Republicans like Senator Susan Collins are enabling Donald Trump's war crimes. GOP must stop Donald Trump's insane tranny

Echo Editorial Opinion published by The New York Times:

Four Ways Trump’s War Is Weakening America

When Donald Trump attacked Iran on February 28, 2026, we called his decision reckless. 

Donald Trump is inept, corrupt a dunce in KKK attire

Trump went to war without seeking congressional approval or the support of most allies. He offered thin and contradictory justifications to the American people. He failed to explain why this naïve attempt at regime change would end better than earlier attempts by the United States in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere.

In the six weeks since, the recklessness of his war has become clearer yet. He has disdained careful military planning and acted on gut instinct and strange wishfulness. 

After Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel predicted to  Trump that the attacks would inspire a popular uprising in Iran, the director of the C.I.A. countered that the notion was “farcical,” The Times reported. But, Trump proceeded nonetheless. 

Without consideration for the consequences, Trump was so confident that he assembled no plan to respond to an obvious countermove available to Iran: causing a spike in oil prices by blocking the Strait of Hormuz. Nor did he develop a feasible strategy for securing the enriched uranium that Iran can use to rebuild its nuclear program.

Last week, Trump careened from illegal and immoral threats about erasing Iranian civilization to a last-minute cease-fire that accomplishes few of his announced war aims. Iran continues to defy a central part of the deal and block most traffic from crossing the Strait of Hormuz. Trump’s irresponsibility has left the United States on the cusp of a humiliating strategic defeat.

As we have emphasized, Iran’s regime deserves no sympathy. It has spent decades oppressing its people and sponsoring terrorism elsewhere. And the current war, combined with the June attacks by the United States and Israel and other Israeli operations since 2023, weakened Iran in important ways. Its navy, air force and air defenses have been degraded, and its nuclear program has been set back. Its murderous network of regional allies — including Hamas, Hezbollah and Syria’s fallen government — has been eroded.

Yet, these successes cannot mask the ways in which the war has weakened the United States. 

We count four main setbacks for America’s national interests that are the direct result of Trump’s carelessness. These setbacks likewise weaken global democracy when authoritarians in China, Russia and elsewhere were already feeling emboldened.

The most tangible blow to the United States and the world is the increased influence that Iran secured over the global economy by weaponizing the Strait of Hormuz. About 20 percent of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas flows through the strait, which is next to Iran’s southern shore.

Before the war, Iran’s leaders feared that blocking traffic would invite new economic sanctions and a military attack. Once the attack happened anyway, Iran closed the strait to nearly all traffic except its own ships. The policy is inexpensive because it mostly involves a threat, namely that a drone, missile or small boat may blow up a tanker. Forcibly reopening the strait, by contrast, would require an enormous military operation potentially including ground troops and an extended occupation.

Trump’s lack of foresight about the strait reveals glaring incompetence. The two-week cease-fire does not bring back the status quo because Iran is still limiting traffic and has threatened to impose tolls as part of a final peace deal. The war has shown Iran’s leaders that controlling the waterway is a real possibility. Eventually, other countries are likely to develop alternatives, including pipelines, but those solutions will take time. For now, Iran appears to have won diplomatic leverage that it could have only dreamed of six weeks ago. The only apparent way to change the situation would be for a global coalition to demand the strait’s reopening — the sort of coalition that Trump is distinctly unsuited to lead.

The second setback is to America’s military standing around the world. This war, together with recent U.S. assistance to Ukraine, Israel and other allies, has burned through a substantial portion of the stockpile of some weapons, such as Tomahawk missiles and Patriot interceptors (which can shoot down other missiles). Experts believe the Pentagon used more than one-quarter of its Tomahawk missiles just in the war against Iran. Returning the stockpile to its previous size will take years, and the United States will have to make tough choices about where to maintain its military strength in the meantime. Already, the Pentagon has pulled missile defenses from South Korea.

The war also revealed that the U.S. military is vulnerable to new ways of warfare. 

For example, America used billions of dollars’ worth of high-tech munitions to destroy Iran’s traditional air and naval forces, while Tehran used cheap, disposable drones to halt traffic through the Strait of Hormuz and hit targets in the region. The world saw how a country that spends one-hundredth of what the United States does on its military can seek to outlast it in a conflict. It is a reminder of the urgent need to reform America’s military.

The war’s third big cost is to America’s alliances. Japan, South Korea, Australia, Canada and most of Western Europe refused to support the United States in this war — unsurprisingly, given Mr. Trump’s treatment of them. When he demanded their help in reopening the Strait of Hormuz, most allies declined. These countries will remain allies in important ways, but they have made clear that they no longer consider the United States a reliable friend. They are working to build stronger relationships with one another so that they can better resist Washington in the future. “Perhaps the greatest long-term damage to the United States from the Iran war will be in its relationships with allies around the world,” Daniel Byman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington wrote on Wednesday.

The situation in the Middle East is more nuanced. Iran’s decision to attack its Arab neighbors during the war may draw those countries closer to the United States. But that prospect is uncertain. Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf countries have been damaged economically by the war and feel abandoned by Mr. Trump’s cease-fire. The past six weeks have given them reason to question his judgment and his understanding of their interests.

The fourth setback is to America’s moral authority. For all the flaws of this country, it remains a beacon to many around the world. When pollsters ask people where they would move if they could, the United States is consistently the runaway No. 1 answer. America’s appeal stems not only from its prosperity but also from its freedom and democratic values. Mr. Trump has undercut those values for his entire political career and perhaps never more than in the past week, when he made odious threats to erase Iranian civilization. Trump's (whiskey) secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, made a series of bloodthirsty remarks, including a threat to offer “no quarter, no mercy for our enemies.”

Those would be war crimes. Trump and Hegseth have embraced a brutal approach to armed conflict that the United States led the world in rejecting after World War II. By doing so, they have undermined the foundations of America’s global leadership, which claims to place human dignity at the center of an argument for a freer and more open world.

