CRIMEA: LET’S LOOK AT THE FACTS

When Donald Trump came to office last January, it was with the promise that he would have the war in Ukraine over with in twenty-four hours. Like much of what Donald Trump says and promises, this statement too was empty, hyperbolic and always undoable.

Since then, however, he and what I call his non-negotiators—principally Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Vice-President JD Vance and Special Envoy Steve Witkoff—have sought to quickly end the conflict by scandalously siding with Russia’s Vladimir Putin and vilifying Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky. This approach ignores completely the fact that the Ukraine War is a war of aggression perpetrated by Russia’s totalitarian leader against a sovereign nation. It also disregards the direct challenge Russia’s aggression poses to NATO, and to the sovereignty of the nations of both Eastern and Western Europe.

The Trump administration’s stance further ignores the fact that Russia is a natural enemy of the US and of the West as a whole, engaged ever since World War II in an ideological and geopolitical struggle for worldwide influence and power that is opposed to the West’s own world leadership goals. There has only been one brief period of rapprochement following the fall of the Berlin Wall. But since the start in 1999 of the reign of Vladimir Putin, alternating between the offices of prime minister and president, the focus of the Kremlin has been on reviving Russian imperialism and on the reestablishment of a bipolar world.

Incredibly, considering this environment, the officials handling Trump’s virtual capitulation to Putin’s whims are now quoting a Russian talking point as the basis for their “negotiations”. Namely, that the war is not Russia’s fault at all, but Ukraine’s for seeking a place as a Western ally within the framework of NATO. Here, my friends, is where we should be seeing a huge flashing sign reading: What’s wrong with this picture?

What I mean by that, in case you’ve let yourself get confused about who Putin is and who the US is supposed to be, is that Ukraine’s wanting a closer relationship with the West is now, and should always have been, a good thing, not a fault. Ukraine is a key piece in the geopolitical puzzle, the very terrain which stands between Russia and renewed domination of Eastern Europe. In case you’re getting lost on the map, if Ukraine’s wanting to be in NATO sparked Russia’s war of aggression, letting Russia have Ukraine is the same as opening a gaping hole in Western defense against a repeat of Russian post-war imperialism, and of the czarist imperialism that preceded it.

In the manner of Herod making a reluctant gift to Salome of John the Baptist’s head, Trump administration officials conducting these non-negotiations are starting from a position of abject weakness by kneeling before Putin with Crimea on a platter. Their sorely uneducated notion is that Crimea has always pretty much been Russian anyway, and besides, Putin grabbed it a decade ago, so, hey, finders keepers.

But is that really the case? The answer is, no.

The fact is that prior to Russia’s original imperialist advances, Crimea was inhabited by various ethnic groups, but principally the Crimean Tatars. They were a Turkic people who established the Crimean Khanate in the fifteenth century. Indeed, the name Crimea is derived from the Turkish root word Qirim. Crimea was a vassal khanate of the Ottoman Empire from 1478 to 1774. The Ukrainian region was, then, part of the Ottoman Empire’s broader sphere of influence, not that of the Russian Empire.

It was only through conquest, not by legal or consensual means, that the Russian Empire annexed Crimea in 1783, following the Russo-Turkish War (1768–1774).  At the end of that war, the Ottoman Empire had granted Crimea independence through the Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca (1774). So the Russian annexation nine years later was the first instance of Russia’s simply grabbing sovereign Crimea for its own strategic purposes. It was that annexation that marked the start of a Russian presence on the peninsula, but contrary to Putin’s narrative, that presence wasn’t based on any inherent or historic Russian claim to Crimea.

Crimean Tatars

The Putin myth echoed by Trump officials that ethnic Russians have always formed the population of Crimea is also spurious.  While it is true that Cossacks traditionally formed part of the Crimean population, along with the native Turkic Crimean Tatars, and while it is also true that Cossacks took part in Russian military campaigns throughout history, the Cossacks cannot be counted as Russians. They were a diverse group of predominantly East Slavic people. A mix of peasants, escaped serfs, and some nobility, they emerged as a nomadic society in the fifteenth century, banding together for mutual protection. They were a quasi-military and semi-nomadic society that primarily inhabited the Ukrainian steppes, venturing as well into Southern Russia. While the Cossacks still exist, with various levels of organization and activity, their communities have been reconstituted and adapted to modern society. 

