A JOYOUS HOLIDAY MESSAGE FROM THE US PRESIDENT: MERRY CHRISTMAS, LEFTIST SCUM AND DEAD TERRORISTS

 Since Donald Trump sat in the Oval Office for the first time in 2017, Americans and the world have become sadly accustomed to bracing ourselves for some new horror burbling from his lips almost every time he opens his mouth to speak. But, no matter how justifiably cynical observers like myself may have become in four years of following his misanthropic, misogynous, and seditious antics during his first term, and, worse all the time, his comportment during this first year of his Grover-Cleveland-second-term, we all too frequently err on the side of potential benefit of the doubt in the hope that, perhaps, he will occasionally demonstrate a glimmer of decency. Alas…  

Christmas is the time of year when people who truly embrace the Christian faith, or who at least posit the principles taught by Jesus of Nazareth—despite professing other religions, or none at all— usually try to let bygones be bygones, and seek, at least on that day, to find it in their hearts to promote peace on earth and goodwill toward others. US presidents have not been immune to this tradition. On the contrary, most have gone out of their way in Christmas messages to encompass the true spirit of Christmas, and its principle of universal love and peace.

During Donald Trump’s first term, there were still a number of people around him—people in his own cabinet who had bought into the Trump America First phenomenon, but still retained some American values and a quota of decency—who probably spent more time trying to keep him from going off the reservation on an unlawful rampage than they spent actually being able to effectively execute their day jobs.

Clearly, that’s what is different about this out-of-left-field second term. He learned from that first term, and from his frustration at not being able to do whatever-the-hell he pleased, that if he hoped to be able to ignore the Constitution, thumb his nose at the law, commit any felonious act he pleased with no pushback and nobody saying, “Huh-uh, no, Mr. President, you simply can’t do that,” he would need to surround himself with people as morally and ethically bankrupt, as undemocratic, as unpatriotic, as ignorant, and as oblivious to the laws and principles of the nation as he was.  

And with the invaluable and servile aid of his corrupt and hijacked Republican Party, and of an acquiescent super-majority in the Supreme Court (three of whom he handpicked during term one), Trump has managed to live the first year of his second term  in  office entirely off the reservation and almost completely above the law. In short, he has morphed into a senile renegade, and  has managed to fully indulge his own full-blown insanity, and his ever more obvious sociopathy (if we’re being nice), and psychopathy (if we are adhering to the learned conclusions of well over a score of noted psychologists and psychotherapists).

I’m drawing attention to the president’s demeanor within the context of this year’s holiday season (as opposed to all the rest of the time that he demonstrates clear signs of insanity), because I believe (and I am certainly not alone) that it is more indicative than ever of his encroaching mental illness. While he was never known for his discretion or appropriateness, his behavior over this Christmas holiday speaks volumes of just how far out of his mind he has gone. He is off the leash, running wild, and is hell bent on wreaking misery and mayhem.

Longtime observers of Donald Trump like myself—as a business journalist in the late eighties and early nineties, I was already following his misdeeds—never thought him fit for office. Any public office. But now it is even becoming obvious to some of those naïvely credulous folks who said, “Let’s give him a chance and see what he does,” that doing so has been a terrible, once-in-a-democratic-lifetime mistake.

As I say, horrible and detrimental to American democracy and the Republic as Trump’s first term was, this second one is proving disastrous. And again, Trump’s outrageous behavior this holiday season is a quick glimpse at the degree to which he has lost any fleeting sense of logic and decorum that he ever had.

In his first term, the influence of a handful of talented and serious people who surrounded him—some, like Marine General John F. Kelly, who, as chief of staff, managed to put up with him for three years, or former Secretary of Defense Mark Esper, in an effort to mitigate the damage Trump could do—tended to keep him on script in the most significant of moments. That didn’t keep him from very frequently slipping through their fingers, but they were at least successful on special occasions such as Christmas, in preventing him from demonstrating how completely violent, vindictive and out of his mind he was. It has to have been a monumentally frustrating task—one that prompted General Kelly to privately refer to the president, in a moment of obvious desperation, as “a fucking moron.”

But at least in his first four years, his staff managed to write him a nice traditional Christmas greeting and get him to post it without any demented addenda to dampen the Christmas spirit of the nation. In 2017, Trump’s holiday message to Americans was, “At Christmas, we thank God for sending His only Son to save us from our sins and from the darkness of this world.”  At Christmas, 2018, the message he transmitted was,  “The true spirit of Christmas shines in the hearts of those who follow the teachings of Jesus Christ.” In 2019, he was almost kumbaya, posting, “Together, we celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ and renew our bonds to one another and to our nation.” And in 2020, even as he was building up to inciting an insurrection less than two weeks later to try and overthrow the government and remain in power as a de facto leader, his Christmas message was, “The Christmas story reminds us that light overcomes darkness, and that hope can overcome despair.”

Obviously, none of these words were “his”, in any real sense of the term. They were a sound byte on a teleprompter or a staff tweet on social media. But his first-term ventriloquists managed to make the right words come out of the dummy’s mouth.

Even in 2024, after defeating Kamala Harris and before taking office, the greeting issued in his name was exceedingly discreet, at a time when he was crowing in triumph and vowing retribution. The message was, simply,  “MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL!”  Santa couldn’t have said it better.