Our New York Times editorial board has long opposed Mr. Trump’s approach to politics and governing. Yet we take no pleasure in his failures over the past six weeks. For one thing, there have been deaths, injuries and destruction, in Iran, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and elsewhere. At least 13 U.S. service members have died in the war.

It is also a mistake for any Americans, including Trump’s critics, to root for this country to fail. We all have a stake in the nation that he leads. So does the rest of the free world. There are no other democracies with the economic and military strength to counter China and Russia. When America is weaker and poorer, as this war has made us, authoritarianism benefits.

The best hope now may sound naïve, but it remains true. Trump(and Republicans like Senator Susan Collins) must at long last recognize the ineptitude of his impulsive, go-it-alone approach. 

Trump must involve Congress and seek help from America’s allies to minimize the damage from his failed Trump Iran World War.

Donald Trump and maga Republicans must be reminded about how January 6th 2020 was treason

Echo essay reported in The Atlantic by Jeffrey Goldberg

Donald Trump's Indecency: At 1:42 a.m. on December 19, 2020, Donald Trump—disturbed, humiliated, livid—posted the following message on Twitter: “Statistically impossible to have lost the 2020 Election. Big protest in D.C. on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!”

In California, David Nicholas Dempsey, a 33-year-old man-child with multiple felony convictions and a profound affection for the president, answered the call. On January 6, wearing a tactical vest and an American-flag gaiter, Dempsey came to the Capitol. Shortly before he assaulted several police officers, he shared his perspectives in an interview given while standing near a gallows. 

The gallows was erected as a reminder to Vice President Mike Pence to do, in Trump’s words, “the right thing.”

Them worthless fucking shitholes like fucking Jerry Nadler, fucking Pelosi, Clapper, Comey, fucking all those pieces of garbage, you know, Obama, all these dudes, Clinton, fuck all these pieces of shit,” Dempsey said. “They don’t need a jail cell. They need to hang from these motherfuckers while everybody videotapes it and fucking spreads it on YouTube.”

Dempsey was not an organizer of the siege, but he was one of its most energetic participants. He assaulted Metropolitan Police Detective Phuson Nguyen with pepper spray. Nguyen was certain in that moment that he was “going to die,” he later testified. Dempsey assaulted another police officer with a metal crutch, cracking his protective shield and cutting his head. Dempsey, who was heard yelling “Fuck you, bitch-ass cops!,” assaulted other officers with broken pieces of furniture, crutches, and a flagpole. Prosecutors would later argue that “Dempsey’s violence reached such extremes that, at one point, he attacked a fellow rioter who was trying to disarm him.” 

All told, more than 140 police officers were injured in the riot, many seriously.

I attended the January 6 rally on the Ellipse, at which Trump told his supporters, “If you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.” Then I walked with the crowd to the Capitol. One woman, a QAnon adherent dressed in a cat costume, told me, “We’re going to stop the steal. If Pence isn’t going to stop it, we have to.”

What I remember very well about that day was my own failure of imagination. I did not, to my knowledge, see Dempsey—he had positioned himself at the vanguard of the assault, and I had stayed near the White House, to listen to Trump—but I did come across at least a dozen or more protesters dressed in similar tactical gear or wearing body armor, many of them carrying flex-cuffs. I particularly remember those plastic cuffs, but I understood them only as a performance of zealous commitment. 

Later we would learn that these men—some of whom were Proud Boys —believed that they would actually be arresting members of Congress in defense of the Constitution. I interviewed one of them. “It’s all in the Bible,” he said. “Everything is predicted. Donald Trump is in the Bible.” Grifters could not exist, of course, without a population primed to be grifted.

After the riot, Dempsey returned to California, where he was eventually arrested. In early 2024, he pleaded guilty to two felony counts of assaulting an officer with a dangerous weapon. He was sentenced to 20 years in prison.

Six months later, in the summer of 2024, Trump, who would come to describe the January 6 insurrection as a “day of love,” said that, if reelected, he would pardon rioters, but only “if they’re innocent.” Dempsey was not innocent, but on January 20, 2025, shortly after being inaugurated, Trump pardoned him and roughly 1,500 others charged with or convicted of offenses related to the Capitol insurrection. (Fourteen people, mainly senior figures in the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys🤢 movements, saw their sentences commuted but did not receive pardons.)

Of the 1,500 or so offenders who received pardons, roughly 600 had been charged with assaulting or obstructing police officers, and 170 had been accused of using deadly weapons in the siege. Among those pardoned were Peter Schwartz, who had received a 14-year sentence for throwing a chair at police officers and repeatedly attacking them with pepper spray; Daniel Joseph Rodriguez, who was sentenced to 12.5 years for conspiracy and assaulting an officer with a stun gun (he sent a text message to a friend, “Tazzzzed the fuck out of the blue”); and Andrew Taake, who received a six-year sentence for attacking officers with bear spray and a metal whip.

A day after the pardons were announced, Trump said in a press conference, “I am a friend of police, more than any president who’s been in office.” He went on to describe the rioters. “These were people that actually love our country, so we thought a pardon would be appropriate.”

Trump had something else to say during that first press conference of his new term: “I think we’re going to do things that people will be shocked at.” This would turn out to be true, but unfortunately, shock does not last. Here is the emblematic inner struggle of our age: to preserve the ability to be shocked. “Man grows used to everything, the scoundrel!” Dostoyevsky wrote. A blessing that is also a curse.