Highly independent and of autonomous spirit, while not strictly mercenaries, the armies of the Cossacks often fought for a variety of regional powers, including Russia, in exchange for self-governance and a free lifestyle. They played a significant role in the history of the region, including participation in conflicts with various states in resistance against foreign invaders. But they formed part of no other nation.

Cossacks - quasi-military, semi-nomadic people

Nor is the term "Cossack" Russian. It is derived from the Turkic word kazak, which, literally translated, means adventurer or free man. Furthermore, East Slavs, the ethnicity to which the Cossacks pertain, were once part of a federation of principalities known as Kyivan Rus', a medieval state that existed from the late ninth to the mid-thirteenth century. It emerged as a powerful confederation with the city-state of Kyiv (today the capital of Ukraine) as its capital, and its territory encompassed much of what are today Ukraine, Belarus, and parts of Russia. 

That said, the Cossacks weren’t indigenous to Crimea. Having taken  part in Russian military campaigns in the area, some of their number eventually settled on or near the Crimean Peninsula, but their presence does not give Russia a legitimate claim. Especially since some of the campaigns the Cossacks took part in where Russian efforts to subjugate and/or displace the native Crimean Tatars.

As for the Tatars, they were the dominant ethnic and political group in Crimea for centuries, and still formed the majority of the population until 1944, when Soviet strongman Joseph Stalin engineered their mass deportation. It was, then, through an act of what is today known as ethnic cleansing, rather than through any legitimate transfer of sovereignty, that the Crimean region’s demographic balance was tipped toward a predominantly ethnic Russian population.

Stalin's deportation of the Tatars

From a strictly legal standpoint, ten years after Stalin’s annexation of Crimea in 1944, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet (governing body of the USSR) transferred the peninsula back to Ukraine in 1954. Basically, the Supreme Soviet removed Crimea from the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR) and placed it once more under the original control of Ukraine (at the time, the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic). Ukraine’s claim to Crimea was never questioned after that, until Putin’s decade-long challenge to Ukrainian sovereignty—not by the Russian Federation after the fall of the USSR in 1991, nor by any international body.  

What is more, International law recognizes Crimea as part of Ukraine. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Ukraine inherited Crimea as part of its internationally recognized borders. Russia itself recognized these borders in multiple treaties, including the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, in which Russia agreed to respect Ukraine’s sovereignty in exchange for Ukraine giving up its nuclear arsenal.

Bearing all of this in mind, Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea and its armed invasion of other parts of Ukraine’s sovereign territory, using devastating military force, are violations of international law, and have sparked the largest major ground war in Europe since World War II—one involving a world-class nuclear power. Russia’s war of aggression on a sovereign country has drawn widespread condemnation in the international community. The United Nations has passed a resolution (R68/262) reaffirming Ukraine’s territorial integrity and declaring invalid a referendum held by Russia in Crimea to try and justify its annexation.

Crimean Tatar children in traditional dress

In short, Russia’s claim to Crimea and all other areas of Ukraine that it has usurped by military force since 2014 is historically, ethnically, legally and morally illegitimate, and the Trump administration’s attempts to justify Russia’s actions based on some “might makes right” theory that forms part of Trump’s authoritarian view of the world, fly in the face of international law, of respect for the sovereignty of free nations, and of America’s traditional role as the erstwhile leader of the Western world.

Worst of all, Donald Trump admires authoritarians. It’s a schoolyard philosophy, a bully’s attitude of joining other bullies in ganging up on the weaker kids in order not to have to stand up to the other bullies himself.  It’s a stance that not only makes the US Russia’s vassal, but which is also tantamount to appeasing a dangerous, megalomaniacal imperialist.

