Those are all statements of support from world leaders and politician, left and right.
Trump’s allies:
Dmitry Medvedev, Putin’s deputy on the security council and former president, called the exchange “a brutal dressing-down in the Oval Office”.
He wrote: “Trump told the … clown [Zelenskyy] the truth to his face: the Kyiv regime is playing with the third world war … This is useful. But it’s not enough – we need to stop military support [to Ukraine].”
“How Trump and Vance held back from hitting that scumbag is a miracle of restraint,” wrote Maria Zakharova, Russia’s foreign ministry spokesperson, on Telegram.
There has been no comment so far from Putin, who has instead taken a backseat, likely watching the fallout unfold with satisfaction. “Putin doesn’t have to say much right now,” said a source familiar with the Kremlin’s thinking.
“It’s clear that he enjoyed the show and now believes he can push for even greater demands in Ukraine. That meeting was a bigger victory for Putin than any of his military battles since the start of the war.”
The source predicted that Putin is likely to call Trump in the coming days to argue that Zelenskyy is not someone who can be reasoned with and must be replaced – a sentiment already echoed by some in Moscow as well as Washington.
“The White House will now start looking more closely at other candidates for Ukraine’s presidency,” wrote Alexey Pushkov, a member of the upper house of the Russian parliament, on Telegram.
A Bulwark column by Will Selber (“retired spook”) takes on the Trump administration’s frenzied effort to purge the military of the miniscule number of transgender persons in the services. A casual observer might think it the greatest problem facing the Pentagon.
As a commander, Selber had to deal with a lot of personnel issues from vaccine refusal to sexual assault charges. But his training provided little guidance for how to counsel an airman who wanted to transition. Still, his primary responsibility was to ensure his unit “was in tip-top shape at all times.”
I asked, “You sure you want to do this?” The answer was yes. I must admit, I had some reservations. For old men like me, transgenderism is a foreign concept. So I read up on it. However, what really convinced me to approve the airman’s request was the airman. Imagine how much courage it took to come into a commander’s office and request such a procedure. That’s courage. And we need more of that in the military.
If these team members were otherwise met standards for service, so what if they identify as transgender? Sure their presence was awkward at first for some other unit members, Selber explains. “However, at the end of the day, despite a few quips, they were integrated into the team.”
good piece. I think the perspective of this guy–feeling awkward and uncomfortable with trans issues but coming around when meeting them personally–describes a lot of people www.thebulwark.com/p/transgende…
It’s not as if Americans are lining up to serve their country in the military these days. Patriotism for many consists of waving flags and collecting guns. Why would the Air Force drum out members and their families over their transgender identities? Selber believes “they deserved better than being summarily separated after being promised steady employment if they swore to uphold and defend the Constitution.”
Selber admits he never fully grasped “all the ins and outs of LGBTQ culture.” But then as a man could he (or I) understand what it is to be a woman? What mattered most was that LGBTQ airmen were proud to serve their country.
Adaptation to change takes time. It’s awkward. It was awkward for some to integrate schools or to integrate women into combat roles. But it’s done. Mostly.
I’m reminded of a retort by comedian John Fugelsang to people’s squeamishness about others’ sexual preference and identity. Roughly: In America, your right not to feel icky does not cancel others’ right to love who they love or be who they are.
I reflect regularly on a Hugo- and Nebula-winning science fiction novel I read in high school. For those unfamiliar with The Left Hand of Darkness:
The novel follows the story of Genly Ai, a human native of Terra, who is sent to the planet of Gethen as an envoy of the Ekumen, a loose confederation of planets. Ai’s mission is to persuade the nations of Gethen to join the Ekumen, but he is stymied by a lack of understanding of their culture. Individuals on Gethen are ambisexual, with no fixed sex; this has a strong influence on the culture of the planet, and creates a barrier of understanding for Ai.
Do Genthians make a Terran feel somewhat icky? Get over it. Or at least try.
