Donald Trump illegally offering to buy diesel from Putin is a crazy deal because it will ultimately cause harm to America's military

Trump guts diesel sanctions on Russia, helping Putin kill Ukrainians and aid Iran.

Echo opinion published in the Philadelphia Inquirer by Trudy Rubin

In trying to lower fuel prices, Donald Trump is helping fund a Kremlin terrorist who is not only out to destroy Kyiv but is helping Iran kill U.S. soldiers in the Middle East.

This weekend, Donald Trump publicly surrendered U.S. honor and security interests to Russia’s Vladimir Putin.

The U.S. president demanded that Ukraine “replace” President Volodymyr Zelensky with someone willing to make “a deal” with the Kremlin to (supposedly) end the war. Yet the “deal” that Trump envisions would not end Russia’s aggression but would reward it.

It would encourage the Kremlin’s unyielding demand that Kyiv surrender to Moscow’s over-lordship. And it would fuel Putin’s war chest, never mind that he has been attacking NATO members with drones, and is helping Iran destroy U.S. bases and kill American troops in the Middle East.

In a Friday phone call with Putin, the president arranged to suspend U.S. sanctions on Russian exports of diesel in the (false❗🤥) hope this will lower U.S. fuel prices before the November midterms. Even more shocking, POTUS threatened to stop sharing U.S. intelligence with Kyiv, unless Ukraine halts attacks on Russian refineries that are meant to finally drive Putin to the bargaining table.

This all happened just as a Ukrainian negotiating team arrived in Miami to discuss with their U.S. counterparts how to overcome Putin’s constant rejection of any ceasefire.

The Ukrainians were ready to discuss a two-way ceasefire over attacks on energy infrastructure, but were totally blindsided. 

Instead, Trump unilaterally declared such a ceasefire had been reached. But, it hadn’t.

Yet when Zelensky rejected the one-sided diesel deal, Trump went ballistic and called for his replacement, as if Ukraine were a banana republic whose president could be ousted overnight.

So much for the much hyped bipartisan legislation named after the late GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham that was supposed to tighten sanctions on Moscow in order to force Putin to accept a ceasefire. In effect, Trump spat on his late GOP colleague and loyal supporter.

Trump’s negotiators have already been talking with Putin’s team about big Russian business deals (that would benefit Trump’s circle of donors and supporters, of course) while demanding zero concessions from Moscow. Clearly, they just want Ukraine to bow so they can get down to moneymaking with Moscow.

And Trump’s desperation to lower diesel prices before the midterms supersedes any concerns about security for U.S. bases, NATO allies, or Ukraine.

The blinkered U.S. leader, however, has no grasp of basic economics. Lifting sanctions on Russian diesel exports will have a minimal effect at the pump; the only way to lower those prices is to negotiate an end to Trump’s misbegotten Iran war.

Meantime, Trump’s refusal to put any pressure on Moscow has killed any prospect of a genuine two-way energy ceasefire that would also halt Moscow’s destruction of civilian electricity grids and heating plants in Ukraine.

If Putin keeps getting freebies from his friend Donald, why make concessions❓

Lifting sanctions on Russian diesel exports, as Zelensky noted, not only gives Putin “more money to inflict suffering on us” but “gives him the ability to fight even more.” To add to this insanity, on the same day POTUS encouraged Putin’s aggression, he also found time to berate the Norwegian Nobel committee for not awarding him his coveted peace prize in 2026.

Few Americans are aware of the new horrors Putin has visited on Ukrainian civilians since early September. Even fewer seem aware of the Kremlin’s tight alliance with Tehran, which gave Russia its first Shahed strike drones, the same drones Iran now uses to destroy U.S. bases and kill U.S. troops in the Mideast.

Putin has returned Iran’s favor by sharing upgraded Shahed technology with Tehran; he is also helping the ayatollahs develop new supersonic missiles capable of striking U.S. warships in the Middle East theater.

To repeat, Trump’s gift to Putin will not only fund Putin’s war machine but will help Tehran kill more Americans, too.

State terror: I witnessed the beginning of Putin’s new blitz on Ukrainian civilians during a trip to Kyiv and Odesa last month and it has only gotten worse since then.

Learning lessons from its war on Ukraine, Russia now produces millions of drones and has upgraded Iran’s Shaheds with jet engines. Russia is also mass-producing cruise and ballistic missiles.

Trump facilitated Russia’s slaughter by ending almost all military aid to Ukraine and refusing to send Kyiv the Patriot interceptors that are the only weapons which destroy incoming ballistic missiles.

Yes, Patriots are in short supply since Trump wasted much of our arsenal in his illegal failing war on Iran. Yet by stiffing Ukraine, Donald Trump is aiding a Russian terrorist who is helping Iran — the very country that POTUS has labeled “the world’s leading sponsor of terrorism.” Untangle that bizarre contradiction, and you can reach only one conclusion: Trump is an open accessory to Russian terrorism that also threatens the United States.

Indeed, “Russian state terrorism” is the only adequate term to describe what Putin is raining down on Ukraine. In conversations with officials from Ukraine’s largest private electricity company, DTEK, I heard worries that attacks on the grid will cut off water supplies this winter and severely disrupt sewage systems.

Russia consistently uses terrorist methods ever since Moscow invaded its neighbor in 2022. I have witnessed shattered high-rise apartment buildings, hospitals, schools, cathedrals, libraries, and markets and heard horror stories about destroyed energy infrastructure that left Ukrainians freezing last winter.

Yet, Putin’s terror attacks this fall are dramatically worse than previous years, given Russian advances in weapons technology and production. and given Trump’s total second term toleration of Putin’s war crimes.