I understand that a review—even a short and partial review—of the past year might seem dismally repetitive (Oh no, no is not at all repetitive, it is first person reporting from the scene and must be told again). But repetition ensures that we remember, and perhaps even experience shock anew. 😢

So, in brief: Trump dismantled America’s foreign-aid infrastructure and gutted a program, built by an earlier Republican president, that saved the lives of Africans infected with HIV; he encouraged the United States military to commit war crimes; he has instituted radical cuts to U.S. science and medical funding and abetted a crusade against vaccines; he has appointed conspiracists, alcoholics, and idiots to key positions in his administration; he has destroyed the independence of the Justice Department; he has waged pitiless war on prosecutors, FBI agents, and others who previously investigated him, his family, and his friends; he has cast near-fatal doubt on America’s willingness to fulfill its treaty obligations to its democratic allies; he has applauded Vladimir Putin for his barbarism and castigated Ukraine for its unwillingness to commit suicide; he has led racist attacks on various groups of immigrants; he has employed unusually cruel tactics in pursuit of undocumented immigrants, most of whom have committed only one crime—illegally seeking refuge in a country that they believed represented the dream of a better life. Those are some of the actions Trump has taken. Here are a few of the things he has said since returning to office: He has referred to immigrants as “garbage”; he has called a female reporter “piggy” and other reporters “ugly,” “stupid,” “terrible,” and “nasty”; he has suggested that the murder of a Saudi journalist by his country’s government was justified; he has labeled a sitting governor “seriously retarded”; he has blamed the murder of Rob Reiner on the director’s anti-Trump politics; he has called the Democrats the party of “evil.”

Yet, even when weighed against this stunning record of degeneracy, the pardoning by Trump of his cop-beating foot soldiers represents the lowest moment of this presidency so far, because it was an act not only of naked despotism but also of outlandish hypocrisy. 

By pardoning these criminals, he exposed a foundational lie of MAGA ideology: that it stands with the police and as a guarantor of law and order. The truth is the opposite.

The power to pardon is a vestige of America’s pre-independence past. It is an unchecked monarchical power, an awesome power, and therefore it should be bestowed only on leaders blessed with self-restraint, civic-mindedness, and, most important, basic decency.

We have been watching indecency triumph in the public sphere on and off for more than 10 years now, since the moment Trump insulted John McCain’s war record. For reasons that are quite possibly too unbearable to contemplate, a large group of American voters was not repulsed by such slander—they were actually aroused by it—and our politics have not been the same. Much has been said, including by me, about Trump’s narcissism, his autocratic inclinations, his disconnection from reality, but not nearly enough has been said about his fundamental indecency, the characteristic that undergirds everything he says and does.

In an important essay, Andrew Sullivan noted this past fall that Trump’s indecency is comprehensive in style and substance. “It is one thing to be a realist in foreign policy, to accept the morally ambiguous in an immoral world; it is simply indecent to treat a country, Ukraine, invaded by another, Russia, as the actual aggressor and force it to accept a settlement on the invader’s terms,” Sullivan wrote. “It is one thing to find and arrest illegal immigrants; it is indecent to mock and ridicule them, and send them with no due process to a foreign gulag where torture is routine. It is one thing to enforce immigration laws; it is another to use masked, anonymous men to do it. It is one thing to cut foreign aid; it is simply indecent to do so abruptly and irrationally so that tens of thousands of children will needlessly die. We have slowly adjusted to this entirely new culture from the top, perhaps in the hope that it will somehow be sated soon—but then new indecencies happen.”

The subject of Trump’s indecency came up in a conversation I had with Barack Obama in 2017. I asked him to name the most norm-defying act of his successor to date. Somewhat to my surprise, Obama mentioned Trump’s speech at the Boy Scouts’ National Jamboree earlier that year. This appearance has been largely forgotten, but it was a festival of indecency. At one point, Trump told the scouts about a wealthy friend of his who, he suggested, did unmentionable things on his yacht.

President Barack Obama, a model of dignified presidential behavior (just like nearly all of his predecessors, Democratic and Republican), understood viscerally the importance of self-restraint and adherence to long-established norms. Which is why he was so troubled by Trump’s decadent performance. “You can stand in front of tens of thousands of teenage boys and encourage them to be good citizens and be helpful to their mothers,” Obama said, “or you can go Lord of the Flies. He went Lord of the Flies.”

We are in a long Lord of the Flies moment, led by a man who, to borrow from Psalm 10, possesses a mouth “full of cursing and deceit and fraud.” For many people—government scientists seeking cures for diseases; FBI agents investigating corruption and terrorism; military leaders trying to preserve respect for the rules of warfare; and, in particular, police officers who were brutalized by Trump’s army of deluded followers—these days can seem infernal. 

Trump’s term is one-quarter over; a piece of advice often attributed to Churchill has it best: When you’re going through hell, keep going❗

Donald Trump State of Delusion speech was long, boring and a litany of lies. Republicans behaving badly!

Obviously, "in order to form a more perfect union", was omitted from this daunting rant. Can anybody donate a copy to him or to somebody who can read it aloud to him❓

Donald Trump’s unworthy state of the union: An address not fit for America’s 250th birthday echo essay published in The Economist. 

At the beginning of his first term, Donald Trump used his address to a joint session of Congress to deliver “a message of unity and strength”, urging bipartisan action as he looked nine years ahead to America’s celebration of the 250th anniversary of its declaration of independence. “What will America look like as we reach our 250th year?” he wondered then.

As Trump marked the arrival of that anniversary in his state-of-the-union speech on February 24th, America does not look at all like the country that, on the occasion of his rookie outing nine years ago, he tried to conjure.

Trump began that address, in February 2017, by observing that it was Black History Month and declaring there was still work to be done on “our nation’s path toward civil rights”. 

He urged support from Congress for some initiatives that remain central to his politics, such as building a border wall, but also for others that have long since shriveled, such as “positive immigration reform”, along with “accessible and affordable” child care, new investment in women’s health and for “clean air and clean water”, and a “rebirth of hope” in “our neglected inner cities”. Trump told Congress then, “True love for our people requires us to find common ground.”

But, this week, as Trump heralded the American anniversary, he still touted grandiose visions—of a “golden age” and a “turnaround for the ages”, achieved in just his first year back in office—but they did not include any summons to an American common ground. 

Incredible, but he did not even mention unity. Instead he repeatedly called Democratic congressmen “sick” and “crazy” and said they were “destroying our country”. 