This passage from the novel’s opening is the one that has stuck with me all these years:
“The Gethenians do not see one another as men or women. This is almost impossible for our imaginations to accept. After all, what is the first question we ask about a newborn baby? ….there is no division of humanity into strong and weak halves, protected/ protective. One is respected and judged only as a human being. You cannot cast a Gethnian in the role of Man or Woman, while adopting towards ‘him’ a corresponding role dependant on your expectations of the interactions between persons of the same or oppositve sex. It is an appalling experience for a Terran ” ― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness
Russian dissident Gary Kasparov spoke at the Principles First conference in Washington last weekend, writes Michael Tomasky. Kasparov “uttered a very simple line that chilled the thousand or so people in the room: ‘The United States has changed teams.’ ”
The hell it has. I resent being told the United States of America switched sides because the White House is in the grip of a band of lawless sociopaths.
Donald Trump’s country-wreckers have changed teams, certainly. Most of the Republican upper echelons has. Many MAGA foot soldiers have as well. How many have aligned with Vladimir Putin’s “might makes right” geopolitics simply because Trump has is unclear. How many would snap out of it after he’s gone is even less clear.
The lean toward Russia on the Christian right comes from the ludicrous proposition that there people live under biblical law because the nation is heavily white and Putin is hostile to LGBT people. One conservative Christian couple from Canada moved to Russia to be free from “LGBT ideology” and quickly found themselves free from being free.
What is clear after yesterday’s world-shaking, Oval Office shouting match is that Trump and J.D. Vance are all in on Vladimir Putin’s brand of autocracy. “[W]elcome to the Putinization of America, comrade!” Kasparov wrote in The Atlantic Friday morning before the fireworks:
Imitation and servility aren’t the same thing. Trump and Musk could attempt to undermine American democracy and create a Russian-style power vertical without kowtowing to Putin or abandoning Ukraine. But they haven’t. And while imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, affinity and envy aren’t enough to explain the abruptness and totality of the Trump administration’s adoption of every Russian position. On Monday, the anniversary of Russia’s all-out invasion, the United States even joined Russia in voting against a United Nations resolution condemning Russia’s war against Ukraine.
Yesterday’s “appalling spectacle” [timestamp 9:03] did not arrive out of thin air.
If anyone doubted that before this horrifying exchange Friday, it surely can’t be doubted now. You had the president of Ukraine who, whatever his flaws, was representing a democracy—a struggling and imperfect democracy, for sure, but one that was invaded by a gangster regime; a country of 38 million people ravaged by a country of 144 million. He came to Washington willing to meet with a president whom he knows to be hostile but ready to sign a totally one-sided deal giving that president control over his country’s mineral rights. That he decided not to sit there in silence as lies were being told about him and the nature of Putin’s invasion was renamed impertinence. And in that moment, about three minutes and change into the tape linked to above, the United States of America symbolically and visibly switched from being the leader of the free world to being a partner of the global authoritarian axis.
The New York Times’ reliably wrong Peter Baker described the “verbal brawl in the Oval Office” as Trump coming to Putin’s defense over Zelensky’s lack of diplomatic finesse:
But what was particularly striking in their exchange was how much Mr. Trump seemed insulted on Mr. Putin’s behalf. He has long been an open admirer of Mr. Putin and has rarely offered any criticism of his own. Just this week, he called Mr. Putin “smart” and “cunning,” and declined to call him a dictator even after calling Mr. Zelensky that.
“You want me to say really terrible things about Putin and then say, ‘Hi, Vladimir, how are we doing on the deal?’” Mr. Trump told Mr. Zelensky on Friday. “It doesn’t work that way.”
He did not explain why it was OK to say terrible things to Mr. Zelensky while pursuing a deal. Instead, he portrayed the Ukrainian leader as unreasonably distrustful of Mr. Putin, who has broken multiple agreements guaranteeing Ukrainian sovereignty and calling for cease-fires and now faces an international arrest warrant for war crimes.