But this Christmas season, it has been pure, unfiltered and unmitigated Donald Trump, a man with no tact, no empathy, no mercy, and no moral north. His holiday messages (scores of them that pepper social media) have been bereft of anything even approaching the Christmas spirit or, for that matter, Christian traditions and principles. They have been an affront to decency and an embarrassment to the nation that Trump supposedly represents.

His official greeting this year (the one he didn’t write) was completely overshadowed by a veritable social media diarrhea of an estimated one hundred fifty personal posts—many hate posts—that he belched out of his bile duct on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. Herewith are some of the most egregious messages that this rogue president transmitted while Christian Americans were celebrating the holiest day of their year.

“Merry Christmas to all, including the Radical Left Scum that is doing everything possible to destroy our Country, but are failing badly.” Hardly a unifying message in the spirit of goodwill toward all.

*  *  *

“Merry Christmas to all, including the many sleazebags that loved Jeffrey Epstein, gave him lots of money, went to his Island, attended his parties, and thought he was the greatest guy in the world—only to abandon him like a dog when things got very bad.”

Wait! Was he talking about himself? I mean, is he one of the sleazebags he’s referencing? Because, as, perhaps, Epstein’s closest friend for more than a decade—far enough back that Trump was a Democrat then—that is exactly what he did. Granted, if you were somebody who knew Epstein simply because you traveled in the same jet set with him, but abandoned any contact when it was made clear to you who he really was, nobody could blame you for giving him the cold shoulder (although denouncing him would have been much better).

But that doesn’t seem to be the case with the president.  Back in 2002, in a story headlined Jeffrey Epstein: International Moneyman of Mystery, Trump told New York Magazine,  “I’ve known Jeff for fifteen years. Terrific guy. He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side. No doubt about it — Jeffrey enjoys his social life.”

That statement seems pretty specific and raises questions about just how much Trump knew about the “beautiful women on the younger side” that Epstein kept company with and trafficked. More than a thousand women (or girls as they are known to non-pedophiles), according to reliable information

And yet, in 2019, when Epstein was charged with sex-trafficking, then-President Trump told reporters that he was “not a fan of (Epstein’s), that I can tell you. I was not a fan of his.” He also said he hadn't spoken to Epstein in fifteen years. That would have been 2004, when, according to Mar-a-Lago scuttlebutt, Trump banned Epstein from the resort, not because of the other man’s dark business practices, but because he caught Epstein luring away young women working a Mar-a-Lago to groom them for his own activities. In other words, it seems more like a fight over skirts than over morality.

*  *  *

 

Obsessively speaking even on Christmas of the Epstein Files, which are becoming a major headache for his administration and person, he said, “When their names come out in the Radical Left Witch Hunt, it will be revealed that they are all Democrats, and a lot of explaining will have to be done.”

Then, bizarrely, he added, “Enjoy what may be your last Christmas.” Which left everybody scratching their heads.

So which is it? A witch hunt cooked up by the “radical left”, or a serious bipartisan congressional probe in which many familiar faces on both sides of the political spectrum are likely to be revealed? Unless, that is, Trump-surrogate-Attorney General Pam Bondi actually manages to suppress any references to her boss and his friends (even if it means she eventually ends up in prison for obstruction).

That kind of cover-up could well happen. Still unconfirmed reports indicate that there is an extraofficial team working, as we speak, in an undisclosed location in Virginia, to scrub all Republican and Trump-friendly names from the files before the documentation is fully released. This is clearly the downside to not rigorously enforcing the law, by which the files should have been released en masse a week ago last Friday. How long will Congress keep saying, “Release the documents…and this time we mean it,” and then giving the administration more time? If Bondi and Trump keep garnering delays, pretty soon not even Jeffrey Epstein will exist in the files. Only the regime-unfriendlies will remain, which may be what Trump is talking about when he says the files will reveal that “they are all Democrats.”

*  *  *

Randomly and apropos of nothing, he dedicated another of his Christmas posts to late-night comic Stephen Colbert, who is leaving CBS after corporate threw him under the bus because of Trump. (CBS’s new owners seem bent on trashing the premier news network in the history of TV journalism—it’s enough to make Ed Murrow and Walt Cronkite rise up from the grave). In the spirit of Christmas (not), Trump tweeted that Colbert was “a pathetic trainwreck, with no talent or anything else necessary for show business success.” He added, “Now, after being terminated by CBS, but left out to dry, he has actually gotten worse, along with his nonexistent ratings. Stephen is running on hatred and fumes ~ A dead man walking! CBS should, ‘put him to sleep,’ NOW, it is the humanitarian thing to do!”

*  *  *

Jaw-droppingly bizarre too were his off-the-wall comments to children with whom he interacted on Christmas Eve. When Trump asked one little girl what she wanted in her Christmas stocking, she said what she didn’t want was a lump of coal. What did the president say? “You mean clean, beautiful coal... Coal is clean and beautiful. Please remember that, at all costs.”