It is easy enough to understand if we stop pretending this is business as usual and start realizing that Trump identifies with Putin because Trump has megalomaniacal expansionist delusions of his own when it comes to our neighbors. There is all too obviously no difference between Trump’s feverish, openly-stated ambition of taking over Canada and making it a state, and Putin’s realized dream of invading Russia’s sovereign neighbors and making them part of his empire.

Appeasing bullies has never worked. There is no better example to quote than that of another megalomaniacal expansionist who invaded his neighbors prior to World War II. The US and Europe alike appeased Germany’s Adolf Hitler when he took over Austria. They turned a blind eye as well when he went on to invade Czechoslovakia, apparently hoping if they let him violate the sovereignty of a couple of nations, he would somehow get it out of his system. It was a fatal mistake, one with the most catastrophic consequences the world has even known.

Western Europe needs to stop appeasing not only Vladimir Putin, but also Donald Trump, if the US itself continues to fail to rein in its rogue leader. European leaders must stop hoping against hope that Trump will have some sort of epiphany and suddenly begin exercising the kind of pro-Western leadership the US consistently produced before the Era of Trump. For as long as Trump is leading it, the US is no longer a reliable ally, and does not have the best interests of the free world in mind. If anyone is to save Europe from the new wave of Russian imperialism—which, make no mistake, will not end in Ukraine if Ukraine is abandoned to its fate—it will have to be Western Europe itself, and the time to step up, sideline Trump, and draw a line in Ukraine is now.  

HERE’S A THOUGHT…

A universal rule of thumb I learned covering South American dictatorships in the nineteen-seventies and eighties: If a single person’s human and civil rights can be suspended, everyone’s rights are at risk.

***

A lot of people seem to think cutting out due process and just trusting the president, the attorney general or the secretary of state to randomly decide innocence or guilt is a great shortcut to getting dangerous criminals off the street and/or out of the country. Instead, it’s an ad hoc shortcut to making the Bill of Rights obsolete and allowing the government to arbitrarily accuse anybody it wants of anything it wants and to be the sole judge, jury and executioner, with no legal recourse to its decisions. (Case in point: The president is now talking about arbitrarily, and unconstitutionally, snatching American citizens off the street and sending them to a foreign gulag, where American justice is powerless). It's likely they will eventually be known as America's "disappeared".This is absolutism, of the sort prevalent in places like Russia, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Cuba, North Korea, etc.

***

The arbitrary nature of the Department of Justice under the current administration is graphically on display when the attorney general obeys an order to try and find a way to jail and exile “homegrown terrorists” of Trump’s choosing, while justifying the president’s release from prison of fifteen hundred pro-Trump domestic terrorists convicted of attacking the Capitol in his name.

***

When you start dictating what both public and private universities can teach, suspending freedom of speech, punishing professors for exposing students to diverse ideas and teaching them to think for themselves, blackmailing authorities by threatening to withhold federal funds if they don’t align the syllabus with official government policy, you no longer have institutions of higher learning. You have “re-education centers” whose goal is to crush dissent, eliminate critical thinking, and create a uniform society in which everyone toes the official line.

***

There may well be some excellent reasons for private Ivy League schools with multi-billion-dollar endowments not to receive even more millions or billions in taxpayer money. But not agreeing to ideological and educational restrictions that a centralized federal government seeks to dictate isn’t one of them. Accepting political and intellectual strings-attached money from the government is tantamount to the prostitution of higher education, and yet another nail in the coffin of democracy.

***

If you're interested in how a leader might transition into dictatorial behavior based on historical examples, these tendencies nearly always involve undermining democratic institutions, centralizing power, restricting freedom of the press, limiting political opposition, and using the legal system to maintain control. So far, with Donald Trump, we’re batting a thousand.