Last year, Russian strikes on cities occurred mostly at night, so Ukrainians could at least walk and work during the daytime. This year, strikes occur far more frequently and often in the daytime, meaning schools and many businesses can’t function because of the constant need to run to shelters.

I have kept the air alert notification app for Kyiv on my phone. It is designed so Ukrainians can punch in their city or town to get advance notice of imminent and critical air attacks. 

As I sit in Philadelphia, sometimes it dings every hour. Sometimes, in the evening, every 20 minutes.

When civilians rush to the shelters deep in Kyiv subway stations, they now have to descend and ascend stalled escalators, frozen due to Russian bombing of Kyiv’s electricity infrastructure. That means that the elderly and mothers with small kids are more likely to risk staying home.

In Kramatorsk, one of Ukraine’s “fortress cities” in Donbas that Russian troops have been unable to capture, the Kremlin strategy now is to make life unbearable. On Thursday, a guided Russian glide bomb targeted two buses in Kramatorsk during rush hour, incinerating 30 passengers.

Photos of the scorched bus made me recall the horrific Hamas bus bombings in Jerusalem I witnessed in the mid-1990s. Putin’s mentality is no different from that of fanatical Islamists who view civilian slaughter as a useful tool.

What is so shameful is that any patriotic president would be revulsed by such terrorist tactics. He or she would use whatever tools were available to force Putin to accept a ceasefire.

A few ways that Trump could exert pressure begin with tightening, not ripping up, sanctions against Russian oil exports as called for by the Graham Act. He could immediately green light joint U.S.-Ukrainian production of Patriot missiles, and in the meantime, encourage nervous allies to spare some of their stock with a promise of replacement from new U.S. production.

Trump could also demand that Elon Musk permit Kyiv to use Starlink connections over Russian territory so Ukraine can bring Russia to the table by more precisely targeting production sites of its drones and missiles — and its oil refineries.

I could go on, but as we know, Trump will never show Putin any backbone. The president decries Hamas but brags of his great relations with the global terrorist in the Kremlin. If this be not treason, then what is?

GOP legislators who fail to call Trump out are also complicit. For those Americans who truly oppose terrorism, the choice at the polls is clear.
In the city of Kherson, freed from Russian occupation, Russian soldiers across the Dnipro River play “human safari,” chasing desperate civilians on the street with drones that can now be targeted from longer distances. They then publish videos of the kills. Russia is now attacking cities that weren’t previously targeted, just to give civilians the feeling there is nowhere to hide. On Putin’s birthday, a Russian cruise missile hit a five-story apartment building, killing 22 civilians (including five children) as they slept in the city of Pryluky.

Such attacks are not collateral damage; they are part of a strategy designed to break the will of the population. “This is the kind of ‘gift’ Putin gave himself for his birthday,” Zelensky said Wednesday. “The killing of children, the killing of people.”

About such killings, Trump says not a word.

Donald Trump and maga Republicans are supporting maniac threats to destroy an entire Iranian civilization

Echo essay in The New Yorker magazine: In his April 2026 reporting, David Remnick frames the second term of Donald Trump as a profound global threat, characterizing the administration's actions as a "strategic failure and moral calamity". Remnick's analysis focuses on the degradation of democratic norms and international stability.

#ImpeachTrumpNOW❗

Trump’s Strategic and Moral Failure in Iran

From the first day of his failed administration beginning in 2016 and continuing the second term in 2024, Trump has posed an emergency to both his country and the world. April 10, 2026

Not many years ago, a ruthless man with an uneasy mind took power in his country and created a cult of personality. 

In the center of the capital, he erected a gold statue of himself that rotated with the sun. He stashed billions in a foreign bank. He closed the academy of sciences, the ballet, the philharmonic, the circus, and all provincial libraries. His autobiography became the nation’s spiritual guide. He banned dogs from the capital for their “unappealing odor.” He renamed the months: January for himself, April for his mother. He was fond of melons. The second Sunday of August became National Melon Day. Such was the world of Saparmurat Niyazov, Turkmenistan’s leader from 1985, until his death in 2006, by cardiac arrest. 

For the Turkmen people, there was nothing comical about life under his dictatorship. He barred dissent and packed his jails with prisoners of conscience. The only consolation was that he could not impose his grandiosity on the globe.

Donald Trump, by contrast, has, from the first day of his administration, posed an emergency to both our country and the world, even as he has ceaselessly invoked the language of “emergency” to inflate threats, suspend norms, and expand his own power. A decade ago, he was already making statements that flouted the ordinary standards of adult behavior. When it came to North Korea, for example, he alternated between cooing words of affection for Kim Jong Un and issuing taunts that mixed nuclear brinkmanship with masculine insecurity: “I too have a Nuclear Button, but it is a much bigger & more powerful one than his, and my Button works!”

Trump embodies the notion that, with age, you become what you always were, only more so. In the final days of the 2024, campaign, he met with the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board. When asked whether he would deploy the U.S. military if China, under Xi Jinping, were to blockade Taiwan, Trump replied, “I wouldn’t have to, because he respects me, and he knows I’m fucking crazy.”

The MAGA coalition has long countenanced Trump’s bigotry and cruelty. But now, with the repeated violations of an America First foreign policy, his poll numbers have plummeted. 

Since returning to office, Trump has ordered military strikes on Iraq, Nigeria, Somalia, Syria, Yemen, Venezuela, and Iran, and has felt little need to provide a coherent rationale for any of them. According to reporting by Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, of the Times, Trump and his national-security advisers gathered in the Situation Room on February 11th to listen to the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, argue for a coördinated attack on Iran. 