It's always creepy—for me at least—to see Trump around young women and kids, but this was beyond weird. Then it just got even weirder. Each year NORAD (the North American Aerospace Defense Command) provides reports to children from its “Santa Tracker” operations, keeping kids abreast of the progress of Santa’s sleigh in its flight from the North Pole to America.

Instead of just playing along, however, Trump couldn’t help himself and brought his paranoia about “aliens” into it.  (Obviously, Saint Nick isn’t American…even if he does drink Coca Cola).Trump said, “We want to make sure that Santa is being good…We want to make sure that he’s not infiltrated, that we’re not infiltrating into our country a bad Santa.”

Man, it was a traumatic Christmas Eve for the kids the White House contacted!

*  *  *

Some of the scores of posts he churned out over the Christmas holiday were, of course, simply self-aggrandizing lies and exaggerations. For instance:

“We no longer have Open Borders…”
Not true: Border crossings have continued. Policy enforcement has varied by agency and court rulings, and it’s true that significantly fewer people are crossing the border illegally or any other way (not exactly the best time to aspire to US residency if you’re a foreigner; not, in fact, even a good time to visit as a tourist, especially if you’re brown). But there is no evidence that borders have been “closed”, as Trump keeps claiming.

“Record Stock Market and 401K’s”
Actually, markets have hit highs at some points, but gains are uneven and influenced by multiple factors, not the least of which, certainly, is the volatility bred by unease over Trump’s personal and policy instability.

“Lowest Crime numbers in decades.” That’s simply false. Not even data provided by his own FBI and DOJ support that claim.

“No Inflation.”  False. While the inflation rate has fluctuated throughout the year, it remains virtually unchanged from its level in the last year of the Biden administration. Clearly, not zero. Just ask anybody who does the grocery shopping.

“Tariffs have given us Trillions of Dollars in Growth and Prosperity”
That’s false. It’s a claim contradicted by leading economists, who say that, as implemented by Trump, it is a disastrous policy. Besides throwing world trade into chaos, it is mostly Trump’s tariff policy that continues to fuel US inflation, raising costs for consumers and businesses, and making them pay for a failed policy. Contrary to Trump’s repeated claims that the tariffs are being paid for by the countries on which they are levied, most economists agree that they are, instead, acting as a hidden tax on American consumers, taking money out of their pockets that they can ill-afford and socking it into the US Treasury.  

Even when he told the little girl on Christmas Eve that “coal is clean and beautiful,” Trump was lying. Every independent study ever carried out shows that coal is a leading source of air pollution and carbon emissions.

*  *  *

Perhaps the Christmas pièce de résistance that Trump delivered to Americans was when he told them that he had chosen Christmas as the perfect time to bomb the crap out of northwestern Nigeria.

In a tweet, he announced,  “Tonight, at my direction as Commander in Chief, the United States launched a powerful and deadly strike against ISIS Terrorist Scum in Northwest Nigeria, who have been targeting and viciously killing, primarily, innocent Christians, at levels not seen for many years, and even Centuries!”

He ended the post in a macabre expression of Christmas spirit worthy of the Zodiac serial killer’s messages to the press. “Under my leadership, our Country will not allow Radical Islamic Terrorism to prosper. May God Bless our Military, and MERRY CHRISTMAS to all, including the dead Terrorists, of which there will be many more if their slaughter of Christians continues.”

Hey, forget all that stuff Jesus said about peace, forgiveness, loving your enemies and all that other good stuff. Donald Trump celebrated Christmas by laying waste to the “infidels”.

Quite apart from whether or not Christmas was an opportune time for such action—always prepared to out-Trump Trump, MAGA influencer Laura Loomer tweeted, “I can’t think of a better way to celebrate Christmas than by avenging the death of Christians through the justified mass killing of Islamic terrorists”—the thinly “biblical” premise on which the attack was launched was tenuous at best, and improvised, with no input whatsoever from experts, at worst. Ask Trump or Defense Secretary Hegseth to explain the ins and outs of the civil strife that has plagued Nigeria in recent years, claiming more than 30,000 lives in all since 2019, and I’ll bet you a c-note they can’t begin to give you a cogent, or even pedestrian answer.

But if you believe it’s simply about Islamic terrorists running willy nilly killing Christians, you’ve been conned. Trump appears to have been responding to a series of social media posts by certain far-right evangelical activists lately decrying attacks on Christians in Africa’s largest country. But the reality of what’s happening on the ground in Nigeria is much more complex and multi-sided than that.

Strictly religious-based fighting is relatively insignificant compared to the overall strife in that country, which resembles civil war, but which can’t be classified as such because of just how multilateral it is. And in simple tit for tat religious-targeted violence, the Muslims have fared somewhat worse than the Christians, with recorded casualties showing 317 Christians killed versus 417 Muslims in the last five years.

However, the motives for Nigerian domestic violence go far beyond this. First, you have the violence triggered by government action, through the Armed Forces, police, and security agencies. The State’s motives include seeking to preserve territorial integrity, maintaining control over the country’s rich oil reserves and its borders, and striving to prevent secession by certain regions that could lead to the collapse of the State as it stands now. Along these lines, then, State security forces are also engaged in defeating insurgent groups and criminal associations that are seeking to take over the country.