If they had power, he warned, they would open America’s borders to “some of the worst criminals anywhere in the world”, the likes of the “Somali pirates who ransacked Minnesota” by committing fraud. He said Democrats can win elections only by cheating. 🤥💢

What happened, in the past decade, to the president who once talked about unity❓ And to the country where that idea still seemed plausible, or at least desirable, in its politics? An impeachment, a pandemic, a racial reckoning over police violence, an insurrection to block the peaceful transfer of power and then another impeachment, plus assorted lawsuits and prosecutions probably all played roles. 

So did Trump’s growing confidence in the power of his polarizing politics. After all, he dutifully read that first speech to Congress off the teleprompter, and it lasted just an hour. This time, he set a numbing record for such speeches, at an hour and 48 minutes, and he was most engaged with his material when he departed from his script, though his “weave” became ever more frayed as the evening wore on. (“Space Force is my baby, because we did that,” he said, to entirely Republican applause, though he said nothing about what the force was up to.)

Consider the House chamber from the president’s vantage point. To his right sat Democratic representatives, who he believes, with reason, will support him in almost nothing he does. 

Directly in front of him sat four justices of the Supreme Court, which, though dominated by conservatives, had just signaled its commitment to its independent authority. By ruling unlawful his novel assertion of a presidential power to impose border taxes at whim, it stripped  Trump of his prized thunderbolts, his most reliable means of dominating the world’s attention and extracting obeisance from abroad. “An unfortunate ruling”, Trump called it in his speech, with uncharacteristic restraint.

With those two constituencies beyond his control, Trump focused his message upon the Republican representatives in the chamber. He cannot afford to lose them. But he knows that, with midterm elections this autumn, they are growing restive. 

Recent polling shows that public approval of Trump is plumbing depths not seen since the insurrection of January 6th 2021. Key constituencies, including independent voters, Latinos and even young Republicans, are losing confidence in him. Fully six in ten respondents told the Marist poll this month that America is worse off now than a year ago.

SOTU voce: Although Trump savaged Republican members of Congress who have broken with him in recent months on tariffs or making war, he was careful in his speech to make no such criticisms. He offered few new policy ideas. But his open contempt, if not hatred, of Democrats along with his trademark braggadocio about his own accomplishments helped draw Republicans together by signaling his intention to go on the offensive over the economy and immigration. Seeming, as usual, less like the House speaker than a house elf, Mike Johnson sat perched over Trump’s left shoulder, grinning eagerly at his faintest witticism; the president has learned that Mr Johnson will serve as his loyal whip rather than the leader of a coequal branch of government.

Trump did supply some uplift. The Olympic men’s hockey team and the heroic servicemen he pointed to in the gallery were reassuring evidence that, in this 250th year, Americans still have passions apart from politics and values that transcend partisanship.

But when it came to politics, culture war substituted for any loftier ambition; Trump’s invocation of Black History Month in 2017, gave way in 2026, to acronymic sloganeering: “We ended DEI in America!” (Meanwhile, the leader of the DEI movement being Justice Clarence Thomas was seated only a few feet away from Trump's rants❗)

On a momentous question, whether America will again attack Iran and if so why,❓🥺 , Trump offered only a muddle. 

On the fourth anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine he had no new vision for ending the war. He had nothing to say about the challenge posed by China or the promise and peril of artificial intelligence. This speech is likely to be remembered only for its length, but its effect will be to further shrink the significance of the state-of-the-union address. ■

Donald Trump and maga Republicans must stop illegal invasions and making threats against sovereign countries!

Echo opinion published in the Baltimore Sun:

Understandably, Americans are more concerned with their job security and the challenging ability to meet weekly expenses than they are about international issues. (Maine Writer opinion, although Trump will use our tax money like his own personal checkbook because the Supreme Court said he can do and get away with anything❗)

But, what Donald Trump is doing on the international stage is so crazy and so dangerous that it demands our attention (“Trump meets with oil executives at the White House on Friday, seeking investments in Venezuela,” Jan. 9).

Trump argues that the capture of Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela was merely the arrest of an indicted criminal. Whether that authorizes him to bomb a foreign country and forcibly change that country’s leadership without authorization from Congress is highly questionable. In defending Trump’s action, Sen. Lindsey Graham compares the arrest of Maduro to the arrest of the leader of Panama, Manuel Noriega, in 1990. But, we did not thereafter intend to “run” Panama like Trump stated we intend to run Venezuela. That Maduro is a cruel dictator is clear; that Trump intends more than just his arrest (such as taking Venezuelan oil) is equally clear. That explains why the Senate, with the votes of five Republicans, just moved forward a bill to restrict the president from taking further military action against Venezuela.

Moreover, what this administration is saying about Greenland is even crazier. The White House made clear it does not reject the possibility of using military force to take over an autonomous territory belonging to our NATO ally Denmark. I don’t think even Trump would suggest that the prime minister of Denmark is a narco terrorist, a term he has used for Maduro. Take a step back for a moment and reflect on the fact that the president of the United States is not ruling out the use of force against a NATO ally for no apparent reason other than a claim that it would help American security to possess Greenland.

Aside from how just plain wrong this is, consider how China could use Trump’s rationale for the use of force and continued occupation of Venezuela and Greenland with regard to actions it might take against Taiwan or anywhere else where its national security could be enhanced by taking over parts of another country. Surely, we lose the moral authority to scold Russia for its brutal attack on Ukraine.

At this point, I don’t care about the hypocrisy and inconsistency Trump demonstrates daily (you’ll remember during his campaign how he warned against foreign interventions), but at some point, enough has to be enough.

From Steven P. Grossman, in Baltimore, Maryland

Donald Trump was clearly played for a chump by former KGB operative Vladimir Putin during the failed summit in Alaska

Associated Press by Michelle L. Price: Trump leaves Alaska summit with Putin empty-handed after failing to reach a deal to end Ukraine war:  "Trump, who for years has balked at American support for Ukraine and expressed admiration for Putin, had pledged confidently to bring about an end to the war on his first day back in the White House. Seven months later, after berating President Zelenskyy in the Oval Office and stanching the flow of some U.S. military assistance to Kyiv, Trump could not bring Putin even to pause the fighting, as his forces make gains on the battlefield".