Asked by a reporter what he would do if Putin breaks a ceasefire, Trump haughtily replied that it had happened in the past because Putin didn’t respect the U.S. president. Then came this weird ramble:
They broke it with Biden because Biden, they didn’t respect him, they didn’t respect Obama. They respect me. Let me tell you, Putin went through a hell of a lot with me. He went through a phony witch hunt where they used him and Russia—Russia, Russia, Russia, you ever hear of that deal? That was a phony—that was a phony Hunter Biden, Joe Biden scam. Hillary Clinton, shifty Adam Schiff, it was a Democrat scam. And he had to go through that. And he did go through it and we didn’t end up in a war. He went through it, he was accused of all that stuff—he had nothing to do with it. It came out of Hunter Biden’s bathroom. It came out of Hunter Biden’s bedroom. It was disgusting. And then they said, ‘Oh, oh, the laptop from hell was made by Russia.’ The 51 agents, the whole thing was a scam, and he had to put up with that. He was being accused of all that stuff.
Trump taking offense on Putin’s behalf, as Baker sees it, appear more pathological from where I sit. Trump identifies with Putin. He looks up to Putin. The coward fantasizes about being like Putin: a strongman. He wants to be accepted in the exclusive club of world autocrats who wouldn’t have an easily manipulated whiner like him as a member.
The wrongs Trump rattled off as done to Putin were done to Trump himself. Trump was not taking offense on Putin’s behalf. Trump saw Zelensky’s listing of Putin’s crimes as an attack on himself. Because in Trump’s fractured mind, he and his BFF are one in the same. Inseparable.
We are in the grip of a madman. Madmen, to be accurate. Sociopaths, megalomaniacs, career grifters, and anti-democracy tech oligarchs. How we purge ourselves of them and heal our alliances, I don’t know.
But I cannot believe real Real Americans™ have gone autocrat or worse. There are more of us than there are of them. We’d best start acting like it. In numbers.
First-time mama Shala welcomed two sloth bear cubs in early December, and after several weeks bonding in their private den, the shaggy-haired sweethearts are making their debut. pic.twitter.com/1q3oSofOXF
First-time mama Shala welcomed two sloth bear cubs in early December, and after several weeks bonding in their private den, the shaggy-haired sweethearts are making their debut.
Sloth bears Melursus ursinus live in hot, dry grasslands and forests in Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal and Sri Lanka. They have distinctive chevron-shaped or U-shaped chest markings, a long muzzle (longer than that of other bears) with an elongated snout, lips that can form a tube shape, allowing them to feed by noisily suctioning ants and termites right out of their nest mounds, nostrils that they can close when feeding on termites and ants (to avoid inhaling dirt), and prominent ears covered in long hair.
Sloth bears’ upper incisor teeth are effectively missing, which helps them to more easily vacuum up insects. In the wild, most of a sloth bear’s diet consists of ants and termites, although they also eat fruit, vegetation, flowers, honey, sugarcane, and sometimes grubs, eggs, and carrion. In their native habitats, sloth bears play an important role in their environment, reseeding forests and grassland areas by distributing seeds they eat, in their scat.
The San Diego Zoo has a long history with sloth bears, first welcoming two Indian sloth bears in 1940, and later, in 1979, becoming the first Zoo in North America to exhibit Sri Lankan sloth bears. The first Sri Lankan sloth bear cub ever born and raised in the Western Hemisphere was born at the Zoo in 1985, and many other sloth bears have called the Zoo home in the more recent past, including a bear named Kenny, who could imitate one of the keepers making a “raspberry” sound as a greeting.
It will be interesting to see how people interpret today’s events in the oval office with Zelensky.
Overall, 30% of American adults say the U.S. is providing too much support to Ukraine in its war with Russia. That’s up slightly from 27% in November 2024, just after the U.S. presidential election. At the same time, the share of adults who believe the U.S. is not providing enough support to Ukraine has increased slightly: 22% say this, up from 18% in November. These shifts mean that U.S. opinion about support for Ukraine is now closer to preelection levels.
