“Sooner or later the [malignant] narcissist cannibalizes his own power base and treats as enemies his most rabid lackeys and toadies. People shrug and say, ‘But aren’t all politicians narcissistic? So what? Who cares?’ Well, the answer is a resounding no. Not all politicians are malignant narcissists.”
Sam Vaknin[i]
Who is the gangster we are all looking for? The left thinks it is Trump. The right thinks it is Zelenskyy. In the recent controversy over Ukrainian President Volodymir Zelenskyy’s visit to the Oval Office, MAGA conservatives have heartily attacked Zelenskyy as evidenced by Dennis Prager’s Facebook post, where he asked, “What do you think about Zelenskyy in the Oval Office today? Does he owe Trump and America an apology?”
Prager’s first respondent wrote: “[Zelenskyy] was dead wrong in how he acted. He should have kept his mouth shut while the press was there.” Another respondent wrote that Zelenskyy had been bullied and “deserved better.” Another wrote that “Zelenskyy … [was] Russia 2.0 … with half the corruption.” Others replied that Zelenskyy had ruined his reputation, that he did not understand there was “a new sheriff in town,” that the Ukrainian leader was “arrogant and overly confident.”
Conservative voters, of course, tend to follow their leaders. Senator Lindsay Graham, formerly an enthusiastic supporter of Ukraine, told reporters that Zelenskyy “either needs to resign and send somebody over that we can do business with, or he needs to change.” Graham added, “I have never been more proud of the president. I was very proud of J.D. Vance standing up for our country.” House speaker Mike Johnson said that Zelenskyy “needs to come to his senses and come back to the table in gratitude or someone else needs to lead the country….” Secretary of State Marco Rubio, against the advice of many Senate colleagues, fiercely defended President Trump’s behavior during Zelenskyy’s visit, saying, “What Zelenskyy did, unfortunately, is that he found every opportunity to ‘Ukraine-splain’ on every issue….”
How could any American of good will be offended that Zelenskyy spoke on behalf of his country to the press? And yet, Vice President J.D. Vance, who ranks below the Ukrainian president, publicly scolded the Ukrainian about answering press questions. Vance later glorified this scolding in an interview on Fox News.
A Psychological Interlude
Something is not right here. Somebody is not right. Who is the gangster we are all looking for? Is it really Zelenskyy? Or is it J.D. Vance? Perhaps we are not looking for a gangster at all. Perhaps we are looking for a psychological type. Professor Sam Vaknin, after studying over 600 hours of Donald Trump videos and reading everything Trump has written, recently made the following statement: “by now I am convinced that Trump is a malignant narcissist.” This view, he added, “is shared by dozens of mental health professionals who went on public record with their analysis of his mental infirmity.”[ii] According to Vaknin, “Trump is dangerous, antisocial, destructive, vindictive, sadistic, and hyper-vigilant.”[iii]
Although Vaknin is left-of-center, he has previously commented on President Barack Obama’s narcissism. This suggests that Vaknin is not politically motivated in his analysis. Some might interject, at this point, that psychology is nonsense; and perhaps it is, indeed. But let us take a look all the same, if only to test our prejudices. According to Vaknin, Trump is not open to good advice. This is because “Trump regards himself as omniscient. In other words, he knows it all. He is all-knowing. He is an authority on anything and everything, from aesthetics to ethics. Trump lacks intellectual curiosity simply because he knows everything. Why would he be curious and what would he be curious about?”[iv]
Unfortunately, this description of Trump has been confirmed by journalistic sources who say that Trump does not always care to read his daily briefing papers. He holds to a small coterie of “advisors.” But these may not be advisors in the usual sense. According to Vaknin, “[Trump] regards outside advice as both superfluous and injurious. Accepting advice implies that you are less than perfect, and Trump is perfect. Trump is likely to surround himself with timid yes-men and sycophantic acolytes. He is likely to generate an impregnable echo-chamber.”[v]
Indeed, there is something like an echo-chamber around Trump. This echo-chamber includes Senator Lindsay Graham, House Speaker Mike Johnson, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and various pundits from Ann Coulter to Alex Jones. The Trump Revolution suddenly has a peculiar, historically familiar smell. Perhaps it is Chanel Number 33, with a whiff of Rightwing Jacobin. It contains, as well, a distillation of Jacques Mallet du Pan’s comment: “like Saturn, the Revolution devours its children….”
“Aiming to disavow his own fragility,” suggested Vaknin, “and the indisputable fact that his public persona is nothing but a fabrication, Trump ostentatiously … abhors the weak, the meek, losers … and anyone else who might remind him by their very existence of how far from perfect and brilliant he is.” Vaknin added that “the public trump is about … resentment, rage, envy, and other negative emotions because he is mercilessly driven by these very demons internally.”[vi]
The Gangster
Exhibit One: The 28 February Oval Office meeting between Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymir Zelenskyy. How did the meeting begin? It was entirely routine. Trump fielded questions while the Ukrainian Head of State described the horrors visited upon his country by Moscow: kidnapped and murdered children, abused Ukrainian prisoners of war, etc. Zelenskyy asked for security guarantees, saying that he would sign the preliminary agreement but hoped for American protection in the future. There was, of course, a question about President Zelenskyy’s attire. The room broke into mocking laughter. Then came a question from a Polish journalist, prompting Zelenskyy to explain that Putin had violated many ceasefires. This was too much for Vice President J.D. Vance, who talked over the Ukrainian Head of State, saying Zelenskyy’s was disrespectful for “litigating” the question of Putin’s trustworthiness in front of the American people.
Vice President Vance attacked President Zelenskyy for forcible conscription in wartime. In responding to this, Zelenskyy told Vance to come to Ukraine and see the country’s difficulties himself. Then Vance accused Zelenskyy of operating a “propaganda tour.” Vance again charged Zelenskyy with being disrespectful, and of “attacking this administration that is trying to save your country.”
This is surreal. Zelenskyy made no attack on the administration, as the record shows; but Vance was determined to show Zelenskyy in a bad light. The vice president asked whether Zelenskyy denied having problems in his country. Taken aback by this storm of accusations, Ukraine’s president replied, “I will answer…. Let’s start from the beginning. First of all, during the war, everybody has problems. Even you; but you have nice oceans; but you don’t [feel the problem] now’ but you will feel it in the future—”
Trump interrupted with, “You don’t know that. You don’t know that.” Zelenskyy attempted to continue by saying, “God bless, God bless, you will not have a war.” Trump could not tolerate this and talked over the Ukrainian, “Don’t tell us what we’re going to feel.” Trump evidently regarded Zelenskyy’s advice as “superfluous and injurious.” He wagged his finger at Zelenskyy and said, “You’re in no position to dictate what we’re going to feel.”
Zelenskyy was astonished at Trump’s suggestion that he was dictating to the American president. Zelenskyy denied dictation, but Trump cut him off. “We’re going to feel very good and very strong,” said Trump. “You’re right now not in a very good position. You’ve allowed yourself to be in a very bad position.” As the scene unfolded, Trump cut Zelenskyy off again, saying, “You’re not in a position. You don’t have the cards right now.”
The Ukrainian president replied emphatically, “I’m not playing cards!” And here we reach the culminating point of the most terrible scene in American diplomatic history. Trump then countered Zelenskyy’s reply: “You are playing cards. You are gambling with the lives of millions of people. You are gambling with World War III.”
