"I would encourage Russia to do whatever the hell they want"

 

Trump says he would encourage Russia to attack NATO allies: I said I would not protect our NATO allies. In fact, I would encourage Russia to do whatever the hell they want pic.twitter.com/ak1a3Mtwzq

— Biden-Harris HQ (@BidenHQ) February 10, 2024

This is not a gaffe and it's not evidence of senility--this is a serious statement from the former president and leading GOP candidate for that office.  Trump would let Russia attack a NATO nation, like Poland or Germany or whatever. He does not think European nations have paid into some kind of mafia-like "protection" (extortion) plan. This is a thing he said on purpose and out loud where the people would hear. It's not new. 

This is not some casual misstatement, but what he actually thinks, because he said similar things before. He would love to pull the US out of NATO. He doesn't understand what allies are or why any country holding so many cards would want allies.  He can't understand why Russia's totalitarianism under Putin is bad because he can't imagine being a human rights-respecting person, or queer, or anyone who might have a reason to not stand with the majority government that wants to outlaw you and the skin you live in. For any degree of nonconformity at all. 

Trump undoubtedly says absurd and wrong things. But this was intentional. And what does that say about whoever supports him? 

Did Russia Pay a "Meaningful Fee?"

 

Russian Telegram channels reported that the interview with Carlson and Carlson himself was not to Putin's liking, and the interview itself was considered a failure:

"The Kovalchuk clan sharply criticizes the idea of an interview with the American journalist Carlson. They say… https://t.co/sCql6QuhkW pic.twitter.com/iyPZDTP2JW

— Anton Gerashchenko (@Gerashchenko_en) February 9, 2024

Well, I'm just throwing this bit from twitter here without knowing anything more about it--would I believe Tucker Carlson accepted a fee for a friendly interview? Let me think about that; it would be very unethical, so I'm going to go ahead and say yes, I do believe Tucker Carlson would do that. I also think he would do it for free, but getting paid if you can is so much nicer, isn't it? 

It also appears that Putin wanted to just give one of his history lectures, about which he is weird and wrong. The idea that Poland was basically asking to be invaded by Germany (and I guess USSR was just standing innocently by like choirboys) is the kind of peculiar revisionism that goes so well with authoritarian states.  There's an analogy there for Ukraine, I guess (about which Putin has his own badly contorted self-justifications) but I just think, if I were Poland, I would like Putin not to be mentioning Poland so much.

I'm not sure who exactly is fooled enough to think Putin is stopping at part of Ukraine. I mean, people might vocally express their "doubts"--I just find it hard to think they are "fooled." 

A US President Speaks From Poland

 

"One year ago, the world was bracing for the fall of Kyiv... Kyiv stands strong, Kyiv stands proud, it stands tall, and most importantly it stands free"

US President Joe Biden makes a speech from Poland following his visit to Ukrainehttps://t.co/p8IyttSPuL pic.twitter.com/ENI188uyBS

— BBC News (World) (@BBCWorld) February 21, 2023

Just as with President Biden's speech yesterday in Kyiv, he again spoke meaningfully to the world on behalf of the fight for democracy and liberty against the oppression and malignance of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the inhumanity of their tactics, and the unity of the western world against Putin's imperialism. 

This is well-understood in Poland, who know that the words of Putin's pet attack-Chechen, Kadyrov, is telegraphing a possible future front in a sick man's bucket-list war. It is understood in Moldova that the threat of Russia is real--and part of their attack is very indirect. Putin, as in his boring and long and wrong speech earlier today, can pretend to misunderstand history, but the people he threatens know well what he is and why NATO has expanded while he has been in charge of Russia. 

A Trump Abroad

I'm not by nature a pessimistic person, which regularly shocks me--my generation is known for cynicism and snark and sarcasm. But I sometimes am hopeful about things, like maybe that the White House plans hotel bookings for the President when he does important stuff abroad so he doesn't have to schlep a room in an embassy like he was Julian Assange or something. (He's staying in Hamburg's Senate house--it's nice, and I am just being mean.) Sigh. I wish I felt better about his being out and around people, is all.

Maybe he would just give a great speech in front of a sympathetic bussed-in crowd. Maybe it wouldn't be a weird white nationalist rant about Western Civilization. Maybe he wouldn't get some historical thing, like the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, really wrong. Maybe he wouldn't mention his election results. 

I also was hopeful that the US President who took an oath to the Constitution would not actually deride freedom of speech and the press which is a big thing, really. (That hope got dashed.) And if I was looking for some kind of acknowledgement that Trump understood that Russia meddled in the 2016 elections and probably was going to try it again, well, again, disappointment.  Trump basically agreed Russia could have been involved but so could anyone and anyway nothing is proven, blah blah blah. Which is itself fake news. There is a lot of consensus that meddling came from Russia to benefit Trump.  And that they will try it again. Right now, they seem to be trying out our nuclear plants. 

I would like to think that a person who put "America first" would be mad about this kind of invasive attack by any foreign government on our infrastructure--whether our electoral infrastructure upon which our faith in government might depend, or on our electric grid. That someone who was speaking for the US interest in, well, anything, had a plan.

But this self-interested SOB can't even admit that Russia is a problem. He is going to go into his meeting with Putin with a handful of people--Tillerson, Lavrov, some translators. And I don't feel good about this based on his meeting with Lavrov and Kislyak.  But maybe we will see, despite efforts to keep this meeting very closed.