Even though the Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, the C.I.A. director, John Ratcliffe, and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Dan Caine, made their reservations plain—Rubio called Netanyahu’s talk of regime change “bullshit”—Trump blundered ahead. And, as in the days of the Turkmen dictator, everyone fell into line.

But when the Iranian regime failed to collapse or capitulate, when Netanyahu’s prediction of a national uprising failed to materialize, Trump turned to threats of war crimes and genocide against the very people he claimed to be helping liberate:

A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will. However, now that we have Complete and Total Regime Change, where different, smarter, and less radicalized minds prevail, maybe something revolutionarily wonderful can happen, WHO KNOWS?

These were not the words of a strategist. They were the words of a maniac. And they had a galvanizing effect, though hardly in the way Trump might have intended. Some of his erstwhile acolytes—Marjorie Taylor Greene, Tucker Carlson, Alex Jones—seem to have woken up to how dangerous he has always been. Yet around the Cabinet table, at Mar-a-Lago, and in the Republican caucus on Capitol Hill, it is gospel that his deranged threats forced a ceasefire and scored a major victory. The President’s war, though, seems poised to achieve little that was not already available through prewar diplomacy, or through some renewed version of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or J.C.P.O.A., the Iran nuclear deal secured by the Obama Administration.

In fact, the original sin of this disaster was Trump’s 2018, abandonment of that deal. 

For all its limits, it had stalled Iran’s march toward an atomic weapon. But Netanyahu, long eager for a full-scale war against Iran—aimed not only at its nuclear program but at its proxies, such as Hezbollah—shrewdly played on Trump’s vanity and his contempt for Barack Obama. Trump destroyed the J.C.P.O.A. with nothing to replace it.

So the war stands as a strategic failure and a moral calamity. The ceasefire is already fragile. “The whole point of this exercise was supposedly to advance the cause of freedom in Iran,” Karim Sadjadpour, a Washington-based specialist on the country, said. “To go from ‘help is on the way’ to ‘we are going to wipe out your civilization’ is strategic malpractice.” According to Danny Citrinowicz, an Iran expert who formerly worked in Israeli intelligence, Trump’s principal envoys to the region, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, almost certainly misread Iran’s capabilities and intentions. “This is a colossal disaster and should never have happened,” Citrinowicz said, noting that it will “haunt the region and world for many years to come.”

In the opening days of the war, the United States and Israel killed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and wiped out much of Iran’s defense and intelligence leadership, apparently believing that the regime would somehow give way to “moderates” and “pragmatists.” Instead, the theocracy and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps remain in place, equally radical, equally repressive, and more determined than ever to acquire the ultimate deterrent: a nuclear weapon. Why give up that pursuit, as Libya did, and leave yourself exposed, when you can, like North Korea, achieve it and deter attack?

Trump has gone far toward shattering what’s left of America’s global stature. His preposterous bluster about Greenland, Cuba, and NATO has undermined the postwar alliance. He has humiliated and betrayed the Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelensky. And all the while Vladimir Putin, who aims to press Ukraine for still more territory, and Xi Jinping, who keeps Taiwan in view, watch the spectacle of Donald Trump for what it reveals about both his instability and the cratering credibility of American leadership.

In the midst of the war, Trump released plans for his presidential library. Its centerpiece will be an auditorium with an immense gold statue of himself. Whether it will turn with the sun 💥🤢 is not yet known. 

Published in the print edition of the April 20, 2026, issue, with the headline “Global Threat.”

Evil Putin made the decision to send young, innocent Russians into a futile war

Opinion essay published in The New York Times: 

"We can’t let them down," by PM Boris Johnson. 

LONDON — Over the past week, in response to the gut-wrenching scenes in Ukraine, Western unity has been impressive and heartening. I know from my near-daily conversations with President Volodymyr Zelensky that this has provided Ukrainians with some comfort in their hour of need.

Never in my life have I seen an international crisis where the dividing line between right and wrong has been so stark, as the Russian war machine unleashes its fury on a proud democracy. Russia’s reckless attack on the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant reminds us just how grave the stakes are for everyone. More than one million people have fled the violence, toward an uncertain future.

President Biden displayed great leadership, consulting and convening allies, exposing the lie that America’s commitment to Europe is somehow diminished. 

Indeed, the European Union has undertaken a remarkable effort to align behind severe sanctions on Russia. 

Dozens of European countries are sending defensive equipment to Ukraine’s armed forces. But have we done enough for Ukraine? The honest answer is no.

Vladimir Putin’s act of aggression must fail and be seen to fail. 

💙💛

Moreover, we must not allow anyone in the Kremlin to get away with misrepresenting our intentions in order to find ex post facto justification for this war of choice. This is not a NATO conflict, and it will not become one. No ally has sent combat troops to Ukraine. We have no hostility toward the Russian people, and we have no desire to impugn a great nation and a world power. We despair of the decision to send young, innocent Russians into a futile war.

The truth is that Ukraine had no serious prospect of NATO membership in the near future — and we were ready to respond to Russia’s stated security concerns through negotiation. I and many other Western leaders have spoken to Mr. Putin to understand his perspective. The United Kingdom even sent emissaries to Moscow before Russia’s invasion to deal directly with Defense Minister Gen. Sergei Shoigu and the chief of the general staff, Gen. Valery Gerasimov, who are spearheading this awful campaign.