What is wrong with Trump? The Russians are threatening World War III, not the Ukrainians. The Russians started the war by annexing Ukrainian territory and launching a massive invasion. Is it possible that Trump believes wars are the fault of those who stand against military aggression? Is Ukraine morally obligated to surrender to save American from the danger of Russian nuclear missiles?
At this point in our analysis, what are we to make of Trump’s attitude toward the victim as opposed to the aggressor? Looking back a few days, Trump voted with Russia and North Korea against Ukraine in the United Nations. And Trump demanded that Zelenskyy resign his presidency without demanding that Putin resign his. Trump also called Zelenskyy a dictator without calling Putin a dictator. And yet, Trump claims he is a “neutral” mediator. Does this look like neutrality? Or is Trump tilting toward Russia?
“You are gambling with World War III,” repeated Trump. “And what you are doing is very disrespectful to this country.” Trump pointed to the ground. In response, “Zelenskyy said, “I have respect for you.” But then Vice President Vance inserted himself again by asking the Ukrainian: “Have you said, ‘thank you’ once?”
To the charge of ingratitude Zelensky tried to defend himself, but Trump talked over Zelenskyy and shut him up, telling the Ukrainian president that he had done enough talking. “You have a damned good chance of coming out of this okay because of us!” Trump declared. To this the Ukrainian replied, “I said thank you.” Trump turned to his audience and said, “It’s going to be very hard to do business like this, I tell you.” Then the American vice president said something about Zelenskyy being wrong. He said, “We know you are wrong.”
TRUMP: You got to be thankful.
ZELENSKYY: I am thankful.
TRUMP: You don’t have the cards. People are dying….
ZELENSKYY: Please, Mr. President –
TRUMP [making a face imitating Zelensky]: You tell us, ‘I don’t want a ceasefire.’ I tell you to take it so the bullets stop flying and your men stop dying.
ZELENSKYY: Of course we want to stop the war, but I said to you … ask our people what they think of a ceasefire.
TRUMP: Without us you don’t have any cards. [Turning the audience again] It’s going to be a tough deal to make because the attitudes have to change.
A reporter then asked if Trump could trust Putin. Trump dismissed the question as a ridiculous “what if?” He is immune to a double cross in the same way Superman is impervious to bullets. Trump might otherwise be a man without qualities, but everyone will agree that he impervious to certain things, like reality.[vii] Being impervious and impenetrable is Trump’s superpower, along with being fearless and dogged. His followers believe in Trump’s mastery of the Great Game. Vaknin argued, “[This] is a form of collective regression to toddler level [thinking], with Trump in the role of the omniscient, omnipotent father. In abnormal psychology this is called ‘shared psychosis.’ The members of the cult deploy a host of primitive, infantile psychological defense mechanisms…”[viii]
There, in that Oval Officer meeting, Trump was doing everything to shake off America’s allies and join up with America’s enemies. He trusts Putin, he distrusts Ukraine. He distrusts Europe. According to Vaknin, Trump’s followers are possessed by a “malignant optimism founded not in reality, but in idealization.” At the end of this most extraordinary meeting, President Trump said that he allowed the rancorous discussion to drag on because it was “good television.” But there was nothing good about it, unless you were Vladimir Putin.
Zelenskyy was then kicked out of the White House. He was not allowed to sign the agreement he had come to sign. Did Trump intend for Zelenskyy to sign that document in the first place? An analytical mind, going over events carefully, has to wonder. Perhaps the best characterization of the 28 February meeting was in Cormac Smith’s Thursday interview with Jonathan Fink:
“People can say [about Zelenskyy], maybe he should have worn a suit [to the Oval Office]. This is ridiculous. This was an ambush, and as a former advisor [to the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry], I can sit there with hindsight and say, ‘Mr. President [Zelenskyy], this is how you should have handled it.’ I don’t believe it would have made the slightest difference how Zelenskyy dressed, or what he said. I think this was an ambush, and they were out to get a particular result out of it. They were out to humiliate him. They wanted to portray this as master/slave. This broke every rule of diplomacy, of good manners, of hospitality. Let us bring this down to basic norms. You do not invite an important guest to your house and treat him in the way that the Americans Treated Volodymir Zelenskyy on Friday night. It was absolutely gut-wrenchingly disgusting, and we need to remember that.”
Trump has made a deep wound in the West. The danger of a Third World War is now greatly intensified. It is disheartening that a majority of U.S. Senators failed to condemn President Trump’s mistreatment of Zelenskyy. It is disappointing that Congress has not voted to censure this disgraceful performance. It is disappointing that Fox News congratulated the President on his cynical bad manners. And, finally, there is no surprise that Russia is making fresh demands in the wake of Friday’s meeting. What is likely, now, is that tens of thousands of innocent Ukrainians will be slaughtered. If any man wants to say, “So what?” – let this be his epitaph, ringing in his ears all the way to Hell. “So what? So what? So what?” Again, Cormac Smith echoed my own thoughts when he said,
“This is as black and white as it comes. This is about right and wrong. You do not treat somebody [like this] … when … the president of 40 million people … [with] the ravages he has seen on his people, with over 140,000 war crimes now recorded and being investigated … had the temerity to challenge President Trump and Vice President Vance, and to say, ‘But don’t you know that Putin does not keep his word?’ And he was attacked by Vance for being disrespectful in litigating this in front of the American people. We need to give our head a little wobble. This is not normal. Speaking to President Zelenskyy as if he was a naughty child, and telling him, ‘You are not grateful enough.’”
Sean Hannity interviewed Vice President Vance on Fox about last Friday’s meeting with Zelenskyy. Vance joked and said it was “great TV.” They both laughed. Why were they laughing? The event was a disgrace. What kind of idiots laugh at their own disgraceful behavior as if it were a wonderful thing. Clowns laugh at their own disgrace. Listen carefully: “For the first 45 minutes the president bent over backwards to be kind and gracious to Zelenskyy, even when Zelenskyy was kind of needling him … saying things I thought were untrue….”
What things did Zelenskyy say that were untrue? About Putin being a murderer and a treaty-breaker? Incredibly, Vance said that Trump was “trying to be diplomatic….” It was so hard, of course, but Trump had to “try.” One tries and tries so hard to be diplomatic. But that annoying little Ukrainian was opening his mouth.
A Polish journalist asked a question, and it set Zelenskyy off, you see…. Vance said, “Then I went back at him; and what I tried [so hard] to do originally was actually try [so hard] to diffuse the situation a little bit…. Let’s try [and try and try but fail] to have this conversation in private, and then….” As if he were recounting a brave exploit before the television cameras, Vance became giddy. How brave we were. How brilliant I was. How amazing it all turned out. Yes. Keep trying to be diplomatic. And then, said Vance, President Trump decided to let the American people see what this discussion was all about, to expose Zelenskyy’s badness. Vance continued:
“I think there was a sense of disrespect, a sense of entitlement, and most importantly – look, we can look past all that stuff; but the president has set a very clear goal for his administration. He wants the killing to stop. And … I really don’t care what President Zelenskyy says about me or anybody else, but he showed a clear unwillingness to engage in the peace process that President Trump has set. It is the policy of the American people and their president.”
