 Presidential Election was not RIGGED, and it was, in so many ways, that horrible War would never have happened. President Zelenskyy and Crooked Joe Biden did an absolutely horrible job in allowing this travesty to begin. There were so many ways of preventing it from ever starting. But that is the past. Now we have to get it to STOP, AND FAST. SO SAD!

Let’s set aside the fact that it’s sociopathic to bring everything back to the 2020 election, which Trump still says was rigged, even though it wasn’t. To again blame Biden and Zelensky for a war that Russian dictator Vladimir Putin is 100% responsible for is sick and twisted—and raises questions about why Trump refuses to assign Putin any fault for his actions.

Trump dug in later on Monday as well. In the Oval Office, Trump told reporters, “[Zelensky is] always looking to purchase missiles. … Listen, when you start a war, you gotta know you can win a war. You don't start a war against somebody that's 20 times your size and then hope that people give you some missiles.”

Trump has repeatedly blamed Zelensky over Putin.

In February, Trump repeated Russian propaganda when he ridiculously accused Zelensky of being a “dictator” for not holding an election in his war-torn country.

Later that month, Trump attacked Zelenskyy in a disgraceful Oval Office ambush, in which Trump and Vice President JD Vance teamed up on Zelensky to demand he be more grateful for American aid in the war.

And on March 31, Trump threatened Zelenskyy with “big, big problems” if Zelenskyy were to back out of a minerals deal.

Trump’s change of tone on Monday over the horrific attack Russia carried out on Ukrainian civilians is likely a response to an interview Zelensky gave to 60 Minutes, which aired on Sunday night.

"I believe, sadly, Russian narratives are prevailing in the U.S.,” Zelensky said. “How is it possible to witness our losses and our suffering, to understand what the Russians are doing, and to still believe that they are not the aggressors, that they did not start this war? This speaks to the enormous influence of Russia's information policy on America, on U.S. politics, and U.S. politicians.”

That clearly pissed off Trump, who demanded CBS News lose its broadcast license for airing the segment. Trump wrote on Truth Social:

They [“60 Minutes”] are not a “News Show,” but a dishonest Political Operative simply disguised as “News,” and must be responsible for what they have done, and are doing. They should lose their license! Hopefully, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), as headed by its Highly Respected Chairman, Brendan Carr, will impose the maximum fines and punishment, which is substantial, for their unlawful and illegal behavior. CBS is out of control, at levels never seen before, and they should pay a big price for this. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!

Trump is angry that he hasn’t been able to end the war on Day 1, as he repeatedly promised during the campaign.

Worse for Trump is that his embrace of Putin and attacks on Zelensky are losing him support from voters.

A Gallup survey released on March 18 found that 46 percent of Americans believe the United States is not doing enough to help Ukraine fend off Russia’s attacks—a 16-percentage-point increase since December.

An NBC News poll from about the same time found that 61 percent of registered voters side with Ukraine over Russia. Yet a plurality (49 percent) thinks Trump sides with Russia over Ukraine.

“I cannot recall a moment in history when American public opinion and voters’ views of a president, as to which country they are more aligned with, have been more in conflict with each other,” Jeff Horwitt, a Democratic pollster who jointly conducted the poll with Republican pollster Bill McInturff of Public Opinion Strategies, told NBC News.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

Trump's 'Liberation Day' Rant: Big Tariffs And Crank Conspiracies

Trump's 'Liberation Day' Rant: Big Tariffs And Crank Conspiracies

President Donald Trump wanted the entire world to know about his self-branded “Liberation Day” on Wednesday, during which he announced—in a 48-minute rambling speech, no less—a slew of new tariffs on imported goods.

During his rant, Trump used props, pushed debunked conspiracy theories, and even engaged in a bit of antisemitic dog whistling.

Perhaps most notably, Trump chose to ignore a reporter’s question about families worried about the impact his tariffs will have on their lives. Trump has previously falsely claimed that tariffs are paid by foreign nations, but historically they’ve been passed on as additional costs to U.S. consumers.

Consumer sentiment dramatically fell 12 percent in March as Americans have growing concerns that the economy will worsen thanks to Trump’s policies like these new tariffs.