It is now clear diplomacy never had a chance. But it is precisely because of our respect for Russia that we find the actions of the Putin regime so unconscionable. Mr. Putin is attempting the destruction of the very foundation of international relations and the United Nations Charter: the right of nations to decide their own future, free from aggression and fear of invasion. Putin's assault on Ukraine began with a confected pretext and a flagrant violation of international law. Russia is sinking further into a sordid campaign of war crimes and unthinkable violence against civilians.

Though there can be no comparison with the assault on Ukraine, we in the United Kingdom know something of Mr. Putin’s ruthlessness. Four years ago, we endured the outcome of Russian operatives’ use of chemical weapons against people in Salisbury, England — and our allies rallied to our side. In our defense and foreign policy review, published a year ago, we warned that Russia remained the most acute security threat, and we announced the biggest increase in our defense spending since the end of the Cold War.

We also warned that the world was entering into a period of competition in which authoritarian states would test the mettle of the West in every domain. Last year’s agreement among the United Kingdom, America and Australia to help deploy nuclear submarines for the Australian Navy demonstrated our shared resolve to meet the challenges we face in the Indo-Pacific.

We have failed to learn the lessons of Russian aggression*. For too long, we have turned the other cheek. No one can say we were not warned: We saw what Russia did in Georgia in 2008, in Ukraine in 2014 and even on the streets of Salisbury. And I know from speaking to my counterparts on recent visits to Poland and Estonia just how acutely they feel this substantial threat.

It is no longer enough to express warm platitudes about the rules-based international order. We are going to have to actively defend it against a sustained attempt to rewrite the rules by force and other tools, such as economic coercion. We must restore effective deterrence in Europe, where, for too long, the very success of NATO and of America’s security guarantee has bred complacency. What happens in Europe will have profound implications worldwide.

We are pleased to see more nations beginning to grasp this hard reality. In January, the United Kingdom was among a handful of European countries sending defensive aid to Ukraine. Now more than 20 countries are part of that effort. Defense spending is going up, though it will take time for that to translate into capability.

That’s a welcome development, but it is not going to be enough on its own to save Ukraine or keep the flame of freedom alive. Russia has overwhelming force and apparently no regard for the laws of war. We need to prepare now for even darker days ahead.

So a six-point plan for Ukraine must begin- starting today!

1. First, we must mobilize an international humanitarian coalition. On Monday, I will meet the leaders of Canada and the Netherlands in London to talk about creating the widest possible coalition to expose the outrages that are taking place in Ukraine. On Tuesday, I will host the leaders of Poland, Slovakia, Hungary and the Czech Republic, now on the front line of a refugee crisis. The United Kingdom has 1,000 troops on standby for humanitarian operations, on top of 220 million pounds ($291 million) of aid. We must all work together to establish an immediate cease-fire and allow civilians safe passage, food and medical supplies.
2. Second, we must do more to help Ukraine to defend itself. More and more nations are willing to provide defensive equipment. We must act quickly to coordinate our efforts to support the government of Ukraine.
3. Third, we must maximize the economic pressure on Mr. Putin’s regime. We must go further on economic sanctions, expelling every Russian bank from SWIFT and giving our law enforcement agencies unprecedented powers to peel back the facade of dirty Russian money in London. We must go after the oligarchs. So far, the United Kingdom has imposed sanctions on more than 300 elites and entities, including Mr. Putin himself. But these measures will be insufficient unless Europe begins to wean itself off the Russian oil and gas that bankroll Mr. Putin’s war machine.
4. Fourth, no matter how long it takes, we must prevent any creeping normalization of what Russia does in Ukraine. The lesson from Russia’s invasion of Georgia in 2008, and seizure of Crimea in 2014, is that accepting the results of Russian aggression merely encourages more aggression. We cannot allow the Kremlin to bite off chunks of an independent country and inflict immense human suffering and then creep back into the fold.
5. Fifth, we should always be open to diplomacy and de-escalation, provided that the government of Ukraine has full agency in any potential settlement. There can be no new Yalta, decided over the heads of the people of Ukraine, by external powers.
6. Sixth, we must act now to strengthen Euro-Atlantic security. This includes not only bolstering NATO’s eastern flank but also supporting non-NATO European countries that are potentially at risk of Russian aggression, such as Moldova, Georgia and the nations of the western Balkans. And those that participate or enable Russian aggression, such as Belarus, will be subject to maximum sanctions. 

Ukrainians have bravely defended their country. It is their valor that has united the international community. We can’t let them down.

The human cost of modern warfare as Russian invasion sets Ukraine ablaze.

*Prime Minister Johnson is 57 years old. He obviously has no experience with World War II.  Maybe somebody can read this to Mr. Johnson:  On September 1, 1939, the German army under Adolf Hitler launched an invasion of Poland that triggered the start of World War II (though by 1939 Japan and China were already at war). The battle for Poland only lasted about a month before a Nazi victory. 

https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/invasion-of-poland-fall-1939

Open letter from Florida U.S. Representative Ted Deutch to Senator Marco Rubio

Published in the Miami Herald by Congressman Ted Deutch:

Dear Senator Rubio, "There is only one universe of facts"

Representative Ted Deutch representes Florida's 22nd Legislative District in Congress. He wrote an open leter published in the Miami Herald, whereby he calls on Florida Senator Marco Rubio to practice what he preaches and to stop ignoring the dangerousness of Trumpziim.

Senator Rubio warns about political divisiveness, yet he blinds himself to Trumpsiism’s rhetoric (and seems willing to accept "alternative facts"!)

Miami Herald reported: “Rubio warns the divided flow of information is threatening democracy in the U.S.:” Moreover, Senator Marco Rubio lamented divisions in media and culture that produce “a world where people might be neighbors and live in two separate universes.”