***

When a president who has already once tried to overthrow the government and remain in power even after decisively losing an election manages to create a rubber-stamp majority in Congress, hires a politically compromised attorney general, talks about returning to power after the current term is over even though he won’t be eligible to serve again (in accordance with not one, but two constitutional provisions), violates due process misusing federal powers, defies the lower and appellate courts and considers the opinions of the Supreme Court optional, as well as flirting with the future possibility of imposing martial law, perhaps it’s time to stop asking ourselves if there’s a possibility that the US could become an authoritarian regime. News flash, folks: It already is.

 

 

 

AUTHORITARIANISM DEFINED

Film documentary cameraman Duane Empey posted this excerpt (see image) from a Washington Post report. I saw it during my regular morning social media perusal, and was struck by what a succinct description it is of the Trump-MAGA mindset. And I was even more struck by how evenly it matches my own experienced definition of authoritarianism.

Yes, in a nutshell, that's Trump, and that's authoritarianism. 

Basically, doing whatever you decide to do while having your morning bowel movement, then going with it until some other whim strikes your fancy, and just not giving a fuck if the whole world burns to the ground because of it.

Nobody's mentioning this anymore like they did during his first term, but it’s worth recalling that this is the same narcissistic, psychopathic felon who remains in possession of the nuclear codes. 

Think about it. 

BLATANT INDOCTRINATION

In his continuing rampage through American democracy, Donald Trump is now going after US cultural institutions. On Thursday he revealed his intention to force changes at the Smithsonian Institution through an executive order targeting funding for what he referred to as programs that promote “divisive narratives” and “anti-American ideology”.

Most people reading this probably have no idea how sweeping a move targeting the Smithsonian is. But a mere glance at what this institution controls brings the importance of the measure immediately to light.  The Smithsonian Institution is no less than the world’s largest museum, education and research complex. It consists of twenty-one museums and the National Zoo.

The bombastic title for the  executive order kicking off this latest far-right purge of liberal democratic  ideals  is “Restoring Truth and History to American History.” Vice President JD Vance has been tapped to head up the sweep.

This terminology is typically Orwellian—in other words, the exact opposite of what it claims to be. Trump’s in-house ideologues  posit that there has been a “concerted and widespread” effort over the past decade to rewrite American history by replacing “objective facts” with a “distorted narrative driven by ideology rather than truth,” adding that it presents America's “founding principles in a negative light.” Long-time observers of the president have come to realize that whatever Trump says he is against is precisely what he is for—hence the comparison with bizarro-world dystopian novels like Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four.

What has taken place, in fact, in the decades since the Civil Rights Era in the US, has been a gradual nationwide effort to remove ideology from the telling of America's story, and to honestly  own up to injustices that have plagued our history, despite the noble tenets of our liberal democratic Constitution. This has necessarily been a process of expurgating the influence of white supremacy from education, and of rightfully and honestly including the history of slavery and American minorities within the narrative of how the US has developed since its inception. In other words, the effort that the Trump administration is seeking to undermine is precisely the one that has sought a sincere, objective and self-aware telling of our history, instead of promoting the self-serving fairytale of American exceptionalism that the white supremacist  far-right has long sought to sell as truth.

So the entire purpose of this latest decree is, then, one hundred percent ideological, and is aimed precisely at indoctrination. Its purpose  is to bend the telling of American history to fit the far-right narrative that precludes critical thinking, voids objectivity, bans the discussion of minority rights and virtues, and assumes that any mind that cannot be bent to fit the far-right ideology is a subversive mind that requires ostracism and/or “re-education”.

Where is Congress and the Judiciary in all of this? And, in conclusion, if one man (as well as the ideologues working in the shadows behind him) is deciding how all Americans should think, which books can be read and which can't, how all universities must be run, what all American institutions should teach, what constitutes our cultural heritage, and what constitutes “proper ideology” over what is objectively debatable, then, how is this not already a dictatorship?

SERIAL CHAINSAW: 103K CUT DOWN AND COUNTING

Elon Musk, an unelected quasi-official and pseudo-department chief, who answers to no one but the president (if that), has now put 103,452 federal workers, many of them crucial—like VA doctors, nurses and administrators, as just one glaring example—out on the street, and is nowhere near done yet.