Echo opinion to the editor of the Los Angeles Times: Watching Donaldl Trump roll out the red carpet to a Russian dictator currently facing an arrest warrant over war crimes against a free country was astonishing. The fact that Trump consistently spews hatred for the “radical left” in California (the biggest tax contributor of all the states) shows how twisted the Republican “own the libs” philosophy has become. 

No wonder Vladimir Putin was so joyful as he rode away in the presidential limousine: Trump legitimized him on the world stage, and he didn’t have to concede a thing.

From Ken Jacobs, in Santa Monica California

Donald Trump continues to enable Russian KGB operative President Vladimir Putin and the world wants to know :Why"?

 Our Allies Are Asking: Why Does Putin Still Own Trump❓

An Echo opinion essay by Thomas L. Friedman in The New York Times

Since Donald Trump decided to rebrand the Defense Department as the Department of War, to more accurately reflect how tough he is, I suggest we rebrand the White House as the Waffle House — to more accurately reflect Trump’s incessant waffling when it comes to actually doing something to deter Vladimir Putin’s steadily increasing onslaught on Ukraine, not to mention his recent drone incursion into America’s NATO ally Poland.

I was in Ukraine last week, attending the Yalta European Strategy conference in the capital, Kyiv, and interviewing Ukrainian and European officials, analysts and entrepreneurs. Some version of the same question came up quietly in almost every private conversation: What in the world is going on with your president? Putin keeps spitting in Trump’s eye and Trump keeps telling the world that it’s raining.

No one wants to say this publicly right now. Indeed, at the opening of the conference President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine could not have expressed more gratitude to Trump, as did several key NATO foreign ministers and national security advisers. They are clearly hoping that if everyone pretends that Trump is doing a lot — letting NATO allies use their own money to buy arms for Kyiv, even though Trump has not allocated a dime of fresh U.S. money to do so — the U.S. president will not abandon Ukraine altogether.

But our European allies were aghast last week at Trump’s response to the swarm of around 20 drones that Russia sent across Polish borders, prompting NATO to scramble fighter jets to shoot them down. While Poland’s prime minister, Donald Tusk, told his Parliament the episode was “the closest we have been to open conflict since World War II,” all that Trump could muster was a post on his Truth Social platform: “What’s with Russia violating Poland’s airspace with drones? Here we go!”

A day later, though, he made clear he was going nowhere. “It could have been a mistake,” 🙄 😖😒he said of the drone penetration.

(According to the German publication WELT, five of the Russian drones were on a direct flight path toward a NATO base before being intercepted by Dutch Lockheed Martin F-35 fighter jets, suggesting they were probably dispatched to test NATO reflexes.)

I love Trump’s turn of phrase: “What’s with Russia violating Poland’s airspace with drones❓” Trump sounds like a teenage blogger commenting on some movie star who did something embarrassing in public — not sounding or writing like the leader of the free world. If Putin had any sense of humor he would post on Truth Social: “Donald, what’s with that Department of War thing❓”

Every day that goes by Trump seems to add another condition or another timeline for when he will impose meaningful economic sanctions on Russia, as Putin steps up his attacks on the  Ukraine. Trump’s latest formulation posted over the weekend is that all nations in Europe, most of whom have already sharply cut back their imports of Russian oil, would need to stop buying oil from Moscow entirely. In addition, all NATO nations need to impose tariffs of 50 percent to 100 percent on China. A serious president would not be posting such demands on social media. He and his staff would be working the phones.

(It is interesting to note that Zelensky has started referring to Ukraine’s increasingly successful drone attacks on Russian oil refineries as “sanctions.” In other words, Ukrainians simply don’t have the luxury of waiting for Godot/Trump to impose his economic sanctions anymore. So they’re doing it themselves, starting at the source. As Zelensky said in his Sunday evening address to the nation: “The most effective sanctions — the ones that work the fastest — are the fires at Russia’s oil refineries, its terminals, oil depots,” because this approach “significantly restricts the war.”)

I have always avoided the more conspiratorial explanations for Trump’s behavior. I do not believe that the U.S. president is somehow a Putin asset (though he sure knows how to play one on TV). What I believe is that Trump is simply different from any American president since World War II — and not in a good way.

For starters, he does not share the bedrock commitment that the Atlantic alliance is the greatest coalition in history for expanding and defending zones of free people, free markets and the rule of law.

At the same time, it is hardly a secret that Trump is a man fueled by grudges and grievances. I suspect that he has never forgiven Zelensky for not giving him the dirt on Joe Biden that Trump sought in his first term — a crazy ask that eventually, through many twists and turns, led to Trump’s first impeachment trial. 

Another explanation is that there is no real policymaking process in this administration. There is no sign that any of Trump’s policy declarations conveyed through social media are vetted first by area experts in the State Department or the C.I.A., no sign that anything is run by the Senate or House Foreign Affairs Committees.

Have you noticed the blank stare on Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s face whenever he is at Trump’s side? It seems like the look of a man struggling to mask his bewilderment. (Maine Writer- In fact, yes, I have noticed....)

Here is Rubio on the Russian drone incursion into Poland: “No doubt about it: the drones were intentionally launched. The question is whether the drones were targeted to go into Poland specifically,” Rubio told reporters. He added, “if the evidence leads us there, then obviously that’ll be a highly escalatory move,” but, “there are a number of other possibilities as well.” 

Without mentioning Rubio by name, Radoslaw Sikorski, Poland’s foreign minister, referring to the drones Russia sent into Poland, wryly observed at the Yalta conference, “We don’t believe in 20 mistakes at the same time.”

The other explanation I offered to my European and Ukrainian friends went like this: You know how we often say that the Chinese are much more sophisticated players of the game of nations — that while we play checkers, the Chinese play chess, always thinking many moves ahead. Well, it’s sort of like that with Trump. Only Trump is not playing either checkers or chess. He’s playing “Monopoly.”