Unfortunately, Senator Rubio has deepened the divide by refusing to condemn the misinformation and dangerous rhetoric President Trump deployed in response to the impeachment inquiry — claims of a coup, accusations of treason, and warnings of civil war.

There is only one universe of facts.

Here is the fact:  Trump admitted that he asked the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate a political rival and then publicly doubled down on his request for foreign interference in our 2020 election.

By using the Office of the Presidency to pressure foreign leaders to assist his re-election campaign, President Trump threatens our national security and the core values that should be at the center of our foreign policy.

By suggesting that we “wait for all of the information to come forward,” Senator Rubio ignores the Trump administration’s obstruction of congressional efforts to obtain those facts.

And when Senator Rubio minimizes Trump's glaring abuse of office as “needling the press,” he carelessly suggests the president’s words have no meaning.

The problem isn’t that Americans are living in “two separate universes.”

It is that people like Senator Rubio are helping Donald Trump attempt to create one where he can never be held accountable.

From U.S. Rep. Ted Deutch,  Florida’s 22nd Congressional District

“The person who wins in this situation is Vlaldimir Putin.”- Donald Trump gives Putin gift after gift

The Russians are calling it “Ukrainegate.”

By Cynthia Hooper, an associate professor at Holy Cross, published in The Conversation.

“I never thought I’d say it, but CNN is right,” remarked one pundit on Russia 1, the county’s most-watched television station. “The person who wins in this situation is Putin.”

Commentary in Russian media about the impeachment investigation of Donald Trump in many ways echoes the language of U.S. coverage. Just a few of the jokes are different.

“Of course, if Trump is impeached, he could probably return here, if you believe the American press,” laughed one Moscow-based moderator.

As a historian who studies contemporary Russia, I have seen the pro-Kremlin Russian political and media establishment grow increasingly skilled at spinning stories to highlight U.S. political weaknesses over the past five years – since conflict between the U.S. and Russia first erupted over Russia’s annexation of a portion of Ukraine.

This latest scandal, revolving around a phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, is a gift for those wishing to advertise U.S. dysfunction without seeming to engage in heavy-handed censorship or promote obviously deceptive propaganda.

One tactic is comedy. In a catchy YouTube feature by the Kremlin-funded English-language media service RT, titled “Ukrainegate: The Next Best Thing,” an enthusiastic young woman with a British accent gives a synopsis of the impeachment investigation. In less than three minutes, she succeeds in mocking both the U.S. and Ukrainian presidents, the U.S. political system, and the ignorance and condescension of the average Democratic operative.

She begins: “Despite all the effort that went into Russiagate, the claims against Donald Trump just won’t stick. Luckily for the Democrats, there are plenty more Eastern European countries that can be used to bring down a president.”

Who is to blame?

Most Russian newspapers are echoing Republican condemnation of Democrats for allegedly concocting another scandal involving Trump after failing to find proof his campaign colluded with Russia to swing his 2016 election.

“The Democrats are making a laughingstock of themselves. If they are not careful, this could end up exposing a lot of Democratic corruption dating back to the Clinton years. 

But, at least it’s keeping them busy – otherwise they’d return to interfering in the Russian economy.” 

So remarked one panelist to general applause on “Vecher” (“Evening”), a popular prime-time talk show with pro-Putin host Vladimir Soloviev.

“The actions of U.S. Democrats are exposing their country to global ridicule,” wrote Maria Zakharova, spokesperson for Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, on Facebook.

Russian pundits are also presenting the U.S. intelligence community as highly politicized and unreliable. Many repeat variants of Trump’s own angry tweets, accusing the security organs of trying to orchestrate a coup.

At the opening of Russian Energy Week in Moscow on Oct. 2, Russian President Vladimir Putin likewise criticized their actions, which he claimed had little to do with defending rule of law.

During Watergate, Putin said, U.S. President Richard Nixon got into trouble “for eavesdropping on his political rivals. But here we have a totally different situation. Here Trump was eavesdropped on … and some kind of anonymous employee of the special services distributed that information.”

Ukraine is, of course, the country she’s referring to. “If you squint, it could even be Russia,” she says. “It’s big, it’s cold, and everyone speaks Russian … sort of.”

Trump slump

Even in defending Trump, the Russian establishment casts him as far more vulnerable than their own leader.

Putin, meanwhile, is taking a cool, professorial tone in describing the U.S. situation to international audiences.

“I was taught long ago to be aware that any of my conversations could end up published,” Putin remarked at the Energy Week panel, alluding to his past training in espionage. He claimed that, consequently, he had nothing to hide and did not oppose making public the transcripts of his meetings with Trump.

Nevertheless, even independent Russian media services generally critical of the Kremlin have pointed out that Trump, not Putin, might be the one with something to hide. 

Citing The Washington Post, internet news company Meduza reported that in one redacted meeting Trump held in 2017, with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, Trump allegedly said that “he wasn’t greatly upset about Russian meddling in the American presidential election of 2016, given that America has done the same thing in many other countries.”

Russian talk show hosts, meanwhile, are expressing incredulity at the fact that a sitting U.S. president can’t apparently manage to keep his would-be secrets secret.

As nationalist Eduard Limonov argued: “If I were in Trump’s position, I’d create my own secret service, answering only to me, and I wouldn’t drink or eat anything that wasn’t vetted by my own people.”