Let that sink in.

The most filthy-rich man on the planet is arbitrarily putting thousands of people a day—people with families, mortgages, rents, college loans, medical expenses and grocery bills—out on the street, and is answerable to nobody.

How is this legal? Where are the checks and balances? Where is democracy? 

And where the hell is Congress?

A VERITABLE ONE-MAN SHOW…PT BARNUM WOULD BE PROUD (REAGAN NOT SO MUCH)

 I don’t know if anybody has  noticed, but Donald “The Don” Trump is dilapidating eighty years of US leadership history in a matter of days.

I’ll get to the mobster-style ambush Vice President JD Vance laid with Trump for Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky in a minute, but first, let’s talk about the right-wing propagandist who got himself a coveted White House press pass and used it, in his role as a fake-news promoter, to ask perhaps the most inane yet incendiary question ever formulated at a summit meeting venue. I’m talking about the idiot (there’s just no other word if we’re giving him the benefit of the doubt, and if we aren’t, then it makes that question malicious, and him a provocateur—although, perhaps, the adjective “useful” before “idiot” would be appropriate here) who, in the midst of a major discussion between two heads of state, broke in to ask President Zelensky why he didn’t wear a suit.

Such a moronic, taunting, disrespectful and mal-intentioned query could only have come from the quarters in which it originated: the so-called Right Side Broadcasting Network, best known for adoring live-stream coverage of Trump’s rallies, town halls, and public events. With the new rise of Trump to the presidency, the network, which relies heavily on YouTube and Rumble for its audience, currently has nearly two million largely MAGA subscribers. In other words, the “reporter” was a MAGA-fake-news plant.

Trump with MAGA minion Brian Glenn

As for the name of the moron who asked the question, it was none other than Brian Glenn, there for a far-right propaganda outfit called Real America’s Voice. That might not mean much to a lot of my readers, many of whom tend to seek out fact-based news outlets for their information. But if you’re one of many Americans who, unfortunately,  subscribe to wild conspiracy theories and Trumpian prevarication, then Glenn may be something of a minor god in your world (where Trump is the big-dog god) since he is a champion conspiracy-theory disseminator.

Oh, did I mention that, among other achievements, Glenn is also the high-flying MAGA celebrity-climber who has scaled Mount Marjorie? That’s right, Brian and Marjorie (Taylor Greene, a.k.a. “Moscow Marjorie”) have been going steady for some time now. So he clearly has direct access to a fecund source of conspiracy gossip and MAGA dogma. 

Brian and Margie, going steady

The question could not have been more crucially timed if it had been planned in advance—or was it? It served as the lit fuse that touched off the fiery shouting match between the Vance-Trump tag-team and the Ukrainian president. It seemed specifically aimed at infuriating President Zelensky, when he was already being badgered by Vance, who seemed thoroughly amused at that sort of question’s being put to a foreign dignitary. It was the sort of question that, had it been asked of Trump by—oh, I don’t know, say, The Associated Press—would have gotten that news medium banished from the White House press core. (Oh wait! The AP was banned for less, simply for refusing to add the fictitious name, Gulf of America, to its stylebook).

Suffice it to say that Glenn’s network  was selected to fill a “secondary TV” role in the White House press pool—CNN has been relegated to that same category, which didn’t exist before last week. Indeed, the White House granted that press pass to Glenn, even as Trump continued to block reporters from The AP, one of America’s most major sources of objective news coverage, from attending. This policy began last week, with the White House handpicking the reporters it permits to attend  presidential meetings held in reduced settings, such as the Oval Office.

Glenn’s query could not have been more impertinent or captious: “Why don’t you wear a suit?” asked Glenn. “You’re at the highest level in this country’s office, and you refuse to wear a suit.” And then, insultingly, he doubled down, asking, “Just want to see if—do you own a suit? A lot of Americans have problems with you not respecting the office.”