The State is hampered in this endeavor by an uneven security presence in what is a very large country with a very large population (237 million), as well as by its own corruption and human rights abuses that both tend to fuel further resistance and to create ever weaker governance.

Countering this State-backed violence, there is Islamic insurgency—in the person of the armed movements known as Boko Haram and ISWAP (Islamic State West Africa Province). These are presumably whom Trump was talking about when he mentioned “Islamic terrorist scum”, but it is interesting to note that both of these major jihadist movements operate out of Northeast Nigeria, and the US Christmas bombings took place, by the president’s own admission, in Northwest Nigeria.

The goal of these violent Islamic guerrilla groups is pretty standard stuff: To establish an Islamic state governed by strict Sharia Law, to  reject Western education, secular government, and Nigerian democracy, and to align with global jihadist movements as a whole.

In all fairness, they tend to be equal-opportunity killers, attacking civilians, soldiers, schools, and aid workers alike, not specifically Christians, but, admittedly, a lot of the people they kill do end up being Christian.

Anyway, if Trump’s objective was to go after the  jihadists, he messed up (or Hegseth did) because they bombed an area on the other side of the country.

And then, in the southeastern region of Nigeria there is the separatist movement, best represented by the IPOB (Indigenous People of Biafra) and its armed wing known as the ESN or Eastern Security Network.  Their struggle is a lot like the one waged by the Kurds in Turkey. To seek independence or autonomy for Igbo-dominated southeast (Biafra). They also want historical redress arising from the 1967–70 Biafran War, while their major complaint is political marginalization and economic exclusion.

What inspires their violence is a long-standing perception of exclusion from federal power, disparate infrastructure investment, the short shrift given to memory of the Biafran genocide and famine, and government repression of peaceful protests, a factor that has succeeded in fully radicalizing the movement.

More or less in the middle of the country, there is an ongoing feud—much like the 19^th-century range wars in the US—between established farmers and free-range herders. Now, at first sight, to an ignorant outsider, this may resemble religious violence, since the Fulani free-rangers are predominantly Muslim and the farmers are mostly Christian. But if there is a religious aspect to the strife between them, it ranks in priority well under the environmental, territorial, economic and ethnic issues that are at the base of their long-standing feud that has frequently led to tit for tat violence.

So, wait a minute…

Who’s in the Nigerian northwest that Trump bragged about targeting for multiple Christmas Day bombing runs?

 Well, that would be a mishmash of bandits and criminal insurgents. These are some pretty awful people, but they have little or nothing to do with targeted religious killings.  

These are bandits, pure and simple. They run in loosely organized, non-religious, non-ideological gangs. They have ready access to a proliferation of arms from the Libya and Sahel conflicts and use them to generate cash-money from kidnap ransoms, cattle-rustling and illegal oil and mining activities. They exist because rural security in that area has collapsed. Poverty and lack of government presence there means that gang rule is pretty much the norm.

So, if Trump’s Christmas bombings took a few bandits out, they probably wouldn’t be missed by anybody but their colleagues and families. But to tell the evangelical base and Americans as a whole that their president was acting as the avenging sword for the mass killing of Christians in Nigeria is a complete and utter farse, a performative lie told by a madman who is growing worse by the day.

If there is a political take that is appropriate for this Christmas season, maybe it should be that this was the Christmas when more Americans than ever saw that the emperor has no clothes.      

 

THE PEACE PRIZE THAT WAS…AND THE ONE THAT WASN’T

The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded today.

No, The Don didn't get it. Someone deserving did. María Corina Machado. A real leader of the Venezuelan people, the one Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro blocked from running for president.

Maduro did the same thing in Venezuela’s most recent election as Trump did in the 2020 US elections, except Maduro was successful at it. He refused to leave office even though he lost fair and square to Edmundo González, the democratic candidate whom Machado backed. It’s actually remarkable that Trump and Maduro aren’t friendly fellow-tyrants, since they have so much in common. Certainly as much as Trump and Putin do. They just wrap themselves in different flags. But both pretend to be democratic and populist when they are, in fact, self-serving autocrats.

María Corina Machado

Machado received the Nobel Peace Prize “for her tireless work promoting democratic rights for the people of Venezuela and for her struggle to achieve a just and peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy.”

In a world where a fervent belief in fighting for democracy and individual rights is too often seen as “old-fashioned and naïve”, the members of the Nobel Committee did themselves proud by honoring a fighter for freedom and democratic government—for which neither Maduro nor Trump has any use. The Nobel Committee hasn’t always done so—like when they gave a Peace Prize to former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger who was directly responsible for some of the worst atrocities ever committed in Southeast Asia. But in this case, they got it right.

Had the committee awarded the prize to Trump—who has been lobbying furiously for it since he returned to office, but for no particularly good reason—while he is carrying out illegal acts of war against a sovereign nation, and committing summary executions in the Caribbean without proof, cause, due process or credible threat, it would have been a travesty beyond all comprehension.

Yesterday, while María Carina Machado was receiving her well-deserved Nobel Prize, Donald Trump was throwing a tantrum and seizing a Venezuelan oil tanker in the Caribbean. It was a move so incomprehensible that it left political and diplomatic observers with their mouths hanging open. No amount of MAGA spin could explain or justify it. It was an act of piracy, pure and simple, carried out in the name of the United States of America, which has become whatever the madman in charge says it is.