Touting his tariff decision, which will purportedly impose reciprocal tariffs on several nations (Trump endlessly repeated the term “reciprocal”), Trump then turned to props to sell his message.

Holding a printed-out report showing the alleged necessity of increased tariffs, Trump was handed a large chart, which listed many countries—but not Russia—and the reciprocal tariffs they will be charged. The full list included several odd choices like the uninhabited Heard and McDonald Islands, located in the southern Indian Ocean near Antarctica.

To almost complete silence from the audience, Trump then read most of the chart, offering up commentary on each country (including complaining about the South African government, which has tried to address the effects of racist apartheid policies, and the consternation of Elon Musk).

And in true salesman fashion, Trump paused the proceeding to throw a red MAGA hat into the audience.

Trump stressed the purported necessity of tariffs against Canada, citing Canadian tariffs on milk imports. But those tariffs are mostly a figment of Trump’s imagination, since the transportation of milk does not meet the threshold, which was imposed during Trump’s first term.

“In practice, these tariffs are not actually paid by anyone,” Al Mussell, an expert on Canadian trade issues, explained to CNN in March.

Trying to preempt criticism of his tariff plan, Trump said that “globalists” would be among the many groups objecting to his actions. This term has long been used by the right, including Trump, as an antisemitic dog whistle to imply conspiracies led by Jewish people.

Then, deviating from his tariff messaging, Trump rehashed long-debunked conspiracy theories about the 2020 election being stolen by President Joe Biden. He also bizarrely took credit for supposedly re-popularizing the term “groceries.”

“Groceries, I used it on the campaign. It’s such an old-fashioned term, but a beautiful term. Groceries. It’s a bag with different things in it,” he said.

Trump pushed a trade war against China during his first term, and it was a massive failure that led to billions spent to bail out farmers. Now with his new tariffs, Trump is set to increase costs for millions of Americans.

So, “Liberation Day” for who exactly?

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

Cui Bono? How Trump Is Dismantling Our National Security Institutions

Cui Bono? How Trump Is Dismantling Our National Security Institutions

I keep reading this story that's going around about a former KGB officer from Kazakhstan who wrote on Facebook that Trump was recruited as a Russian asset during a visit to Moscow in1987. An entire substructure of facts and rumors and speculation has swirled around Trump and Russia ever since the day in Florida in 2016 that Trump uttered his infamous “Russia if you're listening” remark at a press conference urging Russia to look into, you guessed it, Hillary's emails.

Then there was the Mueller Report that, while failing to come up with a provable conspiracy between Trump and Russia during the 2016 campaign, certainly established that Trump was the beneficiary of an all-out effort by Russia to aid in his election. Mueller was even able to indict Russian intelligence officers and civilians working for the Russian government who either interfered actively in the election for Trump or aided him by flooding social media with fake news and Russian propaganda.

But you don't have to go back to the Mueller Report or take the time out of your day to peruse the Steele dossier to ask yourself these questions: What the hell is Trump doing now, and who benefits? The Latin phrase for “who benefits,” cui bono, should probably be engraved on his headstone right beneath his name when the time comes, because of the executive orders that he issues practically every time he opens his mouth.

Most recently, on Friday, Trump issued an executive order cancelling all funding for the US Agency for Global Media, which the Washington Post describes as “the parent agency of Voice of America, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Free Asia, Radio and TV Marti, the Middle East Broadcasting Networks, and the Open Technology Fund, which works to circumvent internet censorship.” The White House press release explaining its defunding of the Voice of America alleged that VOA has been spreading lies and “radical propaganda.”

The Post reports that the “VOA and its affiliates reach 420 million people in 63 languages and more than 100 countries each week,” including countries with regimes that severely limit the access of their own populations to media that is not under the control of their governments, like China, Russia, Iran, Hungary, Belarus, Cuba, and Venezuela. The current VOA director, Michael J. Abramowitz, posted on Saturday on Facebook, “I learned this morning that virtually the entire staff of Voice of America — more than 1300 journalists, producers and support staff — has been placed on administrative leave today. So have I.”