President Zelensky, a wartime leader

President Zelensky sought to keep his cool, answering eloquently in his second language, “I will wear costume after this war will finish." The word for “suit” translates into Ukrainian as  kostyum. But whether intentional or not, the word “costume” in English couldn’t have been more accurate, since the only participant in that room not masquerading as a gentleman, when they were far from it, was the Ukrainian head of state. He was the only one who dressed honestly for the occasion, wearing the combat fatigues of a leader defending his nation and Europe against a war of aggression perpetrated against it by Russia, a dictatorial imperialist power. A power that, until six weeks ago, US leadership still recognized as what it is, one of America’s two most threatening rivals, and, currently the number one  most imminent threat to international peace and security.

As if to lighten the shocking and uncomfortable moment Glenn had created, President Zelensky then quipped, “Maybe something like yours, yes. Maybe something better, I don't know,” sparking laughter in the room. Then he added,  “Maybe something cheaper.”

The Ukrainian leader’s skill as a former comedian could have defused a tense moment. But that wasn’t the game plan. Vice President J.D. Vance—an Ohioan, I’m ashamed to say, like myself—wasn’t going to let this opportunity slip through his fingers. He seized on Glenn’s “disrespect” comment to say, “For four years, the United States of America, we had a president who stood up at press conferences and talked tough about Vladimir Putin, and then Putin invaded Ukraine and destroyed a significant chunk of the country. The path to peace and the path to prosperity is, maybe, engaging in diplomacy. We tried the pathway of Joe Biden, of thumping our chest and pretending that the president of the United States’ words mattered more than the president of the United States’ actions. What makes America a good country is America engaging in diplomacy. That’s what President Trump is doing.”

Zelensky countered, “OK. So he (Putin) occupied it, our parts, big parts of Ukraine, parts of east and Crimea. So he occupied it in 2014. So during a lot of years—I’m not speaking about just Biden, but those times was (Barack) Obama, then President Obama, then President Trump, then President Biden, now President Trump. And, God bless, now, President Trump will stop him. But during 2014, nobody stopped him. He just occupied and took. He killed people…

Trump, who apparently has the attention span of a gnat, and was evidently not listening, said, “Oh, 2014? I was not here.”

And Vance, ever quick to repeat anything Trump says, added, “That’s exactly right.”

Again Zelensky countered, saying, “Yes, but during 2014 ‘til 2022, the situation is the same, that people have been dying on the contact line. Nobody stopped him (Putin). You know that we had conversations with him, a lot of conversations, my bilateral conversation. And we signed with him, me, like, you, President, in 2019, I signed with him the deal. I signed with him, (French President Emmanuel) Macron and (former German Chancellor Angela) Merkel. We signed ceasefire… But after that, he broke the ceasefire, he killed our people, and he didn’t exchange prisoners. We signed the exchange of prisoners. But he didn’t do it. What kind of diplomacy, JD, you are speaking about? What do you mean?”

Seeing that Zelensky was getting the upper hand in reminding the press that Russia was the aggressor, Vance quickly doubled down, and acting as if he were the head of state and not Trump, lectured Zelensky, saying,  “I’m talking about the kind of diplomacy that’s going to end the destruction of your country. Mr. President, with respect, I think it’s disrespectful for you to come into the Oval Office to try to litigate this in front of the American media. Right now, you guys are going around and forcing conscripts to the front lines because you have manpower problems. You should be thanking the president for trying to bring an end to this conflict.”

Clearly, of course, litigating it in front of the American media had been exactly what Vance and Trump had been seeking to do. Usually, when there is a visiting head of state coming to negotiate a deal, the photo op will be short and nothing of consequence will be discussed publicly until negotiations have ended. But the Trump White House seems to have decided to use the presser simply as a means of humiliating President Zelensky, of showing him that the only ones that mattered in talks about Ukraine were the two major powers involved, the US and Russia, since Trump has also blithely ignored Europe completely as an intimately and strategically interested party. The clear purpose was to demonstrate to Zelensky (and to Trump’s base), in mob boss style,  that he didn’t matter. That Ukraine didn’t matter. That only Trump and Putin mattered.