Vance ended his interview with an impassioned plea for diplomacy. “We used to believe in diplomacy” – and yet, ironically, the interaction he retold was the most undiplomatic in American history. Undiplomacy, if ever there was such a word, was Vance’s watchword; for when he speaks the word “diplomacy” he means the exact opposite. And when he says he was “trying” he meant that he really was not trying. All the key words and phrases of this man are inverted or perverted or turned upside-down. Ripping apart the victim of aggression, like a hyena getting his scraps. Ah, but it is all about the “beautiful boys.” What a bad smell such phrases take on at last! And what about the boys who will die when the Chinese land in California, or come flooding in from Canada and Mexico? — after our power grid is knocked out and our oil refineries are nuked, and our fleets sink as radioactive waste from the hypersonic missile strikes? No help from Canada or Europe, I suppose. No encouragement from Japan either. We gave them all up, remember? We pushed them over, we undermined them, we called our allies useless. Trump said they could not defend us. Instead, let us make Putin our friend. To Hell with the others. All of it in the name of “the beautiful boys” that must be saved. It is a road is paved with good intentions, except there are no good intentions in it. According to the vice president, Zelenskyy tried to get back into a meeting with Trump that evening. He apparently wanted to sign the deal. But President Trump was not interested. Why? According to Vance, the reason was Zelenskyy’s unwillingness to discuss a peaceful settlement. Read peaceful surrender. Why won’t Trump throw him a bone? Why not an itty witty guarantee to Ukraine? Just a tiny one. “You can’t just fund the war forever,” said Vance. Forever? Is that the issue? Is that why we are cutting Ukraine off? Because of FOREVER?
The intention is clear. President Trump intends to expose Ukraine to destruction. He is cooperating with the genocidal enemy of Europe and America. The real truth is that Russia, far more than America, cannot continue forever. Russia cannot carry on this war another year. Secretary Marco Rubio intimated as much, and for that slipup, rumor has it that Rubio is being excluded from White House strategy meetings.[ix] Meanwhile, Russia prepares to invade the Baltic States and Poland. NATO is next and Trump does not care.
Here, also, we discover why Trump wants to exclude Europe from the peace talks. Because Europe is on Russia’s menu. Trump knows this. So he excludes Europe from the peace in Ukraine. He betrays Europe. He sells them for Putin’s favor. Yet Europe, like Japan, has trusted in the good faith of the United States, of the American people. Yet so many of those people watched and listened to the disgraceful anti-Ukrainian broadcasts of Laura Ingraham and Jesse Watters. If Trump can force Ukraine into effectively surrendering, with the fig leaf of new elections, then Trump can give Moscow a great gift and, in Trump’s words, “It will be Europe’s problem.” But after Europe’s problem comes America’s problem. Each ally, struck off the list, brings America closer to isolation and destruction. The missiles from Russia are ready. The troops are standing by in China. Beijing’s long-range transports were not intended for a short-range trip to Taiwan. Beijing’s goal lies beyond the first and second island chains. The next great war, say the Chinese strategists, will be fought in North America.
And why does Trump tell the lies that he tells? Why deceive the American people by saying the United States has spent $350 billion in Ukraine? Yet the Congressional Record shows that Congress has voted on five bills for Ukraine totaling $175 billion over three years. And a good portion of that money never left the United States.[x] Why does Trump lie about these fundamental numbers? Because he does not want Europe interfering in his project of surrendering Ukraine.
Since last Friday’s fiasco Trump has suspended the dispatch of American military supplies to Ukraine. He stopped sharing intelligence with the Ukrainians and asked the British to stop their intelligence sharing. At the same time Trump is preparing to remove sanctions on Russia. In other words, Trump is giving away the West’s bargaining chips before the Ukrainians have sat down to negotiate.
Obviously, Trump’s plan is to make Russia into America’s ally against China. This would be a difficult maneuver even if it made sense; but it makes no sense whatsoever. As Zelenskyy has said, the Kremlin cannot be trusted. But MAGA believes in their god and his “art of the deal.” Trump is playing eight-dimensional chess, they say. The truth is, Trump is not a normal person, and his followers are participating in his psychopathy. Is any of this innocent, in a moral sense? Think carefully. Trump is not in a clinic, and we are not psychiatrists seeking to cure him. The setting is completely different. Instead of sitting in a madhouse Trump sits in the White House. Ironically, Sam Vaknin admits, however reluctantly, that “narcissism” might simply be another word for “evil.”
Radical Stupidity
The political philosopher Eric Voegelin suggested that evil is closely related to something he called “radical stupidity.” After all, evil is the most radical form of stupidity. Voegelin takes great pains to explain how this works. Man is a very special kind of being. Owing to his nature, men can choose not to be man. In fact, he says, all men are not fully man. Aristotle wrote about this problem, pointing to Hesiod. Voegelin explained: “Hesiod classifies men into three groups: First … [the man] who himself considers or thinks through all things, who can advise himself…. The second type is [one] … who listens to the best. [Then comes the useless man] who neither thinks … nor listens….”[xi]
According to Voegelin, Aristotle said the man “in full possession of freedom is the man who has authority and lets himself be led by his own” intellect. “Then there are the others, some who … listen when a wiser man tells them what is right and what is wrong.” And then there are those, in Aristotle’s reckoning, who are “slaves by nature.” These are the “useless men” in Hesiod’s formulation. Voegelin tells us that useless men form “a kind of social substratum,” though they exist “at all levels of society up to its highest ranks, including pastors, prelates, generals, industrialists, and so on.” They are everywhere, at every level. Voegelin says these “natural slaves” or “useless men” are best understood as “the rabble.” He wrote, “There are men who are rabble in the sense that they neither have the authority of spirit or reason, nor are they able to respond to reason or spirit….”[xii]
This explains Trump. It explains Vance. It explains the American left and right today. Every ideologist is rabble. Rabble one and all. They fall from one foolishness into another. They cannot think. They cannot take good advice. They do not see with their eyes or hear with their ears but apprehend with hollow heads filled with straw. What Voegelin finds “extremely difficult to understand,” in this context, is the emergence of Adolf Hitler as the leader of Germany in the 1930s. How was it possible “that the elite of a society can consist of a rabble?” After all, the German elite – commercial and military – went along with Hitler. Sadly, a society can be overtaken in its highest ranks by “radical stupidity.” An elite can consist of rabble. How does this happen? Through a collapse of real morality, and the blindness that results from losing access to the divine ground [Voegelin’s terminology, taken from his interpretation of Plato].
As Socrates suggested long ago, wisdom is knowledge of the good; that is, the moral good. Cicero emphasized that there is no other good.[xiii] Radical stupidity, with its attending moral idoicy, signifies the abandonment of true goodness. It takes hold when moral illiteracy becomes rampant, when men are no longer oriented toward the divine. What follows is dehumanization and the loss of reality. What we saw in the Trump-Zelenskyy meeting was a horrifying example of this dehumanization process. Voegelin asked his German students in the 1960s: “How does a man bring himself to commit crimes, and at the same time dispute he ever committed them, and still be honest?”
The answer is simple. He must use words like “peace,” and “forever,” and “try,” and “diplomacy” inappropriately. He must call good evil and evil good. He must lie. He must deceive himself. “We have to save the beautiful boys,” he says. We might rephrase Voegelin’s question: “How does a man bring himself to destroy his allies and enable his enemies, and at the same time dispute he ever did this, and still be honest?”
Well, he is not honest. Real achievements in politics and statecraft require tremendous honesty. Trump and Vance are rabble. They cannot think or listen to good advice. They are people who cannot see the truth because they are fundamentally dishonest.