According to Max Boot, a conservative columnist for the Post, Abramowitz was until last year the president of a thing called Freedom House, which Boot identifies as “one of the oldest and most respected human rights organizations in the world.” Freedom House is among a constellation of organizations that had their funding either eliminated or severely cut when Trump had his henchman, Elon Musk, go after the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

Among the other groups that were defenestrated at the same time was the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a quasi-governmental organization that is funded privately and in part by an act of Congress. The NED runs the Network of Democracy Research Institutes, the Journal of Democracy, the World Movement for Democracy, the Center for International Media Assistance. If those groups sound like they might be CIA fronts, it's because in addition to their do-gooder work for democracy around the world, they are.

USAID has also been used by the CIA as a front for gathering intelligence internationally. Certainly, USAID has done a lot of good around the world, feeding people who are starving in nations in the midst of civil war, working to prevent AIDS and treat AIDS patients with drugs that poor nations cannot provide for their citizens, and digging wells in arid regions where there is no clean water.

That's the thing about doing good works: when you hand out food to people who are hungry and drugs to people who suffer from disease and provide them with water that doesn’t make them sick, they tend to be willing to tell you things they wouldn't otherwise reveal to strangers. So, the CIA has used some USAID workers as both informal and formal intelligence agents over the years.

The NED has been used in much the same way. They've sent people to democracy conferences and meetings of groups promoting democracy in foreign nations where democracy is in its infancy or endangered. They make friends with people working for NGO's and for domestic political organizations. That's the way you collect intelligence. You make friends. You get people to talk to you. You talk to people who have been places where Americans aren't welcome. You make friends with people who live in dangerous areas where Americans working for our government simply don't want to go. Doing all of this, you gather information, rumors, names of people who might be working for countries unfriendly to us, like Russia and China, who are doing the same thing we are doing -- using front organizations to gather information for their own purposes.

This kind of stuff has been going on for decades and virtually defines the way the Cold War was fought between the U.S. and the Soviet Union in the 1950s and '60s and '70s and '80s. The U.S. used fronts like the National Student Association to gather information from countries in Eastern Europe and from countries in Asia that did business with China when we had no diplomatic relations with that country. A decent case could be made that at least in part we won the Cold War with the Soviet Union with some of the front organizations funded by and run by the CIA back in the day.

We're still gathering information about Russia and China and what they're doing not only in their own countries but overseas and in countries over which they seek influence. The VOA not only provided information through its broadcasts to countries with despotic regimes, reporters from the VOA gathered information that they didn't put on the air but shared with American intelligence agencies that were interested in what they knew about what was going on in countries not friendly to the United States.

Here is a story about how the gears in the intelligence business turn overseas. In the late 70s, I became friendly with a man in the movie business who ran a company that provided something called film completion bonds to motion picture companies. Nearly every movie that's made is a separate corporation, even if it's funded by one of the major studios, but especially if its funding comes from a consortium of various sources like wealthy individuals, film institutes from foreign countries, and other sources. People are reluctant to invest in movies unless there is some kind of guarantee that the movie they've put money into will get made. A film completion bond is a form of insurance that that will happen. The typical bond insures that at least one print of the movie will be made and shown in at least one motion picture theater for paying customers.

My friend's name was Sidney Kaufman, and he had a very interesting background. He had been a White House liaison to the OSS during World War II, and after the war in Europe he continued to work in intelligence gathering through his connections with the film industry in European countries. During that time, he got to know the two men who produced the first nine James Bond movies, Albert “Cubby” Broccoli and Harry Saltzman. The office in New York he let me use actually belonged to Broccoli and Saltzman. Through Kaufman, I learned how those two guys who owned the James Bond franchise made so much money.

The Bond movies did extremely well in this country of course, but it was overseas where the big money was, because they were huge there. The problem was foreign distribution, which was known to be a total scam. The way it worked was, you sold the rights to show a film in a foreign country, for which you received an advance payment against a percentage of the box office sales. The problem was that they lied about how much money they took in from your film, and there was no way to prove their lies so you could collect your money.