You can read about Peace-Prize winner María Corina Machado at the link below.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_Nobel_Peace_Prize

 

 

 

 

 

FELON TO FELLOW-FELON

 

My thanks to FB friend Debbie Rudy-Lack for drawing my attention to this. I have fact-checked it.

David Gentile doesn't just have a get-out-of-jail-free card from the White House, he also is no longer required to pay a paltry million-and-a-half dollars in restitution as sentenced.

There's a pattern here. Who does felon-in-chief Donald Trump pardon? Answer, other felons: insurrectionists (some fifteen hundred of them, among which were individuals also convicted of rape and sexual assault, child sexual abuse and exploitation, and production and possession of child pornography), high-rolling financial swindlers and crypto-scammers, money-launderers, and major drug-traffickers.

A good example of this last is the case of Juan Orlando Hernández, wealthy ex-president of Honduras, sentenced in the US to forty-five years in prison for heading up an eighteen-year-long scheme involving drug kingpin El Chapo, with whom he was bribed to partner. Through Hernández’s actions, an estimated four hundred tons of cocaine were funneled into the US.

Trump said Hernández had been treated "very harshly and unfairly."

Question: How are those unidentified, uncharged, unsubstantiatedly-accused folks in the boats in the Caribbean being treated?

PIRACY AS POLICY

 

Piracy defined: Acts of robbery, violence or detention at sea.

The unprovoked attacks in the Caribbean Sea being carried out by the US Department of Defense, without investigation, due process or motive for defensive action, harken back centuries to lawless times when colonial powers, privateers and pirates ruled the seas by force, without regard for territories, the law, or any interests but their own. The crimes committed at sea and from the sea back then were a major basis for America’s revolt against colonialism and its struggle for independence from British rule.

In the last three months, the US, under orders from its ever-more-authoritarian president, has carried out 21 military strikes against at least 22 vessels in the Caribbean region, with particular emphasis on boats out of Venezuela. In all cases, the Trump administration has claimed that the vessels attacked and destroyed, usually by drones, were “narco-boats” transporting illegal narcotics. But neither the Department of Defense nor the White House has deigned to provide any evidence at all that this was the case. And even if they were narco-trafficking vessels, without due process, the act of blowing them out of the water without legal standing or authorization is unlawful.  

Indeed, the Trump regime, to date, has  made zero effort to explain its actions—except as bully-posturing, and in terms of cowboy “street justice”—to the American public or to the world.  And now, retired members of the JAG Corps (the US military’s justice system) are indicating that, under international law and the Uniform Code of Military Justice, the attacks are not only illegal but may well constitute summary execution or murder.

Eighty-three people have perished in these unprovoked attacks. Only two have been captured and repatriated. The victims could just as easily have been fishermen, vacationers or boating enthusiasts as drug-runners, since we only have the word of Trump (long since proven to be a serial liar) and his Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth that the vessels hit by devastatingly lethal US drone attacks had anything to do with narcotics shipments.

Whether Trump and his hijacked Republican Party recognize it or not, all of these attacks have been unlawful at a both national, and global level, constituting gross violations of international law and the Law of the Sea. At a strictly domestic level, they violate a number of federal laws, regulations and the Constitution.

To start with,  the attacks are a violation of constitutional separation of powers. Congress alone is empowered to declare war or authorize captures or strikes at sea, especially in peace time. They also violate domestic criminal statutes and executive-branch prohibitions against assassination or unlawful killing, since these are basically summary executions without any due process whatsoever. Furthermore, they contravene doctrines of due process and the right to life under both US and international human-rights law. Additionally, they infringe on international maritime law and principle of the sovereignty of States over vessels under their flags on the high seas, where the attacker does so without consent from the country involved or from the United Nations General Assembly or Security Council.

And now we must add to this horror new reports that point to the probability that the Department of Defense has at least unofficially been imposing a “no survivors” rule. Backing this theory was information reported this week regarding a September strike that wiped out a vessel, followed by a second strike that killed survivors who remained alive and overboard, clinging to pieces of their craft, following the attack. If these allegations prove true, such an act would unquestionably be a summary execution (murder).

This latest report is stirring outrage in Congress, even among  a handful of GOP lawmakers. But it has also caught the attention of US military law experts. Earlier this week, a statement was released by the Former JAGs Working Group, which indicated that, if the “no-quarter” orders alleged to have emanated from the Department of Defense (DoD) prove true, “both the giving and the execution

of these orders (would) constitute war crimes, murder, or both.”

The Former JAGs Working Group was established in February of this year after Trump unilaterally fired the Army and Air Force Judge Advocates General. The organization, whose members are former military attorneys, created their watchdog group after Trump began “his systematic dismantling of the military’s legal guardrails.” In their statement, they said that, “Had those guardrails been in place, we are confident they would have prevented these crimes.” They added that their assessment of the crimes of which they are potentially accusing the administration was unanimous.

Explaining the legal precedents that led them to this evaluation, the Former JAGs Working Group stated that, “If the US military operation to interdict and destroy suspected narco-trafficking vessels is a “non-international armed conflict,” as the Trump Administration suggests, orders to “kill everybody,” which can reasonably be regarded as an order to give ‘no quarter’, and to ‘double-tap’ a target in order to kill survivors, are clearly illegal under international law. In short, they are war crimes.”