Trump does not judge countries on whether they share our democratic values — or even our interests. Rather, he judges them on whether they are Boardwalk or Baltic Avenue, on whether we have a trade surplus or trade deficit with them, on whether they are the site for a future Trump hotel or golf course and on whether their leaders will flatter his ego or not.

If you don’t flatter Trump and you have a trade surplus with us — say India — your democratic system may not save you from Trump’s tariffs. But if you flatter him, as Putin does, and if you offer him investment opportunities, as Putin also does, then Trump may not impose a single new tariff on you even if, like Russia, your economy runs a trade surplus with America.

Alas, even Trump seems lately to have lost track of all the different conditions that he has set before he will do anything meaningful to punish Russia, which is probably why he just let loose on Saturday with what’s really in his heart when it comes to Ukraine.

“This is not TRUMP’S WAR,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “It is Biden’s and Zelensky’s WAR.”

You notice that he doesn’t say it’s Putin’s war — the man who actually started it.

Sorry, Donald Trump. This is YOUR war now. Because you and you alone have the ability to deliver to Ukraine the military resources to send the message to Putin that time is not on his side, that he will have to accept a deal. Unfortunately it’s a deal that will allow the Russian president to keep some of the territory in Eastern Ukraine that he has seized by force — but the condition for that is that Putin must accept Western security guarantees for Ukraine aimed at ensuring that no Russian leader will ever dare invade again, as well as Ukrainian membership in the European Union.

If you, Mr. President, walk away from Ukraine and let it be overrun by the Russian dictatorship, you can post on Truth Social all you want, and you can give as many interviews with Fox News as you please, but your name will forever be spoken in the same breath as Neville Chamberlain — and well it should.

It takes my breath away that only one Republican in Congress has had the guts to tell Trump that. God bless Representative Don Bacon of Nebraska — a former Air Force brigadier general who responded to Trump’s attempt to weasel out of responsibility with a tweet of his own on X: “Donald Trump, it is Putin who is the one who is the invader. And now this war is on your watch 👀⌚ , and you’ll be judged in the history books in the decades to come by your actions or lack thereof.”

Donald Trump tried to betray Ukraine by kissing Russian Putin's ass- Republicans must impeach traitor Trump

A nauseating 🤢exhibition of international betrayal❗ 

Evil bookends meet in Alaska. 

Echo guest opinion published in The New York Times by Olga Rudenko. "All Russia Needs to Do Is Go Home❗❗"

Betrayal❗ "But afterward, there was no suggestion of a plan for new sanctions on Russia, or deadlines or demands for a swift cease-fire. Instead, Mr. Trump is now apparently suggesting that the sides should go for an all-encompassing peace deal based on Ukraine ceding the rest of the eastern Donbas region — including some areas not occupied by Russian troops"

Vladimir Putin- the former KGB agency, looked like he loved every minute of it.

Putin, evil 👿president of Russia, the man who proclaimed that my country, Ukraine, shouldn’t exist — that it’s a historical mistake, to be fixed by Russian soldiers — was welcomed effusively to Alaska by Donald Trump, in the United States. exited his plane and diplomatic isolation and walked a red carpet like an honored guest.

His smile was triumphant. Was it confidence that he was going to get away with everything he’s done? Or was it the anticipation of getting what he wanted: a subjugated Ukraine and a weakened trans-Atlantic alliance? Perhaps it was both.

Americans may have cringed, but for Ukrainians, watching 👿Putin smirk and laugh was revolting.

The meeting between Putin👿 and Trump on Friday was a stark reminder of a simple truth: that the real barrier, the only real barrier, between Trump and peace in Ukraine (and his coveted Nobel Prize) is Putin 👿. Russia could end the war in Ukraine at any moment by stopping its attacks and withdrawing its forces. By simply going home. Mr. Putin could end it with a phone call.

Putin 👿— and sometimes, Trump — has tried to frame Ukraine as the obstacle to peace. But let’s think about how Ukraine could end this war on terms that Putin 👿would accept: by giving him everything. By relinquishing territory that tens of thousands have died defending, forgoing the prospect of ever joining NATO or the European Union, agreeing not to maintain a military strong enough to defend itself and installing a puppet government pliant to Putin 👿. By agreeing, in effect, to cease to exist.

To a Ukrainian — and surely to most people — the idea of handing anything, never mind everything, to an invader that has brought death and destruction to a peaceful country, seems exactly backward.

A recent Gallup poll showed that 69 percent of Ukrainians want the war to end in a negotiation, and soon. That majority, up from 22 percent in 2022, the first year of Russia’s full-scale invasion, has been widely interpreted as showing that Ukrainians are now willing to compromise. 

But, it’s more complicated than that. Other polls that have more precisely parsed the question of ending the war — Do Ukrainians want to cede territories to Russia to end the war? — have shown a majority still saying “no.”

That’s not stubbornness. It’s a healthy and justified rejection of injustice.

As I watched the meeting on a livestream in the small hours of Saturday morning in Kyiv, my phone was lighting up with alerts that Russian drones were targeting Ukrainian cities — just as they do almost every night. It was additional proof, if it were needed, that the man on the red carpet had no serious intention of making peace.
What did Trump get for his pampering❓ When the two presidents emerged from their meeting, Trump warmly praised the discussion and talked vaguely of making “some headway,” but said they hadn’t reached an agreement. 

Ahead of the meeting, Trump seemed to be moving toward a tougher approach to Russia, and he had made assurances to Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s president, and European leaders just a few days before that any peace deal must begin with a cease-fire and not be negotiated without Ukraine at the table.

But, afterward, there was no suggestion of a plan for new sanctions on Russia, or deadlines or demands for a swift cease-fire. Instead, Trump is now apparently suggesting that the sides should go for an all-encompassing peace deal based on Ukraine ceding the rest of the eastern Donbas region — including some areas not occupied by Russian troops — rather than insisting on a cease-fire first. This is naturally the idea preferred by Russia. 