Broccoli and Saltzman had intelligence contacts with the Mossad in Israel. They made a deal with the Mossad to use its agents to surveil movie theaters when the first James Bond movie opened overseas. The agents would position themselves outside box offices and use one of those little thumb clickers to count the number of people who walked into showings of the film. This was done in cities all over Europe, India, Japan -- anywhere the James Bond films were showing, which was everywhere. When it came time for Broccoli and Saltzman to collect their percentage of the box office totals, the foreign distributors of course lied to them about how many tickets they had sold.

But Broccoli and Saltzman had actual figures from individual movie theaters, courtesy of the Mossad, and they could use those figures to extrapolate by the number of theaters owned by the distributors and determine estimated totals of their box office take. They demanded their money, and the foreign distributors laughed at them, until Broccoli and Saltzman told them they owned the entire James Bond film franchise and they would be making many more movies, and those distributors wouldn't get even one of them unless they paid up now.

They paid, and Broccoli and Saltzman got rich, and the Mossad got its cut too.

Take the motion picture theater box office receipts, and substitute information, and insert for Mossad the people working for USAID and the NED and the World Movement for Democracy and the Center for International Media Assistance, and all the rest of the quasi-autonomous non-governmental and yet very much governmental organizations used by the CIA, and you get a pretty good picture of how intelligence gathering works, or has worked, at least until Donald Trump and Elon Musk came along and started disassembling these elaborate networks that have been used for information gathering and influencing foreign governments for decades.

Cui bono? Do you think for a moment that Vladimir Putin's Russia has retired any of its non-governmental intelligence gathering networks? They haven't even tried to hide the assistance they provided to Trump in his election campaign last year. In fact, one of Putin's pals was quoted saying that Trump owes them: "To achieve success in the elections, Donald Trump relied on certain forces to which he has corresponding obligations. And as a responsible person, he will be obliged to fulfill them.” That little jewel of a quote came from Nikolai Patrushev, a member of Putin’s inner circle and former Secretary of the Russian Security Council.

So, who benefits from Trump's deconstruction of these U.S. intelligence networks, both official and non-official? We know he put a certifiable loon in charge of U.S. intelligence overall as head of the national office of intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, who has been unapologetic about her admiration for both Russia and Vladimir Putin, and her belief that there's absolutely nothing wrong with Russia's invasion of its neighbor, Ukraine.

There is something of a question in my mind about how much Trump really understands about the damage he's done to American intelligence by doing away with USAID and the NED and now the VOA and the rest of our foreign broadcasting networks like Radio Liberty. But it doesn't really matter what he knows because the damage he's done is right there for everyone to see. They took the name of USAID off its headquarters building, for crying out loud. Certainly the thousands of USAID employees here in the United States and overseas who have been fired are not benefiting from Trump and Musk and their tossing away of decade after decade of good works that has done around the world.

What you might call the secret history of the secret history of the way the United States collects intelligence is not widely known in this country, but you can be sure of one thing: it is known to Vladimir Putin and his henchmen in Russia, and it is known to Xi Jinping in China, and it's known to the other countries who are, if not our enemies, at least very much not our friends.

Cui bono? Not you and me and our fellow citizens, but I'd be willing to bet that Donald Trump has figured out a way to fatten his own wallet from all the damage he has done to the foreign policy and national security interests of this country.

Lucian K. Truscott IV, a graduate of West Point, has had a 50-year career as a journalist, novelist, and screenwriter. He has covered Watergate, the Stonewall riots, and wars in Lebanon, Iraq, and Afghanistan. He is also the author of five bestselling novels. He writes every day at luciantruscott.substack.com and you can follow him on Bluesky @lktiv.bsky.social and on Facebook at Lucian K. Truscott IV. Please consider subscribing to his Substack.

Reprinted with permission from Lucian Truscott Newsletter

Where Would Trump Be Without His Spineless Enablers?

Where Would Trump Be Without His Spineless Enablers?

It's amazing how men who prided themselves on strength and toughness will submit to a gangster.

In 2022, after Russian tanks rolled across an international border into Ukraine and missiles pierced the quiet of cities like Kharkiv and Kyiv, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky earned worldwide acclaim for his courage and heroism. No one was more pro-Ukrainian than Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), who exulted in an arrest warrant the Russians had issued against him:

"I will wear the arrest warrant issued by Putin's corrupt and immoral government as a Badge of Honor."

