[Vision2020] His View: Trump does Putin’s work for him

[Tom Hansen]

Donald Trump, who lied to get out of the draft during the war in Vietnam, a war that cost 58,272 Americans their lives.

Courtesy of today’s Moscow-Pullman Daily News with special thanks to the Palouse Pundit, Nick Gier.

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His View: Trump does Putin’s work for him

Today I would like to respond to the absurd notion that Donald Trump would have stopped Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

Laura Trump has declared that her father-in-law “exudes power,” and that no one, even Russia’s president, would mess with him. Trump uses his power like any mob boss, and he gets his way by creating fear and lawlessness.

However, when he is around other bullies, Trump crumbles in their presence. He becomes small and impotent. British journalist Nate White says that “he suddenly transforms into a sniveling sidekick instead.”

Giving him far too much international credibility, Trump, after some threatening bluster about “Rocket Man,” wrote “love letters” to North Korean dictator Kim Jung Un. As he himself groveled before Kim, Trump admired the way Kim’s associates cowered, and he said that “I want my people to act like that.”

At the 2018 Helsinki Summit, Trump blindly accepted Vladimir Putin’s assurance, against his own intelligence reports, that Russia had not interfered in the 2020 election. Will Imboden of Foreign Policy has called Trump’s submission to Putin a “betrayal in front of our most dedicated adversary,” and “one of the most appalling moments in the annals of presidential history.”

On his way to Helsinki, Trump falsely accused NATO member states of owing the U.S. money, and he called the European Union a “foe” of the United States. NATO members pay their dues promptly every year, and, in 2014, former President Obama got them all to agree to spend two percent of their GDP on defense by 2024.

In his recently released book, John Bolton, Trump’s third (count them!) national security adviser, writes that in private Trump didn’t want to punish his friend Putin, but he was forced to support sanctions in public.

Bolton also says that “it’s hard for me to describe how little he knows,” and “his reasoning for things is so whimsical and useless.” One of many examples of Trump’s geographical ignorance is his belief that fiercely independent Finland is part of Russia.

Because of his “lack of knowledge and backbone in conversations with Putin,” Bolton claims that Trump embraced Putin’s views on Ukraine. Paul Manafort, Trump’s first campaign manager, was a lobbyist for Ukraine’s former pro-Russian dictator, and that was another source for Trump’s disdain for Ukrainian democracy.

Bolton concludes: “Putin saw Trump doing a lot of his work for him, and he thought, in a second term, Trump would make good on his desire to get out of NATO.” Just before he left office, Trump initiated that move by withdrawing 12,000 troops from Germany.

Recently, on a right-wing talk show, Trump praised Putin’s invasion as an act of “genius.” He continued: “Oh, that’s wonderful. Putin is now saying that a large section of Ukraine is independent. How smart is that? And he’s going to be a peacekeeper.” His later reversal was disingenuous and vintage Trump.

Dramatically underestimating Putin’s determination to destroy Ukraine, the U.S. and the Europeans should have sent more weapons earlier. However, Trump’s suspension of military aid in 2019 blind-sided Ukrainian officials, who declared: “At the end of the day, the only ones who will be happy about that are the people sitting in the Kremlin.”

How could the Ukrainians ever trust Trump again? Their president Volodomyr Zelensky’s chief of staff says that “Biden has done more for Ukraine than any other president.” Biden has reunited NATO and has imposed the toughest sanctions in history.

Trump is now saying that he would have stopped, presumably with, as he exclaimed in a recent boast, his magnetic personality, Russia’s annexation of Ukrainian Crimea in 2014. At that time, Trump defended the invasion because he learned that there were many Russian speakers in that area, and that Russia needed to build a submarine base there.

Bolton was right that Trump is ignorant and obtuse: Most Ukrainians speak Russian and that naval base would of course be a threat to U.S. national security.

The New York Times’ Maureen Dowd sums it up well: “Tiny, tiny Trump and cruel fool Putin. The corrupt, paranoid germaphobes love surrounding themselves with sycophants, conjuring delusional worlds and giving unhinged rants.”

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Seeya 'round town, Moscow, because . . .

"Moscow Cares" (the most fun you can have with your pants on)
http://www.MoscowCares.net

Tom Hansen
Moscow, Idaho

“A stranger is just a friend you haven’t met.”
- Roy E. Stolworthy
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