Quoting from Karl Kraus’s Dritte Walpurgisnacht, 185-86, we see the problem clearly. A society that begins to rely on “a political morality based on telling tales about things that never happened” will find itself unable to discover the truth. In that case, “the alleged becomes real and the real alleged, and … the murderer, if he lies about it enough, has not murdered….”[xiv]
By telling tales and distorting language, Trump has blamed Zelenskyy for threatening America with World War III. Here is an allegation, out of Trump’s mouth, which suggested the victim (Zelenskyy) is guilty and the murderer (Putin) is free of guilt. Others in MAGA might jump in and say that Putin is fighting the “globalists” (i.e., an arm of Moscow’s scissors strategy), or they might say that Putin is fighting the New World Order (not seen on any maps consulted for this essay), or he is fighting some other gang of invisible conspirators (ask Marjorie Taylor Greene for the latest). The effect of this moral confusion is that America opens fire on its own allies. America destroys its own alliance system. At the same time, Trump intends to embrace the Kremlin mass murderer. Here Trump’s pettifogging whitewashes Russian butchery, refashioning the butcher into a proper ally (against China)!
This moral idiocy could be found on the left during the Vietnam War. Today we find it on Fox News. We hear anti-Ukrainian comments every day. These people are like the strident leftists of the 1960s talking about the Republic of Vietnam, deriding it as a corrupt CIA puppet regime undeserving of support. When the Republic of Vietnam fell, when millions died at the hands of the communists in Cambodia and South Vietnam, did the leftist puppets of Moscow realize their mistake? No. They blamed everything on Nixon. Always blame someone else. Yet the death and loss of life at the end of the Vietnam War was far greater than all the deaths in twenty years of fighting that war. This fact went unnoticed, and the left merely grew in arrogance. Today the right is using the same script that the left used in the 1960s, only it is bolder and more insane. Even as the left of the 1960s was heavily infiltrated by Moscow, the right of the 2020s is also infiltrated. And there, in Ukraine, where no American forces have been used, with the Eastern Bloc bogged down and trapped, the West might have been saved. But now, instead of treachery from the left we see treachery from the right. Whenever you hear anyone mouthing Russian talking points, you are hearing the sound of the infiltration – “like rats’ feet over broken glass.” And yes, the infiltration is easy because the enemy has targeted our hollow men – headpieces filled with straw. Trump is destroying America’s alliance system. He is destroying America’s economy. What we saw in the Trump-Zelenskyy meeting was Trump’s moral idiocy, his imprudence, his cowardice, his injustice, his intemperance. In this case, the absence of virtue is not vice. The absence of virtue is hollowness. As Vaknin said of the narcissist, his core is an empty wilderness beset by a howling wind.
“Our dried voices, when
“We whisper together
“Are quiet and meaningless
“As wind in dry grass
“Or rats’ feet over broken glass
“In our dry cellar”[xv]
Trump’s moral idiocy is something we cannot unsee once we have seen it. Many of us turned a blind eye to Trump’s wickedness because we were afraid of the left. And now our champion is ready to collapse the West faster than the Democratic Party.
Evil can take many forms, but here we must emphasize evil’s clownish aspect. According to Voegelin, the Third Reich was a farce. It was a clown show with violent clowns committing mass murder. What set the clowns loose? Radical stupidity, moral idiocy and illiteracy on the part of society as a whole. A clown of this type can live out his life without killing anyone, but such clowns
“can become criminal through social circumstance. So [that] whoever is a stupid man [or clown, in this sense] … [and is put into a position] in society where he has no business to be, gives orders or tries to instruct others is criminally stupid; and because of that he becomes criminal, even if he himself does not understand this at all.”[xvi]
Those who tried to humiliate Zelenskyy in that Oval Office meeting are radically stupid in Voegelin’s sense. They are rabble. Moral idiots. Vaknin calls them narcissists, but their root pathology is spiritual rather than psychological. The rabble is inwardly disordered. It takes power during disordered times. One of the classic studies in criminal stupidity, of course, is Shakespeare’s King Lear. Voegelin offered the following observation on the relationship between disordered times and the success of disordered souls:
“In a situation of disorder and chaos, qualities such as cunning, craftiness, and violence are indeed necessary in order to preserve one’s life and to prevail, and whoever lacks them is incompetent and perhaps may perish. Under ordered conditions, however, precisely this craftiness, violence, misuse of trust, and so on, is a symptom of stupidity, because a man who behaves this way will be socially boycotted.”
When our society inevitably recovers its sense of moral order, how will Donald Trump be regarded? As a hero or a villain? King Lear is a play that ends with mass death. However cunning you are, your immorality catches up with you. Cunning is overthrown by cunning, and everyone loses.
President Donald Trump imagines, by betraying the Ukrainian people and feeding them to the Russian crocodile, he can make the crocodile into his pet. But crocodiles are not pets. Perhaps Trump will change course. This morning he tweeted something about hammering Russia with sanctions. Such momentary changes, however, do not change the fact of what has already been attempted. Furthermore, Trump has surrounded himself with moral idiots and clowns. Inevitably, he will make more mistakes. The damage to the West is already done and the trust between America and Europe has been undermined.
All sensible people, who have knowledge of international affairs and moral clarity, are appalled by the Trump-Zelenskyy meeting of last Friday. All those living in the echo-chamber of Trump’s narcissism, see nothing but Zelenskyy’s alleged “disrespect” and “ingratitude.”
The rabble have found their gangster. He is the one they have always been waiting for.
Video and Audio Presentations
Apologies for the technical difficulties at the beginning of the KLW World News Broacast. The important part of this video is the visuals of the Russian building along NATO’s border in Russia and Belarus, which begins around the one hour and 17 minute mark.
A discussion
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Links and Notes
[i] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJWZkzGkVrw
[ii] Ibid.
[iii] Ibid.
[iv] Ibid.
[v] Ibid.
[vi] Ibid.
[vii] The Man Without Qualities, a novel by Robert Musil, features a protagonist who has no commitment to moral virtue, nor any sense of life. He is something akin to Mishima’s voyeuristic Shigekuni Honda character, who listlessly appears throughout The Sea of Fertility tetralogy – the last books that Mishima wrote before his symbolic attempt to overthrow the Japanese Government in 1971. This type of ambivalent, insignificant, and insubstantial character reminds us of the alienated man and the subtler dangers associated with him, rather than the more dramatic possibilities inherent in a political figure.
[viii] Ibid.
[ix] See Rubio’s Fox News interview directly following the events of last Friday.
[x] How Much Aid Has the U.S. Given to Ukraine?
[xi] Eric Voegelin, Hitler and the Germans (Columbia and London: University of Missouri Press, 1999), p. 88.
[xii] Ibid, pp. 88-89.
[xiii] Cicero, On Duties.
[xiv] Voegelin, p. 95.
[xv] T.S. Eliot, The Hollow Men.
[xvi] Voegelin, p. 106.
270 responses to “The Gangster We Are All Looking For”
Jeff, I just got the notification of your essay, and I’ve been waiting for it. I will read it this evening. I just want to say, I appreciate the discussion you had with the retired military man who had all of the satellite imagery, and the discussion with Gussak. I appreciate what you said. My take on the Zelenskiy visit to the Oval Office was right in line with everything you said. I have been so full of outrage, shock, anger, and sadness ever since I watched it last Friday, and still haven’t been able to choke it down, especially with the further betrayal that has ensued against Ukraine.
I am surrounded by people who genuinely love America, but think Trump can do no wrong, even as he does the worst things imaginable!
I never was crazy about him, and never really expected much from him. I’ve always been convinced that his one conviction is that everyone should be free to make as much money as possible, and that any other positions he takes or causes he “champions” are strictly based on what he thinks will bring him the most prestige in the eyes of the most people.