About one-in-five Americans (23%) say the level of U.S. support for Ukraine is about right, down slightly from 25% in November. Another 24% say they are not sure, down from 29% over the same period.
That was three weeks ago. I suspect that it won’t change substantially due to today’s events. My only hope is that the viral clip of Trump ranting incoherently about Hunter Biden’s bathroom breaks through the cacophony and brings a few of those people who weren’t sure over to the right side. Not that it matters. This country is now a Russian ally whether we like it or not.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth last week ordered U.S. Cyber Command to stand down from all planning against Russia, including offensive digital actions, according to three people familiar with the matter.
Hegseth gave the instruction to Cyber Command chief Gen. Timothy Haugh, who then informed the organization’s outgoing director of operations, Marine Corps Maj. Gen. Ryan Heritage, of the new guidance, according to these people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the matter’s sensitivity.
The order does not apply to the National Security Agency, which Haugh also leads, or its signals intelligence work targeting Russia, the sources said.
U.S. negotiators pressing Kyiv for access to Ukraine’s critical minerals have raised the possibility of cutting the country’s access to Elon Musk’s vital Starlink satellite internet system, three sources familiar with the matter told Reuters.
Ukraine’s continued access to SpaceX-owned Starlink was brought up in discussions between U.S. and Ukrainian officials after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy turned down an initial proposal from U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, the sources said.
Starlink provides crucial internet connectivity to war-torn Ukraine and its military.
The issue was raised again on Thursday during meetings between Keith Kellogg, the U.S. special Ukraine envoy, and Zelenskiy, said one of the sources, who was briefed on the talks.
During the meeting, Ukraine was told it faced imminent shutoff of the service if it did not reach a deal on critical minerals, said the source, who requested anonymity to discuss closed negotiations.
“Ukraine runs on Starlink. They consider it their North Star,” said the source. “Losing Starlink … would be a massive blow.”
Foreign adversaries including Russia and China have recently directed their intelligence services to ramp up recruiting of US federal employees working in national security, targeting those who have been fired or feel they could be soon, according to four people familiar with recent US intelligence on the issue.
We are barely a month into the second presidential term of Donald Trump and he has made his top priorities clear: the destruction of America’s government and influence and the preservation of Russia’s.
Unleashing Elon Musk and his DOGE cadres on the federal government, menacing Canada and European allies, and embracing Vladimir Putin’s wish list for Ukraine and beyond are not unrelated. These moves are all strategic elements of a plan that is familiar to any student of the rise and fall of democracies, especially the “fall” part.
The sequence is painfully familiar to me personally, because I marched in the streets as it played out in Russia at the start of the 21st century. With ruthless consistency, and the tacit approval of Western leaders, Putin and his oligarch supporters used his fair-ishly elected power to make sure that elections in Russia would never matter again.
Of course, American institutions and traditions are far stronger than Russia’s fragile post-Soviet democracy was when Putin took over from Boris Yeltsin, who had already done his share of damage before anointing the former KGB lieutenant colonel to be his successor in 1999. But those who dismissed my warnings that yes, it can happen here at the start of Trump’s first term, in 2017, got quieter after the insurrection on January 6, 2021, and are almost silent now.
Trump’s personal affinity for dictators was apparent early on. His praise for Putin and other elected leaders turned strongmen, such as Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, was tinged with undisguised envy. No feisty parliament to wrangle. The free press turned into a propaganda machine for the administration. The justice system unleashed against the opposition. Elections staged only for show. What’s not to like?
We are now full-fledged Russian allies and they know it:
There was a massive blow up in the oval office today between Trump, Zelensky and JD Vance. The so-called “deal” for the minerals is off and Zelensky ended up leaving the White House. Trump says that he won’t be welcome until he wants peace. By that he means that he won’t be welcome until he’s willing to grovel before him. I don’t think that’s going to happen.