The ex-JAGs made it clear that: “If the US military operation is not an armed conflict of any kind, these orders to kill helpless civilians clinging to the wreckage of a vessel our military destroyed would subject everyone from (the Secretary of Defense) down to the individual who pulled the trigger to prosecution under US law for murder.”

The Former JAGs Working Group made a plea to both Congress and the American people, saying: “We call upon Congress to investigate and the American people to oppose any use of the US military that involves the intentional targeting of anyone—enemy combatants, non-combatants, or civilians—rendered hors de combat (“out of the fight”) as a result of their wounds or the destruction of the ship or aircraft carrying them.”

They also went on to tacitly back the position of retired Navy captain and current Senator Mark Kelly, whom the Trump regime is currently seeking to court martial for reminding Armed Forces personnel that they are under no obligation to obey unlawful orders, no matter who gives them. According to Trump (who, as a 34-count convicted felon, has no regard for the Constitution or any other law), military personnel must obey all orders of the commander-in-chief, no matter what those orders might be.

In their statement, on this point, the ex-JAGs said: “We also advise our fellow citizens that orders like those described above are the kinds of ‘patently illegal orders’ all military members have a duty to disobey.”

They added that, “Since orders to kill survivors of an attack at sea are ‘patently illegal’, anyone who issues or follows such orders can and should be prosecuted for war crimes, murder, or both.”

More specifically, from an international viewpoint, legal experts make it clear that, if the Trump regime orders US forces or agents to carry out lethal strikes on Venezuelan territory, territorial waters, or flagged vessels without a UN Security Council mandate, Venezuelan consent, or a lawful claim of self-defense, such actions are deemed unlawful uses of force under Article 2 of the United Nations Charter. They also constitute violations of Venezuelan sovereignty under customary international law and International Court of Justice doctrine.

Furthermore, US attacks on vessels navigating under Venezuelan flag on the high seas are a violation of the Law of the Sea—an international statute negotiated worldwide in the 1970s and 1980s and in effect around the globe since the nineties. The alleged “double-tap” orders from the DoD are considered extrajudicial executions, and are in violation of international human rights laws. Under international humanitarian law (IHL) and Articles 7 and 8 of the Rome Statute (under which the International Criminal Court was founded) such actions are deemed to be war crimes.   

Bottom line, the face of the United States that the world is seeing right now under the Trump regime is that of an all-powerful but lawless, rogue nation, bent on dominating other sovereign states by force, and in total disregard for long-standing diplomatic and international legal norms. We are being seen as a barbaric and violent people with no respect for the sovereignty of other nations. In short, we are being seen as a nation ruled by a dictator, who, like his erstwhile idol, Vladimir Putin, is willing to make use of all of the devastating power at his fingertips as a threat, so as to impose his whims on the world by force. And we are also being seen as a once democratic nation that is now ruled by an autocrat, and by the corrupt ruling party that he has usurped to serve as his shill in a mere pantomime of representative government.

 

THE PUTIN APPEASEMENT PLAN

The 28-point Trump peace plan for Ukraine, as leaked to the public last Friday, would have been better named The Putin Appeasement Plan. The so-called peace plan, as leaked, might as well have been authored by the Kremlin (and perhaps was).

In fact, at the start of talks between US and Ukrainian officials this week in Geneva, Secretary of State Marco Rubio ended up having to deny that the Russian government had anything to do with drafting the plan.

Summed up briefly, the plan’s talking points—which were clearly unacceptable to Ukraine, and would be to any country that had been the victim of such massive foreign aggression, and that had fought as long, as bravely, and as hard as Ukraine has—included measures that would basically have tied the hands of both Kyiv and the leaders of Europe, while opening the way for further expansionist aggression by the Putin regime. Indeed, if it is true that the document—reportedly leaked to the press by an official of the Ukrainian government—was  formulated solely on the suggestions and demands of President Donald Trump and his Secretary of State (“Little”) Marco Rubio, then these two top-ranking US officials should, from here on out, be considered Russian agents.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky expressed satisfaction with advances made in the Geneva talks on November 23^rd and 24^th and the Trump administration and Ukrainian delegation released a joint statement expressing optimism when the preliminary talks ended.

According to that statement, “Both sides agreed the consultations were highly productive. The discussions showed meaningful progress toward aligning positions and identifying clear next steps. They reaffirmed that any future agreement must fully uphold Ukraine’s sovereignty and deliver a sustainable and just peace…
Ukraine and the United States agreed to continue intensive work on joint proposals in the coming days. They will also remain in close contact with their European partners as the process advances.
Final decisions under this framework will be made by the Presidents of Ukraine and the United States.”

President Volodymyr Zelensky

It was obvious to everyone, apparently, except Trump that the original 28-point plan wasn’t going to fly. At least not with Zelensky…or the EU…or, it would seem, either of the two main US political parties.

First, from what we know about the original document—the terms of which continue to be re-discussed, not only Ukrainian land illegally annexed and militarily usurped by Russia, but also parts of Ukraine’s territory that Russia has yet to be able to successfully wrest from the hands of its rightful owner would be summarily handed over to Putin.