PutinA recent Gallup poll showed that 69 percent of Ukrainians want the war to end in a negotiation, and soon. That majority, up from 22 percent in 2022, the first year of Russia’s full-scale invasion, has been widely interpreted as showing that Ukrainians are now willing to compromise. But it’s more complicated than that. 

Other polls that have more precisely parsed the question of ending the war — Do Ukrainians want to cede territories to Russia to end the war? — have shown a majority still saying “no.”

That’s not stubbornness. It’s a healthy and justified rejection of injustice.

As I watched the meeting on a livestream in the small hours of Saturday morning in Kyiv, my phone was lighting up with alerts that Russian drones were targeting Ukrainian cities — just as they do almost every night. It was additional proof, if it were needed, that the man on the red carpet had no serious intention of making peace.

What did Mr. Trump get for his pampering? When the two presidents emerged from their meeting, Trump warmly praised the discussion and talked vaguely of making “some headway,” but said they hadn’t reached an agreement. Ahead of the meeting, Mr. Trump had seemed to be moving toward a tougher approach to Russia, and he had made assurances to Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s president, and European leaders just a few days before that any peace deal must begin with a cease-fire and not be negotiated without Ukraine at the table.

A recent Gallup poll showed that 69 percent of Ukrainians want the war to end in a negotiation, and soon. That majority, up from 22 percent in 2022, the first year of Russia’s full-scale invasion, has been widely interpreted as showing that Ukrainians are now willing to compromise. But it’s more complicated than that. Other polls that have more precisely parsed the question of ending the war — Do Ukrainians want to cede territories to Russia to end the war? — have shown a majority still saying “no.”

That’s not stubbornness. It’s a healthy and justified rejection of injustice.

As I watched the meeting on a livestream in the small hours of Saturday morning in Kyiv, my phone was lighting up with alerts that Russian drones were targeting Ukrainian cities — just as they do almost every night. It was additional proof, if it were needed, that the man on the red carpet had no serious intention of making peace.

What did Trump get for his pampering❓ When the two presidents emerged from their meeting, Mr. Trump warmly praised the discussion and talked vaguely of making “some headway,” but said they hadn’t reached an agreement. Ahead of the meeting, Trump had seemed to be moving toward a tougher approach to Russia, and he had made assurances to Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s president, and European leaders just a few days before that any peace deal must begin with a cease-fire and not be negotiated without Ukraine at the table.

But afterward, there was no suggestion of a plan for new sanctions on Russia, or deadlines or demands for a swift cease-fire. Instead, Mr. Trump is now apparently suggesting that the sides should go for an all-encompassing peace deal based on Ukraine ceding the rest of the eastern Donbas region — including some areas not occupied by Russian troops — rather than insisting on a cease-fire first. This is naturally the idea preferred by Russia. After the meeting,

Putin, still smiling, appeared not to have moved on anything., still smiling, appeared not to have moved on anything. , still smiling, appeared not to have moved on anything.

Trump, driven by impatience and his on-again-off-again friendship with Mr. Putin, now again on the upswing, may yet try to force Ukraine to end the war on Russia’s terms.

But accepting any Russian deal above the Ukrainians’ heads would be an affront to the memory of the tens of thousands of Ukrainians who have died defending their land. 

It would be a slap in the face to the civilians who have fled to make them watch a Russian flag rise above their destroyed homes. It would be the end of hope for the Ukrainians living in the territories occupied by Russia.

At the Kyiv Independent, the Ukrainian media organization where I work, part of our job in the days before the summit was finding out what Ukrainians thought about the meeting.

“What were so many deaths for?” Nataliia Prykhodko, a widow of a Ukrainian soldier, told a colleague. “How can they decide our fate without us?”

Oleksii Ladyka, a soldier, described how it felt to read about discussions of land swaps from the battlefield in eastern Ukraine. “When you talk about Donetsk Oblast like a hot cake that can be passed around,” he said, “I want them to remember that everyone here has their own family, has their loved ones, has a hope and a wish for a peaceful life and a future for their children, just like anyone anywhere in the world.”

On Monday, President Zelensky, who was excluded from the summit, was scheduled to meet Trump in the White House. Ukrainians fully expect to be framed as the obstacle to peace in the coming days and weeks.

To that, let me just say again to those who are still listening: Russia could just go home.

Donald Trump: How to destroy democracy in 100 days! Republican cult followers are enabling incompetence

Echo opinion published in The New York Times by Ben Rhodes: 100 Days❗ That’s All It Took to Sever America From the World.

In 1941, as President Franklin D. Roosevelt marshaled support for the fight against fascism, his chief antagonists were isolationists at home. “What I seek to convey,” he said at the beginning of an address to Congress, “is the historic truth that the United States as a nation has at all times maintained clear, definite opposition to any attempt to lock us in behind an ancient Chinese wall while the procession of civilization went past.” Roosevelt prevailed, and that victory expanded America’s relationship with the world in ways that remade both.

Eighty-four years later, Donald Trump is systematically severing America from the globe. This is not simply a shift in foreign policy. It is a divorce so comprehensive that it makes Britain’s exit from the European Union look modest by comparison.

Consider the breadth of this effort. Allies have been treated like adversaries. The United States has withdrawn from international agreements on fundamental issues like health and climate change. A “nation of immigrants” now deports people without due process, bans refugees and is trying to end birthright citizenship. Trump’s tariffs have upended the system of international trade, throwing up new barriers to doing business with every country on Earth. 

Sadly, foreign assistance has largely been terminated. So has support for democracy abroad. Research cuts have rolled back global scientific research and cooperation. The State Department is downsizing. Exchange programs are on the chopping block. Global research institutions like the U.S. Institute of Peace and the Wilson Center have been effectively shut down. And, of course, the United States is building a wall along its southern border. (Pope Frances: Build bridges not walls")

Other countries are under no obligation to help a 78-year-old American president fulfill a fanciful vision of making America great again. Already a Gaza cease-fire has unraveled, Russia continues its war on Ukraine, Europe is turning away from America, Canadians are boycotting our goods and a Chinese Communist Party that endured the Great Famine and the Cultural Revolution seems prepared to weather a few years of tariffs. Travel to the United States is down 12 percent compared with last March, as tourists recoil from America’s authoritarian turn.