Indeed, Trump would later tip his hand, saying as much when, after the blow-up, he crowed, “I think it’s good for the American people to see what’s going on. I think it’s very important. That’s why I kept this going so long.” Then, addressing Zelensky directly, “ You have to be thankful.”

Having tired of Vance’s impertinence, President Zelensky asked the VP, “Have you ever been to Ukraine that you say what problems we have?”

“I have been to –” Vance muttered, obviously caught off guard.

“Come once,” Zelensky suggested.

Then like a kid in grammar school who hadn’t done his homework, Vance said,  “I’ve actually watched and seen the stories, and I know that what happens is you bring people, you bring them on a propaganda tour, Mr. President. Do you disagree that you’ve had problems, bringing people into your military?”

“We have problems…”

“And do you think that is respectful, to come to the Oval Office of the United States of America and attack the administration that is trying to prevent the destruction of your country?”

“First of all,” said the Ukrainian president, “during the war, everybody has problems, even you. But you have nice ocean and don’t feel now. But you will feel it in the future. God bless –”

That’s when Trump blew up and talked to Zelensky in his best mobster style, telling him not to tell the US how it would feel. Talking down to him like the principal scolding a school kid,  saying “You don’t know that. You don’t know that… Because you’re in no position to dictate that.” He and Vance went on tag-teaming President Zelensky, and Trump’s lecture continued,  “You’re not in a good position. You don’t have the cards right now. With us, you start having cards.”

Zelensky, appropriately, said,  “I’m not playing cards. I’m very serious, Mr. President. I’m very serious.”

“You’re playing cards,” said Trump. “You’re gambling with the lives of millions of people. You’re gambling with World War III.”

Vance returned to his sophomoric “magic words” argument, again asking, “Have you said thank you once?”

To which President Zelensky answered, “A lot of times. Even today.” Anyone who has ever listened to anything the Ukrainian president has ever said about US aid knew this was true. Perhaps no other recipient of American aid in history has been more expressive about his appreciation than President Zelensky.

But Vance doubled down: “No, in this entire meeting…” And then in a complete non sequitur, he added, “You went to Pennsylvania and campaigned for the opposition in October.”

To which President Zelensky said, “No.”

Vance continued to badger him, “Offer some words of appreciation for the United States of America and the president who’s trying to save your country.”

Overwhelmed by such a lack of manners and propriety, President Zelensky said,  “Please. You think that if you will speak very loudly about the war, you can…”

And was immediately interrupted by Trump, who blustered,  “He’s not speaking loudly. He’s not speaking loudly. Your country is in big trouble.”

 “Can I answer —” President Zelensky tried, to which Trump barked,  “No, no. You’ve done a lot of talking. Your country is in big trouble.”

It was an utterly vile display of disrespect and bullying, and it is difficult to believe that it wasn’t planned that way, since Trump ended the contentious meeting by saying, “This is going to be great television. I will say that.” And coming from a former reality show star, who does everything necessary to stay at the top of the daily news schedule, that says a lot.

Make Russia Great Again

But the tone is nothing new. Such displays of disrespect have come to typify how the Trump regime treats America’s natural allies. Meanwhile, his most fawning, laudatory, and embarrassingly acquiescent behavior has been reserved for America’s natural enemies, and for predators bent on preying on democratic nations.

Putin’s spokesman, Dimitry Peskov said it all. Obviously pleased beyond all expectations with  the blow-up and with the ignominious expulsion of President Zelensky from the White House, Peskov said,  “The new (US) administration is rapidly changing all foreign policy configurations.  This largely aligns with our vision.”

He could not have stated it more accurately. Under Donald Trump, in just six weeks, the US has all but abandoned its Western allies and democracy, and embraced authoritarianism and the world’s most repressive and dangerous regime. He has, in a word, surrendered the US to our principal enemy, and turned his back on our friends.

 

RESIST!