Even as Russian commentators defend both Trump and to some extent Ukrainian leader Zelensky, they also are taking the opportunity to remind viewers that the two men both lack political experience. Trump probably thought he and Zelensky, the star of a popular television sitcom before he became president, could be “kindred spirits, able to reminisce about promising TV careers ruined by a move into politics,” RT (Russia Today) joked.

(Putin is strange a looking man; but, nevertheless, he is looking like a global leader.)

Russian President Vladimir Putin is a strange dude but he's KGB trained. Obviously, Putin brought in the "big Kahoona", because Donald J. Trump is his prize fish.

Amid a barrage of increasingly sensational Western headlines, Russian journalists can allow the U.S. media to do their work for them. Selective quotes from U.S. coverage of Washington’s bitter political battles are held up, in the Russian press, as examples of U.S. hypocrisy and decay.

At the same time, Russian leaders are presenting themselves as statesmanlike and above the fray. Their benevolent attitude, at least for the moment, appears to extend to Ukraine, thanks to Zelensky’s apparent willingness to make peace with the Kremlin.

“I don’t envy him,” said Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, on a trip to Cuba, refusing to get drawn into a reporter’s question about whether “Zelenskiy has become Trump’s Monica Lewinsky”, but still laughing at the jest.

Meanwhile, Putin continues to position himself to look strong on the global stage. Taking questions with a panel of oil and gas executives in Moscow on Oct. 2, he joked about planning to interfere in 2020 U.S. elections.

But, speaking the next day at the Valdai Discussion Club in Sochi to an audience that included the King of Jordan and the presidents of Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan and the Philippines, Putin emphasized that today’s complex world requires global cooperation and a sense of “common responsibility.”

Taking the tone of a parent talking about a small child, Putin suggested the U.S. try hard to correct its all-consuming domestic chaos. He stressed that Moscow will be willing to work with whomever the future U.S. leader might be.

Donald Trump needs to be impeached and removed from office - an Illinois echo

An echo opinion letter published in the Illinois newspaper The News-Gazette 

Donald Trump must be removed

During the infamous “telephone call,” (traitor) Donald Trump asked the Ukraine President  Volodymyr Zelensky to “look into horrible” things done by the Vice-President Joe Biden and apparently dangled military aid as a carrot to do so (i.e. quid pro quo). If that wasn’t bad enough, Trump also brought up the conspiracy theory about “CrowdStrike.”

CrowdStrike is the cyber-security firm that said Russians hacked the Democratic National Committee’s (DNC) computer server, stole documents and gave them to WikiLeaks. These emails were then released to the public, all of which was confirmed by U.S. intelligence.

In spite of this confirmation, it appears Trump was pressuring the Ukrainian president to investigate and disavow CrowdStrike’s Russian findings.

The Mueller Report, eight U.S. intelligence agencies and both parties on Capitol Hill are all in consensus that, as Dan Coats, Trump’s former director of national intelligence, said, “Russia conducted an unprecedented influence campaign to interfere in the U.S. electoral and political process.”

And, the first sentence of the Mueller Report says “The Russian government interfered in the 2016 presidential election in sweeping and systematic fashion.”
Most recently, the acting DNI (Director of National Intelligence), during congressional testimony, said our “greatest challenge is to maintain the integrity of our election system.”

Donald Trump must be impeached!

Still, Trump has repeatedly denied Russian interference in the 2016, election, tried to obstruct the Mueller investigation a dozen times and actually defended Vladimir Putin on the national stage in Helsinki.

As he actively seeks foreign help with his (corrupt!) election campaign, Trump is obviously not defending the sovereignty of our elections nor our Constitution. 

Trump needs to be impeached and removed from office.

Dave Schwenk Urbana Illinois

Making the Ukraine an offer it can't refuse - Donald Trump: the corrupter in chief

Vanity Fair Report- White House officials "Alarmed" by Donald Trump's Ukraine Dealings, even before the call to President Volodymyr Zelensky

Donald Trump created alarm among the international diplomats and intelligence operatives when he provided a "quid pro quo" offer to Uraine's Zelensky. It seems to me, it was making Zelensky "an offer he can't refuse"....OMG

At least four national security officials registered their concerns with a White House lawyer both before and immediately after the July 25 phone call. By ALISON DURKEE

For however “perfect” as he believed it to be, Donald Trump's now-infamous phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky reportedly raised concerns among administration officials as soon as Trump hung up the phone. 

As the Washington Post reported Thursday, however, that wasn't the first time aides had raised objections about how the president was dealing with Ukraine. According to the Post, at least four national security officials were so “alarmed” by Trump's apparent attempts to pressure Ukraine to investigate his political rivals that they “raised concerns” with National Security Council legal adviser John Eisenberg both before and immediately after Trump's July 25 phone call. The officials “were not a swamp, not a deep state,” a former senior official told the Post—but were simply White House officials “who got concerned about this because this is not the way they want to see the government run.”

Concerns over Trump's Ukrainian dealings both before and after the call were widespread even among Trump's top advisers, the Post reports, including former National Security Adviser John Bolton and then-acting deputy national security adviser Charles Kupperman. 

Indeed, the alarm bells reportedly started going off after the abrupt ouster of former Ambassador to Ukraine Masha Yovanovitch, and the Post notes NSC (National Security Council) officials “were alternately baffled and alarmed” by the behavior of Rudy Giuliani, who pressed for Yovanovitch's removal and very publicly declared his plan to press Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden and son Hunter Biden. (In addition to the Biden conspiracy, Trump also “became increasingly focused” on baseless right-wing conspiracy theories regarding Ukraine's supposed role in the 2016 election.) Worry among NSC officials escalated even further after U.S. ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland—who got his job after donating $1 million to Trump's inauguration—declared that Trump had put him in charge of relations with Kiev. During a meeting with Bolton, then-U.S. special envoy to Ukraine Kurt Volker, and Zelensky aides about corruption in Ukraine's energy sector, Sondland “blurted out that there were also ‘investigations that were dropped that need to be started up again,’” the Post reports. “Bolton went ballistic” after the meeting, one official told the Post, and senior NSC officials “huddled” about their Ukraine concerns in the ensuing days. The senior officials also looped in acting U.S. Ambassador Bill Taylor, whose ensuing explosive text messages with Sondland and Volker have since been publicly released.