The ideologues driving Trump’s agenda defend their actions by pointing to the excesses of American foreign policy, globalization and migration. There is, of course, much to lament there. 

Yet, Trump’s ability to campaign on these problems doesn’t solve them in government. Indeed, his remedies will do far more harm to the people he claims to represent than to the global elites that his MAGA movement attacks.
Start with the 💲economic impact. If the current reduction in travel to the United States continues, it could cost up to $90 billion this year alone, along with tens of thousands of jobs. 

Tariffs will drive up prices and productivity will slow if mass deportations come for the farm workers who pick our food, the construction workers who build our homes and the care workers who look after children and the elderly. International students pay to attend American universities; their demonization and dehumanization could imperil the $44 billion they put into our economy each year and threaten a sector with a greater trade surplus than our civilian
aircraft sector.

Moreover, the economic outlook gets worse with time. Why would other countries choose to invest in a country where the president roils global markets through social media posts, profits from crypto schemes that fleece ordinary people and undermines the rule of law upon which commerce depends❓ It’s far more likely that nations will make trade deals and forge supply

 chains without the United States while China and its growing list of partners accelerate a movement away from the dollar as the world’s reserve currency.

In the short term, treating international relations like a protection racket could yield some bilateral transactions. Yet, something more fundamental is being lost: trust. An America that, for all its mistakes abroad, guaranteed the security of its allies. An America that, for all its nativism, took in refugees and educated countless world leaders through its universities and exchange programs. 

An America that, for all its hubris, responded to humanitarian crises and showcased an appealing cultural openness. An America that people around the world liked more than its government.

Frankly, the destruction of that trust will hurt us more than the rest of the world. This was certainly the case with Brexit, a project animated
by the same blend of nationalism and nostalgia that has propelled Trump. Nearly a decade after voting to divorce Europe, Britain finds itself wrestling with a predictable incapacity to generate growth, a diminished position in its own region and a growing factionalism in its politics. Less than a third of Britons now believe they made the right decision.

We are following that course on a global scale. After 250 years of growing more diverse and more connected to the world, Trump and his cohort are imposing the staid (sedate 🥱😌😒) insularity of self-imposed decline. The draining of democratic values from our national identity will leave America defined by its size, power and quixotic lust for profit: a place, not an idea. 

Roosevelt left us the inheritance of believing we were the good guys. But, Trump is eviscerating that pretense as cuts to U.S.A.I.D. have almost certainly caused more civilian deaths than Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

So, here is at least some good news: A nation’s relationship with the world is not defined solely by its government, particularly one as big and multifaceted as the United States.

In the first Trump term, state and local governments remained committed to combating climate change, welcoming immigrants, protecting higher education and sustaining global ties. All those efforts will be harder in our new Trumpzi reality, but that only makes them more important. 

As the Republicans often remind us, we live in a federal republic, and communities that maintain connections to the world will be better positioned to succeed than those that choose to follow Trump down the rabbit hole of isolationism.

Our institutions also have a choice. Part of what has shocked the world about their capitulation to the Trump administration is the failure to grasp that the moral choice is the best path to self-preservation. Law firms can choose to care more about the law than whether a callous competitor will pick up some of their business. Universities can build credibility within an interconnected world instead of validating the lie that a few students chanting “Free Palestine” is more dangerous than afar-right takeover of academic freedom. The entertainment sector can tell compelling stories about a consequential era instead of algorithmically designed superhero junk. Billionaires can spend money on STEM education for girls instead of financing celebrity trips into a higher part of the atmosphere.

At a more individual level, Americans can demonstrate that they don’t want to be defined by Mr. Trump’s xenophobia. There are international students who fear for their safety; defend their right to be here. There are colleagues and customers around the world; American businesses should engage them in new ways. 

There are enormous shortfalls in humanitarian assistance; American philanthropy should fill as much as it can. There are Republican members of Congress whose constituents will be devastated by  Trump’s policies; make them more afraid of losing their voters than the threats of a lame-duck president. (Uhg😟😰.....Maine Writer:  Impeach Trump NOW❗)

But, he wrong way to respond to our current emergency is to promise, as President Joe Biden did, that America will be “back.” That ignores the enormous mistakes elites made over the last three decades and the political context that allowed Trump to return to power with the mind-set of an arsonist. We’re not coming back, and that’s OK. Indeed, it’s an opportunity.

Instead, our intention should be to return to the world as a different country. That requires something that Americans have not always done well: listening. We have much to learn. And ironically, we now have more in common with people in other countries living under corruption, autocracy and oligarchy. 

Perhaps this chapter in our national experience can be a moment when we find a new kind of solidarity with others who have been through versions of what we are now experiencing.

Indeed, the United States will never be a normal country, if there is such aa thing. Like China and Russia, it is too big, too shaped by a revolutionary and imperial past, too rived by traumas that it has inflicted and absorbed. 

What Roosevelt understood is that America’s peculiarities could stir us to a more enlightened form of self-interest. As a multiracial nation connected to the world and committed to a set of freedoms core to our identity, we could never afford to follow the foolish path of America First — a slogan that amounted to capitulation to fascism.

America’s strength has always been connected to the fact that it comprises people from everywhere who chose not to be defined by a ruler or to fear the future. 

At a time when power in the world is becoming more diffuse, our shifting demographics should be seen as a strength — not something to be feared or suppressed through a reactionary politics that shuts out the world. If we continue down that path, the procession of civilization will leave us behind, in a fearful, diminished and impoverished place. If we recover our sense of agency, we can re-engage the world as a part of it — neither hegemon (i.e., "leader") nor hostile.

Ben Rhodes is a contributing Opinion writer and the author, most recently, of “After the Fall: The Rise of Authoritarianism in the World We’ve Made.”