Last Friday, after mad king Donald and his scheming viceroy, JD Vance, performed a tag-team ambush on Zelensky in the Oval Office, Graham sounded a different note. "Somebody asked me if I was embarrassed about President Trump. I have never been more proud of the president. I was very proud of JD Vance for standing up for our country."

Disgusting. A politician whose identity was forged as a hawk and staunch defender of liberty and democracy now praises the most powerful man in the world for sandbagging the beleaguered leader of a bleeding ally, a victim of aggression? That's standing up for America?

Ditto Marco Rubio, that gelding who has likewise transformed himself from a champion of freedom into an obedient toady to the man whose project is to destroy the Western alliance.

We live in an upside-down world where the far greater man, Zelenskyy, is being hounded to apologize to the gangster who behaved abominably.

Consider that even before the Oval Office debacle, Trump and his team had been grossly disrespectful and abusive toward Zelensky and Ukraine. Trump called him a "dictator" (though he declined to say as much about Putin). Trump then repeated Putin's propaganda that Ukraine, not Russia, had started the war. Vance told a European audience that he feared "the threat from within" far more than Russia or China. And then Trump proposed a "deal" that amounted to extortion, demanding the right to mine rare earth elements (which Trump called "raw earths") on Ukrainian soil in return for ... nothing. It was a shakedown. As Trump unguardedly admitted when he lost his temper, he regards Ukraine as a target for extortion because they "don't have any cards."

It was the most shameful moment in American history in at least a century, and a special shame attaches to the explainer class of analysts who, without even the excuse of fearing voters, perform pirouettes on their principles.

Marc Thiessen used his perch as a Washington Post columnist to excoriate not Trump for this blatant betrayal of 80 years of American world leadership but Zelensky.

As recently as June 2023, Thiessen had seen his role differently — that of guide to help MAGA types remain on the side of Ukraine. He outlined an "America First Case for Supporting Ukraine." But now, when the leader has pivoted, so has Thiessen. "The blowup was Zelensky's fault," he wrote. Thiessen excoriated Zelensky for resisting a deal without security. "He summarily dismissed Trump's idea of an immediate ceasefire — something that is extremely important to Trump, who is committed to stopping the killing — because he said Putin had already broken ceasefires 25 times."

But that's a key stumbling block, isn't it? Trump is demanding a ceasefire without security guarantees for Ukraine, which is an open invitation to Putin to sign the deal and then regroup and attack again as he has done repeatedly. Thiessen was quick to accuse Zelensky of disrespect but didn't notice the key part of an exchange he himself highlighted. When Zelensky noted that Putin had broken previous agreements, Trump interrupted to say, "He never broke to me. He never broke to me." Putin's agreement was not with Trump. But Trump's narcissism, solipsism and moral obtuseness were painfully obvious in that exchange.

Thiessen further scolded Zelensky for contradicting Trump in front of "the entire world." Well, it was Trump's decision to invite the cameras, not Zelensky's. As he boasted afterward, it was "great television." Thiessen was referring to a moment when Trump was repeating Russian disinformation about how all of Ukraine's cities have been destroyed. Zelensky was the soul of restraint saying, "No, no, you have to come, Mr. President, you have to come and to look."

Trump is as deaf to such appeals as he was indifferent to the photos of starving Ukrainian POWs Zelensky had brought along. Throughout the latter part of the meeting, when it became heated, Trump's favoritism toward Putin showed through. He scowled when Zelensky called Putin a war criminal, and when a member of the press asked whether Trump saw himself as "in the middle" between the warring parties or "on Ukraine's side," Trump said he was not on Ukraine's side and went on to scold Zelensky for his harsh words about Putin.

"It's wonderful to speak badly about somebody else," he noted sarcastically, "but I want to get it solved." Later, he said about Zelensky, "You see the hatred he's got for Putin. It's very tough for me to make a deal."

Trump is a soulless sociopath. This is not news. But without the Vances, Rubios, and Thiessens of the world, he would not be quite the danger to the Atlantic alliance, peace and security that he is.

Mona Charen is policy editor of The Bulwark and host of the "Beg to Differ" podcast. Her new book, Hard Right: The GOP's Drift Toward Extremism, is available now.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.


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