But, who would have imagined what is happening now??!!
Forgive me for posting a comment right out of the gate, but I’m so glad for the things you said, and that like-minded people who care about America, the West, and freedom-seeking Ukraine can finally discuss our concerns here for a couple of days.
Zelenskiy proved that he is an honorable man who loves his people.
Trump and his administration…there are not sufficient words to describe them.
They are infinitely worse than mere traitors.
Yes. It’s frightening. The war can happen this year.
I don’t recall a time in my life where I have been more terrified, even when deployed to combat. If Trump ultimately fails the United States and the West and what Jeff talks about comes true, none of us are ready for it no matter what we do to prepare. We will all be tested like never before.
Yes we will. I think the mental and spiritual testing among our own people who should know better may prove harder than any physical trials of war and destruction from our enemies.
Absolutely.
Luckily our enemies are people who tend to have malevolent talents rather than effective ones.
I really enjoyed your interview with Lee Wheelbarger. Scary stuff. This information is what we should be spreading to our own contacts, ie, our own circles, of the Russian buildup on NATO borders today.
I was so repulsed and ashamed by the insults toward a head of state via our own President and Vice President on Feb 28, 2025, that I penned a letter to each of my elected officials as well as the White House. Absolutely disgusting. It is apparent to me that our current President is acting in favor of one of our 2 main enemies. My own children’s future weighs in the balance of these idiots who are in charge of our country and its foreign policy.
JD Vance should never have spoken over the President, and is an embarrassment, and to think that the Republican Party will push him for the next presidential election is insulting. He’s an uneducated fool regarding foreign policy especially regarding Russia and China.
It appears “Make America Great Again” Donald Trump has duped the American public and works for our enemies.
Slava Ukraini
https://x.com/JPLindsley/status/1898151754438455737?t=FzDx7HMxnucVNigC_7RZaQ&s=19
Every day Trump sinks lower. So much for bemoaning the “beautiful boys” dying*. He’s fine with Russia terrorizing Ukraine’s civilian population until the country agrees to capitulate on Russia’s terms.
https://x.com/Biz_Ukraine_Mag/status/1898070953399046276 Mar 7/25
Reporter: Why not provide Ukraine with air defences?
Trump: Because I have to know that they want to settle
*My first thought when I heard Trump’s rambling monologue on the “beautiful boys” dying was that he was only referring to Russian soldiers. In his view Ukrainians are not worthy of any consideration. This is born out by what he says here, and by the quote from the Bob Woodward interview (see below). Seeing how Trump always denigrated American soldiers who died for their country as ‘suckers’ and ‘losers’, his comments re Russian/Ukrainian soldiers are consistent with his belief that dying for one’s country is a needless loss of life. I have to be honest, I never understood Jeff reading so much in this phrase uttered by Trump. It’s essentially just a narcissist draft dodger incoherently recalling his youthful fear of dying in Vietnam. It fits with the other anti-Vietnam War callback of Vance accusing Zelensky of the evil of conscripting men to fight in defense of their country.
https://www.militarytimes.com/news/pentagon-congress/2019/02/27/trumps-lawyer-no-basis-for-presidents-medical-deferment-from-vietnam/
——-
The reporter who’s name I didn’t catch, makes some observations that I haven’t heard from anyone else.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XVJE4S1Glx8
The ‘evidence is in’: Trump is an agent of Putin
1:16
The US mechanism for financing aid to Ukraine was actually cancelled before the Oval office debacle. This was a predetermined decision by Trump and did not depend on that White House meeting.
9:11
The Oval Office beat up was like a struggle session. Mao’s China embraced Stalin’s idea and there are famous scenes of Mao’s red guards during the Cultural Revolution taking so-called class enemies or any political enemy of Mao and the regime on stage for public humiliations, denouncing them forcing them to self-criticize humiliating them publicly.
Often these rituals include people who are closest to the victim and with crowd participation. This would be readily identifiable to anybody with Marxist Leninist background. Vladimir Putin would have seen this, Xi Jinping would have seen this for exactly that, a struggle session designed for the public humiliation of Zelensky. Everything about it including being conducted by somebody close to you, because the US has been the closest most important single ally of Zelensky.
11:25
It’s not just that meeting … It’s the fact that Trump had no conversations, no negotiations with Zelensky before this. Even when he was out of power he’s had continuous regular phone calls as a private citizen to Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin all these years
19:34
Question: Have you ever thought that could happen ?
Reporter: Yes, because Trump had said he wanted to do all of these things. He’d said at some point in his last term or since in fact to Bob Woodward the American journalist he said “Perhaps you’ll explain this to me one day,” said Trump. “The meaner the tougher these foreign leaders are the more I seem to like them, the nice ones not so much.” That’s just one generalization from one interview that he gave.
I have always thought a man who had five deferments is definitely too afraid to serve his country in combat, and that Trump always boasting about supporting the veterans was possibly a way to deflect from and cover up that shortcoming.
But, does anyone remember a discussion between Trump and someone else leading up to his first run for president, in which he made the case to the person that him being president would help his “brand”, which gives credibility to what Cohen said?
I can’t remember who he was talking with, but that has always been in my head for some reason, yet I haven’t been able to find it. Does anyone else remember, or did I dream it??
I don’t recall hearing that specifically, but knowing Trump it’s not surprising.
Here’s a discussion about Trump 2024 run.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66kq9jKvIw4
Trump Biographer DETAILS Secret Oval Office Meeting In 2020 On Comeback
The Bulwark – Mar 6, 2025
Alex Isenstadt, veteran political reporter and author of Revenge: The Inside Story of Trump’s Return to Power. They discuss details of a stunning Oval Office meeting in December 2020.
In the early December 2020 meeting (starts at minute 10) Trump admits that his odds of overturning the results of the election through courtroom litigation is going to be very difficult. He recognized this before January 6, but says that by doing this litigation and by keeping his supporters activated he is setting the stage for if he were to run again. This shows a lot of cynicism on Trump’s part, as well as willingness to con and exploit his supporters for political gain. The reporter goes on to describe how the winning formula behind Trump’s 2024 campaign was to portray him as a vessel for people who were anti-establishment who felt alienated from elites. While there were valid arguments to support some MAGA policies, the campaign was dominated by a sense of deep grievance and resentment. Seeing the tyrannical and revanchist mood of MAGA after Trump’s treatment of Zelensky, I’d say there’s some merit in the argument that Trump deliberately pushed his malignant narcissist mindset on his supporters.
I have to admit: I was kind of worried when I saw Jeff hadn’t posted for a couple of weeks. But this…this was well worth the wait. “Moral idiocy,” I couldn’t have put it better myself. Even though it was entirely self-serving, the 60s leftists had at least SOME skin in the game regarding being drafted. I’d long wondered how Americans, especially on the right of today, could suffer “war weariness” at the Kremlin’s genocidal war on Ukraine…while not a single regular American soldier has died in defense of Kyiv.
But anyway, today’s right echoing the leftists of the 60s just proves Jeff’s point further about how virtue has been thrown completely to the wayside. After that kerfuffle/ambush/whatever you want to call it in the Oval Office, I logged onto a fairly mainstream conservative site as I would usually do every morning, and holy cow! It was like being dropped into the middle of the Two Minutes’ Hate! I was so skeeved out by the whole thing, I haven’t been back since. The point here is, that Zelensky seems to have become an Emmanuel Goldstein-like figure for a LOT of the right through no fault of his own. I was just shocked by how quickly it escalated.
