A quote from a recent Kevin Drum post that rings true to me. I think it really is this simple:
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Well, not quite, but it was settled a couple months ago. All over the media are acting shocked that the US just turned its back on Ukraine, but in truth it did that in November.
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Fuckface/Dunce were treating this “resources” agreement as a proxy for Zelenskyy agreeing to the US negotiating peace on their behalf. Total bait and switch.
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Right, I guess it would have been more accurate to say that he got on Trump’s permanent enemies list five years ago and this was the inevitable kind of vengeful action Trump would take towards Ukraine if ever given an opportunity.
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They are not worthy to clean that man’s toilet. Sometimes you get dog shit on your shoe, and you scrape it off and move on; I hope Zelensky scrapes them off his shoes and moves on.
I don’t think I can stomach watching it. I feel horrible for Zelensky that he had to go through that, and likely won’t get anything out of it anyway. Lucy, the football and Charlie Brown.
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Zelenskyy for President of the World!
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I sure wouldn’t be surprised at this. The whole “minerals deal” was such a colossally stupid idea and I don’t see how it could have ever been structured. Zelenskyy is clearly too smart to get goaded into the kind of shouting match Trump and Vance were going for. I have no doubt that Zelenskyy has been through more shit these past few years than Trump and Vance combined to be intimidated by those man babies.
None of this is surprising, though. Trump has clearly never liked or respected Zelenskyy. Their very first phone call, I’m sure Trump figured he’d be just another 3rd world kis ass that he could shake down. Unfortunately for him, Zelenskyy said no, and Trump then got impeached for it. Trump just can’t not fuck up around this guy because he doesn’t know how to deal with people who have integrity.
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In November of 1940 Molotov met face-to-face with Hitler. They had a very blunt, tense meeting. But even Hitler knew enough not to hold the arguments in front of the world’s media!
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Speaking of contractual negotiations and making deals…
I’ve sometimes heard it said that working out a deal is a bit like flirting and seduction. Not a bad analogy as such, as far as analogies go anyway.
Thing is, Trump’s version of this is best described as date rape. Always has been.
And Ukraine already did a deal. In 1994. It’s known as the Budapest Memorandum, and it [quoting from my source] prohibited Russia, the United States, the United Kingdom and France from threatening or using military force or economic coercion against Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan, except in self-defence or otherwise in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations.
As a result of other agreements and the memorandum, between 1993 and 1996, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine gave up their nuclear weapons.
Russia violated this agreement in 2014 by occupying the Krim peninsula, in 2022 by invading Ukraine proper, and now the Trump administration is arguably violating the “economic coercion” part with the proposed minerals deal.
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I object to the wording that downplay’s how much T**** is in Putin’s pocket. He takes orders from Putin. Dumping this deal is an example of exactly that. He tried to make a deal that Ukraine insisted would secure their borders. Instead, after Putin sent orders to trash the deal, T**** set up this shitshow. It’s not a dotted line. T**** reports directly to the Kremlin.
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Seems plausible, but can you cite a reliable source with evidence of that?
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Trump is at the point where agent and useful idiot are completely blurred together. He takes his whole viewpoint from the Kremlin, he quotes their lies quicker than his own, and it’s very clear this deal was only ever meant to be on Putin’s terms that had already been rejected. So maybe he had direct orders to scuttle things, or maybe he genuinely thought he was a great deal maker who could change that rejection by shouting. I am not sure how one would tell or what difference it would make…that he is doing work for Russia is obvious either way.
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You can donate directly to the Ukrainian government’s war/rebuilding efforts here: https://u24.gov.ua/ If you’re a social media user, you can share that link, too.
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Based on what T**** let slip, that he talked with Putin between the time the deal was agreed upon and the meeting with Zelenskyy. The White House had not announced the communication between T**** and Putin, which they would have under standard protocol. That, and he’s clearly doing Putin’s bidding by his actions.
Like @chenille points out, there’s no functional difference between a willing agent and convenient idiot, but given how incompetent T**** is in everything else, his success at being Putin’s lapdog is unlikely to be accidental. I think he has to be following orders.
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Okay, yeah. I just ask because hardcore evodence seems potentially, if only slightly, actionable, IF there’s anyone left in a position of power to take action against a known, proven Russian agent squating in the White House.
/grasping at a perhaps nonexistent straw
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I really doubt there’s any kind of formal contract. Putin tells him what he should do and he does it. Because he loves fascists and bullies and white supremacists and mafia dons who will throw some pennies toward his crooked schemes, and Putin is all those things. And he happens to despise democratic leaders and war heroes and Jews and people who don’t know their place and won’t sell out to him, and Zelenskyy is all those things. I think the only orders he needs is someone explaining to him what senpai would like…after that he probably thinks it’s his own idea.
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