Second, if some sort of peace deal were reached (by some miracle), Ukraine and the world would simply have to take Moscow’s word with regard to not only the future security of Ukraine, but also of the rest of Eastern Europe. Ukraine is a key piece in the European security puzzle, and, according to Trump’s plan (which was never consulted with the EU), neither Europe nor NATO would be able to post troops in Ukrainian territory as a guarantee against future Russian aggression.

Third, not only would Ukraine be forbidden from having European troops on its soil, but it would also be required to reduce the size of its armed forces, and of its cache and variety of weapons, with long-range arms capable of striking back against Russian aggression being specifically prohibited.  

Fourth, the resulting treaty would have ensured that Ukraine could never become part of NATO—a stipulation that flies in the face of the best interests of both Ukraine and the rest of Europe.  

Fifth, Ukraine would have received no US military aid, meaning that its only supply of additional war materiel would have to come exclusively from Europe.

Trump had originally given Ukraine an ultimatum to accept the US deal by Thanksgiving (that’s this coming Thursday). Trump told White House reporters that President Zelensky could either accept the US deal, or continue to “fight his little heart out”.

Following the leaking of the so-called plan, the Trump administration came under withering attack from Democratic and Republican lawmakers alike.

Former Senate Majority Leader and senior Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said:  “Putin has spent the entire year trying to play President Trump for a fool. If administration officials are more concerned with appeasing Putin than securing real peace, then the President ought to find new advisers.” He went on to say that, “Rewarding Russian butchery would be disastrous to America’s interests…And a capitulation like Biden’s abandonment of Afghanistan would be catastrophic to a legacy of peace through strength.”

The chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Senator Roger Wicker (R-MS), warned that, “This so-called ‘peace plan’ has real problems, and I am highly skeptical it will achieve peace. Ukraine should not be forced to give up its lands to one of the world’s most flagrant war criminals…Vladimir Putin.” Wicker added that, “Any assurances provided to Putin “should not reward his malign behavior…in particular, any suggestion that we can pursue arms control with a serial liar and killer like Putin should be treated with great skepticism.”

Republican Representative Don Bacon of Nebraska accused the Trump administration of trying to force Ukrainian capitulation. Specifically, he said, “They’re pushing a surrender plan on Ukraine…It looks like Russia wrote it.” He opined that, “In the war between Ukraine and Russia, the first to surrender was America…This will be President Trump’s legacy if he forces this surrender plan on Ukraine.”

Reiterating Bacon’s sentiment, Senator Mike Rounds (R-SD) said, “They want to utilize it (the 28-point plan) as a starting point…It looked more like it was written in Russian to begin with.”

On the other side of the aisle, ranking Senate Foreign Relations Committee member, Senator Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), said, “This is a Russian proposal … There is so much in that plan that is totally unacceptable.” She went on to say that, instead of acquiescing, the US should “put pressure on Putin, provide long-range weapons, impose secondary sanctions…and force Putin to the table for real negotiations…We should not be representing Russia’s interests in this agreement.”

So one-sided "Little" Marco had to publcly
deny it was penned by the Kremlin.

Maine Independent Senator Angus King succinctly said that, “It rewards aggression. This is pure and simple. There’s no ethical, legal, moral, political justification for Russia claiming eastern Ukraine.” King added that, in talking to Secretary Rubio, he had concluded that this was “not the administration’s plan,” but more like a “wish list of the Russians.” 

These opinions were echoed by the  Royal Institute of International Affairs, a London-based think-tank better known as Chatham House, whose  stated mission is "to help governments and societies build a sustainably secure, prosperous, and just world." Criticizing the Trump plan, Chatham House foreign relations experts posited that it read “more like a demand for capitulation than a peace deal.” They highlight that many of Russia’s long-standing war aims were fully baked into the proposal, including territorial concessions, limits on Ukraine’s military, and constraining its sovereignty by, among other things, dictating when elections would happen there.

Chatham House also warned that Trump’s plan would weaken Ukraine’s long-term deterrent capabilities by restricting its military and future NATO prospects. The think-tank’s experts pointed out that, bottom line, without strong, legally binding security guarantees (comparable to NATO’s Article 5), Ukraine’s future protection remains uncertain.

Virginia Democrat, Senator Mark Warner, made the point, on Fox News (of all places), that the draft plan was “total capitulation (and) a historically bad deal, rivaling Neville Chamberlain giving in to Hitler before World War II.” He argued that many of its terms—territorial concessions, military reductions, barring Ukraine from NATO—“are likely to make Xi Jinping happy, just like they make Vladimir Putin happy.”

His reference to the appeasement of Hitler at the start of World War II was spot on, but not original. From early on in Trump’s presidential career, observers have repeatedly mentioned Trump’s almost slavish appeasement of Putin, comparing it to Chamberlain’s appeasement of Hitler. Among other places, the danger of appeasing the Russian dictator was made clear here, in A Yankee At Large,  back in early 2022.  https://yankeeatlarge.blogspot.com/2022/03/appeasement-history-repeats-itself-in.html

That danger remains, despite reported advances in the Geneva talks, particularly because Trump has repeatedly proven himself  not to be a trustworthy negotiator—when the chess game doesn’t go his way, he simply kicks over the chess board, and can never be counted on to keep his word. The comparison with Chamberlain’s appeasement of Hitler with the terms of Trump’s original “peace plan” was stunning, since there are major parallels between the two men’s actions.  