I was thinking about how things could have possibly gotten to this point when it hit me: The big Kremlin shills and repeaters are not JUST shills, repeaters, and outright propagandists. They’re something far worse: They’re demoralization (in the Bezmenovian sense) agents. The Alex Joneses and Tucker Carlsons of the world, I mean, have an even MORE insidious effect on their target audience than the regular shills, repeaters, and propagandists do.
It is frightening, evening terrifying to see this.
I read about Trump sending billions to Israel, I knew he supported it (as did I), everybody knews it, but is he going to ask them how these funds will be paid back as well? Why does Ukraine have to “return the money” as if it was stolen, while facing enemies of the US, but Israel does not have to sign any agreement to be protected or pay back the military support?
The Europeans will need time to rearm, you said Russia and China will get stronger eventually, if both sides need time, in this case time ultimately benefits who?
It just shows the hypocrisy of MAGA. Israel is a rich country that can make its own weapons and can afford to pay back the aid. But Israel’s aid is fast-tracked even though they are not fighting a battle for survival, while Ukrainians gets demonized as a bunch of scam artists for fighting America’s enemy. MAGA says that ruthless transactionalism is the new national ideology, except for when it hurts Russia. MAGA has become Russia’s little wind-up toy don’t expect any logical consistency.
——
Remember when MAGA complained that the US was depleting its weapons stocks to help Ukraine?
Now DOGE will lay off about 1,000 employees at the largest ammunition factory in the US, McAlester Army Ammunition Plant. Trump is quietly disarming the US under the guise of government efficiency. And MAGA will cheer on the death of the Military-Industrial Complex. I always suspected DOGE was about something else, not just cutting down on waste, and it always seemed terribly reckless to hand so much power to a Russia and China friendly billionaire ideologue like Musk. Is there any accountability, any oversight at all?
https://kfor.com/news/oklahoma-legislature/lankford-weighs-in-on-doge-voicing-concerns-on-certain-actions/
“Tinker cannot operate if we lose 600 civilian employees there,” Lankford said. “We will not be able to keep aircraft in the air long term for the Air Force … The same thing in McAlester. If we remove a thousand civilians there, we won’t be able to operate.”
It’s a logistics cut.
Good points. This insane and arbitrary policy benefits Russia. The United States got three years to prepare for war while Ukraine held back the Russians. We wasted the three years because Biden would do nothing. Europe did nothing. We need Ukraine to buy us more time, but Trump is collapsing Ukraine on purpose. Now Russia knows it must strike Europe before they rearm. They are fully mobilized in their economy. Russia cannot afford to return to a peacetime economy and let Europe ramp up. This means war could be soon.
https://www.politico.eu/article/donald-tusk-plan-train-poland-men-military-service-russia/
Tusk also stressed that Poland cannot restrict itself to conventional weapons.
“We must be aware that Poland must reach for the most modern capabilities also related to nuclear weapons and modern unconventional weapons … this is a race for security, not for war,” he said.
They don’t have time.
Off topic
Mr. Nyquist, could you mention some good books about the Bush era?
In a broad view, it could be between the post-Reagan and George W. Bush eras, I just finished reading Clinton’s Secret Wars and I picked up “Decision Points” now to read, is this the one you said Bush saw Putin’s nature, but he was finishing his term?
Bush was receiving intelligence reports on Putin continuously, so it’s hard to say exactly when he understood the truth; but Bush was certainly clued in fully by August 2008 when he told Putin off to his face in Beijing.
**Serious question. How come political insiders and people allied with Russia knew what was coming, but pro-Ukraine conservatives were able to fool themselves for so long about Trump?**
Please no one take this the wrong way. But the breakneck speed at which Trump is betraying the West requires examination of everything we thought we knew about the guy.
While no specific sources are mentioned, this Guardian article echoes what Jeff’s sources said about Trump planning to betray Ukraine. Quite a few political insiders expected this. Kellogg proves he was just a token appointment when he hailed the meeting as an “America First” triumph.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/28/jd-vance-volodymyr-zelenskyy
There is a thing in Washington that many people understand but that few will say: that the Trump administration was looking for a pretext to ruin its relationship with Ukraine, and that the canned messaging that followed the Oval Office feels oddly coordinated and premeditated.
“That was a train wreck by design,” said Sam Greene, a professor of Russian politics at King’s College London. “The quiet conversation since Munich has been about setting Ukraine up for a fall…”
—–
Here’s what John Bolton was saying one day before the shameful Oval Office ambush. He essentially predicted where things were heading. Trump hated Zelensky ever since the impeachment. Soon after Zelensky was elected Trump had a conversation with Putin in which Putin was deriding Zelinsky, and Trump was completely eating it up (min 14). Bolton says Trump came close to withdrawing the US from NATO in 2018 (min 3:30). That’s incredible, how come we haven’t heard of this before? It puts Trump’s cringeworthy gushing over Putin at the 2018 Helsinki summit in a whole new light.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBIRPVUkWBA
There’s ‘something’ wrong with Donald Trump: John Bolton – Feb 27, 2025
—-
State Duma member Oleg Morozov Predicted the Trump-Vance Ambush of Zelensky
https://x.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/1895712486550356065
Viktor Orban knew that Trump’s “secret plan” to end the war in Ukraine in 24 hours simply mean. not giving either money or weapons to Ukraine. Reportedly there was a meeting between Republicans and Orban’s people two months ago.
https://x.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/1767226988236829102 Mar 3/25
Yes. I did not to believe the Russian oligarch that told me on Inauguration Day what Trump would do; and poor Mr. Wang was afraid I would not believe him; but once we saw certain moves from Trump it was obvious. He is dangerous and we are in deep trouble.
Bolton’s been warning about Trump withdrawaling from NATO for years and saying he’s unfit for office but thats the first I’ve seen him say Trump was about to pull the plug in 2018.
Yes, I don’t remember hearing that before. Jeff, did you know anything about this?
Bolton was saying a number of things. I was intending to read his book, but regretfully I did not. I think I should now.
This post on X that I chanced upon recently made me wonder.
Remember in February 2024 when Putin randomly came out and said he preferred ‘more predictable’ Biden as president over Trump? And as if on cue, Trump went on to do something unpredictable?
https://x.com/Lisasbaktkake/status/1762607625441570838
Meanwhile on Russian state TV they were mocking Trump:
“But regardless of what he says, what Trump did was better than what Biden’s doing.”
This was when aid to Ukraine ran out and the vote over more aid was held up for 6 months in Congress thanks to Speaker Johnson. It was widely reported that Trump was using his influence over Republicans to get them to block the bill in the House. When Biden wasn’t slow-walking the aid, the Republicans stepped up to the plate. The Russians liked this. And then Putin made the out of the blue comment that he actually preferred Biden over Trump. Taken in context, his comment made no sense because at the time Republicans were being much more helpful towards Russia. But nevertheless, conservatives lapped this up as proof that Biden was a Russian asset and Trump wasn’t. I remember people on this forum speculating that maybe Trump and Johnson received some intel briefings that made them see the truth about Russia. Anyway, back to Putin. As we know, he lies all the time, so why should anyone have believed him? The short answer is because pro-Ukraine conservatives wanted to believe.
When the vote was finally held in April a majority of Republicans voted against it, but it didn’t matter because at the last minute Johnson and Trump turned pro-Ukraine and that’s what pro-Ukraine conservatives remembered. In hindsight, that was the pattern of Trump’s election campaign. 90% of what he said about the Ukraine war was Russian narratives, but every once in a while he tossed a bone to the other side and many people believed it. Even here, we latched on to Trump’s supposed “erratic-ness” in the hope that he’d do the right thing in the end. Now we know for sure that was just wishful thinking.