For as concerned as officials already were about Trump's Ukraine behavior, their concerns “soared” once Trump spoke to Zelensky. In line with previous reports, including the whistle-blower report,

the Post notes that Bolton and other senior officials were being contacted “within minutes” of the call's end by their subordinates expressing concern, and a rough transcript of the conversation was moved to a highly secure computer network meant for classified material “within hours.” “When people were listening to this in real time there were significant concerns about what was going on—alarm bells were kind of ringing,” one source told the Post. “People were trying to figure out what to do, how to get a grasp on the situation.” White House officials were reportedly seeking ways to officially report the conversation, the Post notes, which was made challenging by “the lack of a White House equivalent to the inspector general positions found at other agencies.” So they went to Eisenberg, who reportedly vowed to “follow-up.” It's not clear that Eisenberg actually took any action, though—and his lack of any clear response, the Post speculates, could have contributed to White House officials' decisions to share their concerns with the whistle-blower, a CIA employee who was first contacted by a White House official hours after Trump and Zelensky's phone call. (It is unclear whether any of the officials who spoke with Eisenberg are the same ones who spoke with the whistle-blower.)

The reports of how acute the alarm was over Trump's behavior within the White House ranks isn't great for the president as he continues to downplay the allegations and insist he was in the right—and come as damning reports concerning his and Giuliani's Ukraine scheming only continue to escalate. In addition to the fallout over Trump's phone call, new reports this week have raised concerns about how the administration handled the freezing and reinstatement of aid to Ukraine—which could suggest the existence of a “quid pro quo”—with the Washington Post reporting Thursday that political appointees intervened to freeze the aid over the objections of career staffers, who feared the move would be “improper.” The Associated Press, meanwhile, reported Thursday that Yovanovitch was fired after pushing back against Giuliani's rogue Ukraine operation, marking yet another bad story for the lawyer after his clients were arrested earlier Thursday.

While tensions are already running high in Trumpzi's world, the Trumpters and his allies also may soon face even more detrimental details coming to light, should Yovanovitch and Fiona Hill, Trump’s former top aide on Russia and Europe, testify as planned in the coming days. NBC News reports that Hill is expected to testify that Giuliani and Sondland circumvented the National Security Council to pursue their “shadow policy” on Ukraine, and her impending testimony has reportedly “stoked fear” in the White House given that she's not a Trump loyalist. If Hill, now a private citizen, is able to testify without the White House attempting to exert executive privilege over her testimony, it could also give Democrats the green light to seek testimony from other former White House officials, including Bolton—who's already been very clear that he's totally willing to trash talk his former employer.

In the file "I told you so" with tragic consequences

Echo published in The New Yorker by Jeffrey Toobin

Donald Trump’s Ukraine Scandal Has Its Roots in RussiaBoth situations stem from the President’s apparent willingness to accept political favors from foreign leaders, and his eagerness to do Putin’s bidding.

(Maine Writer- In the file of "I told you so!) 

Donald Trump and his allies nearly succeeded in consigning the Mueller report to oblivion. William Barr, Trump’s compliant Attorney General, got a jump on the process when he preëmpted the public release of the report by providing a misleading summary, which minimized the special counsel’s findings on Russian interference in the 2016 campaign. 

Trump compounded Barr’s distortions by falsely and endlessly repeating that the report found “no collusion, no obstruction.” Congressional Democrats did little for the cause of clarity by using the report as an occasion to debate the semantics of what constitutes an impeachment investigation. And Robert Mueller himself invited a certain measure of confusion by telling his story in dense, legalistic prose. Barely six months after he delivered the report, it had already faded into the mists of Trumpiana: post-Sean Spicer, pre-whistle-blower.

The whistle-blower revealed Trump’s July 25th phone call to Volodymyr Zelensky, the President of Ukraine, in which, according to the official memorandum, Trump said that he wanted a “favor,” then asked Zelensky to look into negative information concerning Joe Biden, at the time the Democratic front-runner for 2020. The request was so plainly an abuse of Presidential power—Zelensky was awaiting delivery of military aid already approved by Congress—that Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House, launched an investigation focused on impeachment, to be led by Adam Schiff, the chair of the Intelligence Committee. Mueller and Russia are out; Schiff and Ukraine are in.

But the Russia and Ukraine scandals are, in fact, one story. 

Indeed, the Trump's false denials in both of them capture the common themes: soliciting help from foreign interests for partisan gain, followed by obstruction of efforts to uncover what happened. Both, too, share roots in Vladimir Putin’s Russia. Mueller’s two indictments of Russian interests—the first involving the use of social media and the second the hacking of Democratic Party e-mails—are perhaps the most detailed chronicle ever published of foreign interference in a U.S. political campaign. Trump’s team was appreciative. When a public-relations adviser to a Russian oligarch’s family e-mailed Donald Trump, Jr., offering dirt on Hillary Clinton that was “part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump,” the candidate’s son gave a straightforward reply: “If it’s what you say I love it.”