In the late 1930s, rather than confronting Hitler militarily, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain made concessions to the German strongman, most famously in the Munich Agreement (1938). This pact between Britain and Germany allowed Hitler to annex the Sudetenland (a region of what was then Czechoslovakia) in exchange for a promise of what was called "peace in our time" (basically a vow from Hitler that he could annex Czech territory if he would go no further).

Chamberlain’s motivation was that his country had been deeply scarred by World War I, giving rise to strong pacifist sentiment, fear of another devastating war, and a hope that reasonable negotiation could avert conflict. But the British PM was completely misjudging Hitler—much as Trump has Putin since 2016.  There was simply no way that Hitler’s territorial ambitions could be quelled by limited concessions, or that he would not risk a broader war if given some of what he wanted. Many international affairs analysts also believe this to be true of Putin, who, they indicate, is bent on returning Russia to the power it wielded under Stalin and the Soviet Union, or to even before that, when it was still the czarist Russian Empire.

By giving in to Hitler’s demands, Britain (and France) signaled to him that aggressive expansion would be rewarded. This emboldened Hitler to push further. This policy weakened the deterrent effect of collective security. Rather than a unified front standing up to German expansion, appeasement led to fragmentation and uncertainty.

In the end, Chamberlain’s gamble failed. With each concession, Hitler gained new strength, and the following year, Germany invaded Poland, leading directly to WWII.

To understand the comparison, you need only look at what Trump’s 28-point plan included: namely, a freeze on the front lines roughly where they are now, meaning Russia would forestall further military advances but retain control over significant occupied territory; reduction of the size of Ukraine’s military; the relinquishing of Ukraine’s NATO aspirations; the lifting or easing of sanctions currently enforced against Russia, and only the weakest of security guarantees for Ukraine against renewed Russian aggression.

Zelensky needs full EU support

Critics argue that the spirit and original letter of Trump’s proposal rewards Russia for its war of aggression on Ukraine, and punishes (rather than standing up for) Ukraine for so nobly and fearlessly defending itself against a superior military aggressor.

After seeing the terms of a truly terrible plan, any improvement negotiated will tend to look better. But that doesn’t guarantee that a clearly Russian-prone US administration will eventually agree to throw out the 28-point plan entirely and forge a deal that will be frankly advantageous to both Ukraine and Europe as a whole, which are clearly the aggrieved parties in Putin’s unprovoked aggression and expansionism.  According to the US Council of Foreign Relations,  “This plan comes at the worst time for Ukraine and its partners,” adding that, “at minimum, Russia will try to put the blame on Ukraine for preventing peace in the eyes of Trump.” The CFR points out that, “Territorial concessions…the international recognition of this territory as Russian …would surrender Ukraine’s most formidable defenses.”  The CFR adds that, “The entire agreement is structured to work via incentives and carrots with Moscow, instead of sticks and punishment.”  

This US-based Atlantic Council suggests that Trump’s influence on any final peace deal should be tempered by congressional discretion. The non-partisan suggests that, if a deal is made, it should go through formal US legal and institutional processes (e.g., Senate ratification) to demonstrate seriousness and to create a durable commitment.

The European Council on Foreign Affairs is specific and adamant about the shape any peace deal with Russia should take. The ECFA makes it clear that  “Borders cannot be changed by force? … All gone in the 28 points … which seem to stem from a different assertion: the strong do what they want and the weak suffer what they must.” The foreign relations group believes that forcing Ukraine to accept the loss of territories to Russian aggression “would create a material threat to Ukraine’s independent existence.” According to the ECFA,  “It would strip Kyiv of its defensive ‘fortress belt’ in the Donbas…and send a powerful signal of impunity” to Russia.

The ECFA concludes that a weak deal like the one proposed by the US, “would, of course, be immoral…But more than that, it would also be a mistake. It would embolden (Russia), teaching Moscow all the wrong lessons. The council adds that such a deal “would trade a bad war now for a worse one within a few years.”

To date, Trump has stubbornly and egotistically sought to keep America’s European NATO partners entirely marginalized from the Ukraine peace negotiations. It is easy to speculate that he has done this because the EU, from the start, would have resisted Trump’s consistent tendency to act as an agent for Putin in the framing of any peace plan.

But the outrageously one-sided 28-point draft plan has so weakened the administration’s credibility both at home and abroad that the EU has been emboldened to insist on a more active role in the negotiations. Clearly, Europe must have a major role in setting the stage for ending the war, and Europeans should be actively providing Zelensky with their backing in insisting that Putin not be rewarded for international aggression and for waging an illegal and illegitimate war.  

Because, in the end, how this war ends isn’t a question of Ukraine’s security going forward, but of the future security of both Eastern and Western Europe. And that is far too important an issue to be left solely in the hands of a man as erratic, self-interested, arrogant and willfully ignorant as Donald Trump.