Looking back on this incident, was our side being subtly fed a narrative that Russia was afraid of Trump because he’s ‘unpredictable’?
Deception is always possibly. And we were deceived.
It reminds me of the knife South Vietnam got in the back on multiple levels and it makes me sick. Complete with the Hell on earth that WILL be unleashed if the commies win in Ukraine. Just look at Bucha, Izyum, and the network of torture chambers. I expect this kind of thing from the left, but that it’s largely the RIGHT pushing for it now? Again, it makes me sick.
It is dreadful. Painful.
Very interesting video, but I have a question: From the colour of the trees it seems to be summer not winter or do I make some mistake? Anyway if Russia is really going to attack the Baltics I have a Problem, currently I am located in Riga. I talked to many people from Ukraine, Uzbekistan and Georgia and they were shocked by Trumps behaviour. Maybe he really is a KGB Agent
Seems another geopolitical analyst, Peter Zeihan, is just as confused as the rest of us as to what our current administration is doing in regards to our foreign policy and lack of support of Ukraine.
https://youtu.be/UDf8YBuRIvU?si=xYoR3pmLgsGjFOlk
Never underestimate Russian power. They can control other people’s governments.
Jeff made some great points on John Moore’s program this past week. Many are echoed in his post here, but what really stuck with me (I always take notes on his discussions) was this regarding America’s alliances, friendlies if you will. Our “leaders” do not understand that we need them as much as they need us. We need Europe, we need Australia, Japan, S. Korea….
Here’s what he said (paraphrasing)
People say “peace through strength”. President Trump is acknowledging (to our enemies) America is too weak to stand up to Russia or to defend NATO. Folks here in America say to Europe “Go defend yourselves!”
That’s Europes problem? The problem is the U.S. dollar is supported because we defend those countries. They all use the dollar to trade because we defend them. If we stop defending them, they will stop supporting our dollar and it will lose its value very quickly. Inflation hits…That’s a disaster for the U.S. and its own economy. What happens to our trading partners? Imagine a world with America all alone. Our Allies today are now with our enemies.
A 10% tariff on China? A 25% tariff on our Allies and nearest neighbors (Canada, Mexico) ? Not a smart strategy. This will isolate us and open us up to a bombing and invasion here in the U.S.
Trump is destroying us via his foreign policy specifically regarding Ukraine and NATO.
Yes. The policy of destroying our alliances destroys our trading system.
And now, Trump is belching out nonsense about Japan. And Japan has been an excellent ally. They hold over a trillion dollars of our debt.
https://japantoday.com/category/politics/us-japan-alliance-unequal-trump-complains?
The Japan comment shows Trump is deranged. He needs to be impeached.
Yes he does. That mouth…
When we tariff Mexico and Canada they will trade less with us and more elsewhere. That will have to mean China, no?
Yes. Ontario Premier Doug Ford warned about this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbZPNENSiXE
‘I don’t want to go to China’: Top Canadian official on why Trump’s trade war will help China
5:56
Ford: “…I want to ship them more high grade nickel that 50% of your economy and your military relies on. … We have more critical minerals than anywhere in the world. I don’t want to go to China. I don’t want to ship it out. But he [Trump] keeps putting all these threats and trying to attack our families and our businesses.”
——
This comment posted on Jake Broe’s X feed sums up the MAGA position: “The U.S. and Russia together are an unstoppable force. F*** the rest of you.”
People here laughed when I took exception to Trump’s repeated 51st state comments. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, but for some reason I didn’t think he was entirely joking. Most US presidents ignore Canada, but Trump’s first order of business was to impugn Canada’s sovereignty. Why? Well Solovyov is telling us why. At the end of the last Anti-Communist Conference Jeff wondered whether Trump had been presented with a grand bargain by Putin and Xi’s people, where the world would be split in 3 spheres of influence with the US getting North and South America. While I’m sure the KGB has plenty of kompromat on Trump, this promise from Putin explains more than anything Trump’s rush to sell out the West and crush Ukraine. Now Russia’s official propagandist Solovyov is openly acknowledging this arrangement. He also boasts that without America’s nuclear umbrella, there is nothing stopping Russia from nuking European cities and overtaking the whole continent.
The part about the US taking Canada and Greenland starts at 3:18
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54rl-Z8F62U
Vladimir Solovyov says Trump is Russia’s ally – Mar 4/25
Here is an slightly older article that points to something I suspected from the beginning, that Trump’s 51st state comments were not really about trade or border issues. Just like with Ukraine aid, he inflates the amount of the deficit and ignores crucial details. There is mal intent on Trump’s part.
https://www.theepochtimes.com/world/rubio-trumps-51st-state-comments-began-with-trudeau-saying-canada-would-cease-to-exist-with-high-tariffs-5814083?utm_source=NA_article_paid&src_src=NA_article_paid&utm_campaign=newsalert-2025-02-21-ca&src_cmp=newsalert-2025-02-21-ca&utm_medium=email&est=STR5Yow1keuBEYqurWv3%2BUwiDaP3j7nRbLjgCSquk%2F5RYrdaX6vtPOX3qfHYvyaV&utm_term=news1&utm_content=1
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the American president’s repeated comments about Canada becoming the “51st state” began when the Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said in a meeting that the country would “cease to exist” with high American tariffs on its goods.
The United States had a $67.9 billion deficit in the trade of goods with Canada in 2023, according to the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. Canadian leaders have pointed out that the deficit is due to the fact that the United States is buying Canadian oil at a discount, and with that removed, the United States in fact enjoys a trade surplus with Canada.
Laura, I remember dialogue between you and me on that topic. I hope you didn’t think I was laughing at you. I certainly wasn’t. I was confused as to what exactly Trump was doing then.
There is one person who used to comment on this blog, who steadfastly held that Trump is a KGB asset. “CONCERNED” never had a doubt. He told us we would see it, and now we do.
Just as Zelenskiy told Trump that America will feel this war…
The level of Trump’s pride and the way he scorned that warning -“you dont know that. You don’t tell us what we’ll feel.”… it caused me a lot of concern.
It made me think of the pride of Belshazzar before the hand wrote “Mene, mene, tekel upharsin” on the wall in the book of Daniel.
Or, the people saying not even God could sink the Titanic before it’s ill fated maiden voyage.
That was a very key point of that entire meeting in my eyes.
Several times, Trump has said we’ve got a big ocean in each side of us, so we don’t have as much to worry about as Europe.
Excuse me??? Those thousands and thousands of Chinese operatives are still in our midst, and how many are waiting in Mexico? And ICBM’s have no problem crossing oceans to a vastly unprepared America.
Pride goth before destruction, and Trump and MAGA are eaten up with it.
Trump is the one who doesn’t have any cards, he just doesn’t realize it.
Yes. CONCERNED may well have been right. He always took the most pessimistic view possible view. It is now difficult to argue Trump’s innocence.
I have never struggled to get a handle on such an array of intense emotions as I have since watching the extremely evil Oval Office ambush of Zelenskiy last Friday. I could tell in your voice in your discussions that you have probably been in the same situation, as well as everyone who has commented here. I never was fully certain about Zelenskiy until that day.
The headlines on stupid right wing news sites were saying how disrespectful and ungrateful he was.