The blow up happened when Vance said Zelensky hasn’t thanked America.
"You've gotta be more thankful" — remarkable scenes out of the White House as Trump and JD Vance team up to do Putin's bidding and demean Zelenskyy pic.twitter.com/wjp8UfqN0G
Trump didn’t just yell at Zelensky and put on a big show of pretend dominance. It’s clear that he wants to abandon Ukraine, he hasn’t made a secret of it, and he made clear what side he is on today:
Trump to a reporter who asks him about Russia breaking a ceasefire: "What if a bomb drops on your head right now … Putin went through a hell of a lot with me. He went through a phony witch hunt." pic.twitter.com/7Z1IdNvMcr
It wasn’t about thanking America. It was about groveling before Dear Leader and licking his boots on national TV. It was a set-up — Vance was primed to make this demand and Trump was prepared to demean and humiliate Zelensky. Unfortunately for them, Zelensky didn’t play along the way they wanted him to.
Keep in mind that the mineral deal he was there to sign was an empty deal that meant nothing. There was no security guarantee and the minerals are worth very little. Zelensky was only going to get a tiny bit of daylight solely on the basis of how eagerly he sucked Trump’s… toes in front of the whole world. It was essentially meaningless.
As I wrote earlier this week, the post war world order is dead and NATO is almost certainly gone for all intents and purposes. . The European countries will now arm up to defend themselves and that may very well be nuclear. Great stuff.
He continues:
The US is now on the side of the big, autocratic, nationalist countries against the democracies. A world of transaction, drained of values, in which might makes right if you are big and the small are expected to capitulate.
This mirrors how Trump governs at home. If you believe in any values proposition, if you are vulnerable in any way, if you don’t serve a particular interest of his, you aren’t just disposable – you are the enemy.
Capitulation does not work against that mindset. You give a pound of flesh, he will try to take five. You have to know what you stand for and who stands with you. Ukraine and Europe need to determine how they can survive not only without the US, but with the US at best neutral at worst adversarial.
We have switched sides. It’s done. We have to adjust.
By the way, I happened to be doing my monthly hit on Majority Report when this came down today. Yikes:
“The chaos that is reigning right now is causing everyone to sit on their hands.”
That’s Citadel CEO Ken Griffin, ON Semiconductor CEO Hassane El-Khoury, Franklin Templeton CEO Jenny Johnson, and Nasdaq Private Market CEO Tom Callahan on the world of Donald Trump right now. Their comments over the past week capture a growing disquiet among business leaders, a month into a presidency that many of them had cheered.
“What decision do you make? Do you want to go left or right?” El-Khoury told Semafor in an interview this week. “Are we going to grow the business? Well, I don’t know. Are there tariffs or not?” (Since that interview, Trump threatened to double his own proposed 10% tariffs on China and put a 25% levy on European goods.)
CEO optimism is fading as Trump pushes ahead with trade restrictions, while business-friendly deregulation has yet to materialize. US consumer confidence in January recorded its biggest one-month decline since November 2023. The US stock market, long Trump’s preferred proxy for economic might, is lower than it was before his inauguration, trailing major indexes in Europe, China, Mexico, and Canada — all targets of the president’s planned tariffs.
Still, they aren’t exactly shouting it from the rooftops. Maybe when the tariffs hit and unemployment and inflation jump they’ll get a little bit more openly agitated? It won’t be long before we can see. They certainly are proving one thing — they don’t give a damn about the country.
A mystery disease in Congo has killed over 50 people—half within 48 hours of getting sick and it’s spreading rapidly.
We don’t need no stinking NIH or CDC or WHO. We’re done with all that. Don’t worry, Donald Trump and Bobby Jr will lead us through it. They’re geniuses. Eat some organic grapes and drink a Diet Coke. You’ll be fine.
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