Just two years earlier, Putin had invaded Ukraine and annexed Crimea. The government in Kiev went back and forth between leaders who wanted to accommodate Putin’s regime and others who wanted to enlist the help of the West to push back against it. 

Moreover, the political consultant of choice for the pro-Russian faction was Paul Manafort, who served as Trump’s campaign chair in the summer of 2016. As Mueller documented, Manafort passed proprietary campaign polling data to pro-Russian Ukrainians. The campaign-era Trump portrayed in the report suffered from one major limitation: he wasn’t President. He clearly welcomed Putin’s assistance, and promised a better relationship with Russia; but he was still just a businessman from New York.

The whistle-blower’s complaint is the epilogue to Mueller’s report: the coming of age of an illegal aspiring colluder.

(In the file of "I told you so") It’s important to note, as well, that, in the Ukrainian chapter, Trump has done Putin’s bidding, to the extent that he can, going so far as to embrace a discredited conspiracy theory that Ukraine, not Russia, interfered in the 2016 campaign. The rest of the U.S. government has never been as enamored of Putin as Trump is. That includes Republicans in Congress, who joined the Democrats in voting for military aid to Ukraine. Trump wants no part of conflict with Putin, but the aid package tied his hands. There was a revealing moment in his joint news conference with Zelensky at the United Nations last month. Almost as an aside, Trump said, “I really believe that President Putin would like to do something. I really hope that you and President Putin get together and can solve your problem.” Ukraine doesn’t have a “problem” with Putin—it has an invasion by Putin.

In the July 25th phone call, Trump did what he couldn’t do as a candidate: he tried to leverage the power of the Presidency to extract partisan political advantage. Texts of U.S. officials, released last week, further suggest an attempted quid pro quo. On September 1st, William Taylor, the top U.S. diplomat in Kiev, asked, “Are we now saying that security assistance and WH meeting are conditioned on investigations?” Gordon Sondland, a former Republican fund-raiser who is Trump’s Ambassador to the European Union, replied, “Call me.”
Ten times Donald Trump obstructed justice documented in the Mueller Report.- CBS News reports.

Mueller did chronicle Trump’s efforts, as President, to interfere with his investigation. Trump made repeated attempts to rein in or fire Mueller, and was saved from that misconduct only by the refusal of people around him (including Don McGahn, his White House counsel; Rob Porter, his staff secretary; and even Corey Lewandowski, his otherwise zealous onetime campaign manager) to carry out his directives. The lesson of the past few weeks is that those restraining figures have left the building, literally and figuratively. Trump is currently surrounded by people like Barr and Mike Pompeo, the Secretary of State, who are willing to debase their offices to indulge Trump’s abuse of power. The unhinged arias of Rudolph Giuliani, his personal lawyer, are a constant from the Russian chapter to the Ukrainian. In customary fashion, Trump has sought to normalize his corruption, by bragging that he could recruit even more countries, including China, to conduct political investigations for him. That’s still an abuse of power, even though he’s now doing it in public, rather than bothering to try to hide it.

Mueller famously closed his investigation without rendering a judgment on whether the President committed crimes. “We did not draw ultimate conclusions about the President’s conduct,” he wrote. The time, though, for ultimate conclusions is approaching. 

One way of looking at Trump’s evolution from candidate to President, from Mueller’s time to Schiff’s, is that his abuses are accelerating, with each unpunished act serving as a license for more. The Constitution gives Congress the tools to halt this cycle in Trump’s out-of-control Presidency. The question now is whether the people’s representatives will use them. This article appears in the print edition of the October 14, 2019, issue, with the headline “From Russia to Ukraine.”

Jeffrey Toobin has been a staff writer at The NewYorker since 1993, and the senior legal analyst for CNN since 2002.

Whistleblower Strong! What we know

"I'm sorry, but I don't want to be involved in the democratic elections of U.S.A.," Zelensky said to reporters at the U.N. General Assembly. - Reported in Newsweek

Two White House officials named in the whistle blower complaint are Rudy Giuliani (Trump stool pigeon) and Attorney General (Trumpzi!) William Barr.

Here's a brief summary of what the whistle blower complaint asserts:
A dozen White House officials were on the call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, and several later intervened to "lock down" records of the call, according to the whistleblower.
After pleasantries were exchanged, the president "used the remainder of the call to advance his personal interests," said the whistleblower, citing White House officials with direct knowledge of the call.

The document describes the whistleblower's concerns that these actions constitute a "serious or flagrant" problem, abuse, or violation of the law.

The whistleblower said these actions pose risks to U.S. national security and undermine the U.S. Government's efforts to deter and counter foreign interference in elections.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-09-26/whistle-blower-complaint-about-trump-released-to-public

Multiple White House officials were “deeply disturbed” by President Donald Trump’s call with the Ukrainian president and the administration attempted to “lock down” records of the interaction, according to a whistle-blower’s complaint made public Thursday.

The complaint from the whistle-blower, who hasn’t been publicly identified, “appears credible,” the intelligence community’s inspector general said in a separate letter released Thursday, by House Intelligence Committee.

“The White House officials are deeply disturbed by what had transpired in the phone call. They said that there was already a ‘discussion ongoing’ with White House lawyers about how to treat the call because of the likelihood, in the officials’ retelling, that they had witnessed the president abuse his office for personal gain,” the complaint says.

The whistle-blower said that senior White House officials used unusual procedures when handling the records of Trump’s July 25, conversation with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. They said it wasn’t the first time that a presidential transcript was put into a “code word-level system solely for the purpose of protecting politically sensitive -- rather than national security sensitive -- information.”