When I got time to watch it for myself, I clearly saw that quite the opposite was true. I saw a man who clearly could not go along with lies, or pretend that Putin and Russia can be trusted. I saw a man who was trying to make the case for his people. Those photographs of Ukrainian POW’S after they were freed from Russian captivity was something sacred that should have been shown to Trump in a private meeting, and you could see Zelenskiy was not expecting to have had to do that in front of the cameras in such a manner. And then, Trump’s callous way of handling those photographs…
Jeff, you are much stronger than I in being able to watch it several times in order to break it down for people. I have not been able to watch it again yet. Even now, tears are coming out.
I hate Trump and his entire administration. I really do. I can’t believe he has made our nation guilty of this extreme and utterly wicked betrayal. It makes *me* feel dirty, yet I’m not. I hate this man. I’m so sorry to have to say that, and I pray God helps me get a handle on it.
The Oval Office meeting of 28 February was extremely painful to watch, but not entirely unexpected. I wrote “Origins of the Fourth World War” in the 1980s and spent the 1990s polishing it. I expected America to open itself to attack long ago, and I explained that everything would end in a Russian and Chinese invasion. It was my best analysis at the time, and it was based on political sociology, psychology, and strategic analysis. All the elements of cluelessness and American self delusion were present under Reagan. It was clear what would happen given Russian and Chinese methods. We all cling to hope, but reality is what it is. It is human. Trump was ambiguous in many of his statements about Ukraine. This allowed many of us to hope he would not act foolishly, like the fools in MAGA who hate Zelenskyy and Ukraine. Now we see that Trump, more than anyone, opens us to attack. Trump is the gangster we have all been looking for. In sociological terms, however, our whole country has become a Benedict Arnold Enterprise, Inc. Trump is not the only contributor to this, but now he is the biggest screwup of them all and will take the blame. Everyone around him, too.
You’re right, Jeff. I have long thought that Trump is symbolic of our society -that he is a “symptom” of the “disease” that effects our society.
I was growing up during the time you were working on Origins, and had very little awareness of geopolitical events, but many of the societal deficiencies you pointed out in the book, I even realized as a teenager, and seemed to always be going against the grain of many of my peers.
You are right: the blame will be targeted on Trump. And he deserves it for his proud mouth. But, as you said at the end of the discussion with Nevin, America has earned what’s coming.
We can only throw ourselves individually on God’s mercy. I fear we have now crossed the last line.
God is merciful.
Yes, CONCERNED was right. I hope he comes back and posts some more. There’s something to be said for taking the most pessimistic view possible. I had a strong feeling that Trump would sell out Ukraine and that all the ambiguousness, including the appointment of Kellogg, was just a cover. But I never imagined he would be this vile, and that he would pull the rug out from under Europe and serve it up to Russia on a silver platter.
The overweening pride and arrogance of MAGA, imagining that America will rule over a hemispheric empire of vassal states, is something else. It really brings to mind the adage “pride before fall”.
Yes, Laura. You were smelling out Trump early. I wanted proof, and now the proof is there. Trump has betrayed us. He sides with our enemy.
There were really only three or four possible ways to go:
1.) Believe from what we had already seen and heard that Trump was no good. I fell into that category as well.
2.) Give him some time in office to see what his actions turned out to be. Jeff took this approach, and he was only saying he thought we should wait a couple more months (which it turned out we didn’t have to wait quite that long).
3.) Be a Trump sycophant, believing a golden age had dawned in America and the West-albeit without that sterling character that brings the blessing of such an age.
4.) Believe the Russian lies that Ukraine really is the epitome of evil, and Russia a protector of Christian values.
So, it’s no fault that Jeff wanted to wait a little bit once Trump assumed office, or that CONCERNED was sure a long time ago that he was a KGB agent. I personally didn’t know whether or not CONCERNED was right, but I knew he stacked up a good bit of evidence and made many good points. I was actually of the opinion that Trump had no true convictions other than the conviction everyone should be free to make as much money as possible, and thus, his only guiding principles were born of that conviction. Besides that one true North, he was a spinning compass needle, subject to pointing in the direction of the strongest magnetic pull of fame and prestige.
He tried to look so strong, but he was clearly a double minded man from the beginning of his first term, and we know that a double-minded man is unstable in all his ways.
And now, everyone should be able to see what a pathetic, foolish, weak individual he is.
And in him, we see a reflection of a large portion of our society. I surely don’t mean all, but a large portion.
It is sad how the mighty have fallen.
It is true that the Lord is our only hope. And not so much for this life.
I forgot to say, that having no true moral principles grounded in Truth, and being very subject to flattery and praise, I felt he was probably the most useful of all useful idiots for the Communists. So, whether an agent or not, to me made no difference. Same net effect.
At any rate, we now know CONCERNED was on the money.
No agent could do s better job.
As for these things coming out saying he was an agent all along, it reminds me of playing a trick on someone as a kid, and taking it too far, getting them to believe something that wasn’t so, and having them so confused that you could even tell them the truth and they wouldn’t believe it.
Until now I didn’t really think Trump was a Russian agent. Like you, I thought he just an unthinking celebrity businessman and opportunist who had no convictions other than making money and promoting his brand. As with many Western businessmen he was probably wooed by Russian money at one point, but even that wasn’t the most important factor. The two things that were paramount in convincing me that the likelihood of Trump supporting Ukraine was very low were:
1.. Hatred of Ukraine and praise of Russia quickly became the loudest and most dominant voice in MAGA. I said before that Trump could have blown Russian propaganda out of the water if he wanted to, but instead he rode the bandwagon. Granted, Trump went against his base many times during his first term, most notably on immigration. But foreign policy was never a top election issue with the American public compared to domestic issues like immigration and the state of the economy. So there would be almost no political downside to Trump dumping Ukraine. Which is why I really didn’t think Trump would go against his base on this issue.
2.. A lesser but still relevant point that I sometimes thought about, was Trump’s personal praise and admiration of Putin. And we know from his first term that everything is personal with Trump. He never talked like this about any other world leader, only Putin and to a lesser extent Xi and Kim. I was worried in 2018 when I saw Trump’s gushing praise of Putin, and then in the 2020’s when leftists and people like Bolton who witnessed his interaction with the Russian president described it like that of an excited 12 year-old meeting the captain of the high school football team. The potential for Trump being the ultimate useful idiot was very strong. The argument that he was just being a politician and playing out a clever strategy seemed convincing on the surface, and at times I believed it, but I never felt entirely at ease with that explanation. For one thing, Trump was clearly clueless about Russia. Also, I admit, I developed a strong aversion to the 4D chess argument ever since I learned of the QAnon (ie Russian psy-op) phenomenon.
I started to entertain the passing thought that, because of the Russian collusion scandal, Trump was limited in what he could do in his first term, but now that MAGA had switched sides the brakes were removed. In hindsight, it really seems like this simple explanation was the truth. It’s the best way of reconciling Trump’s previous Russia policy to what we are seeing now, and the reason why Russia invested so much effort in the last 3 years in winning over the American right. We now also have to consider that Trump, like Obama, was saving the really bad stuff for his second and final term.
Trump is off his leash this time around. Yes. And it’s bad.
Trump is representative of a TV-watching society.
Very poignant essay and discussions. Macron and Starmer were confusing to me because they both support communist leaders but are supporting Ukraine. You said that they want their own kind of socialism under their own control. So, they must be realizing that that isn’t going to work. Also, with all due respect to Trevor I think that he is in denial about DOGE and Bannon. He has done such great work but I have been getting annoyed at his denial and now I am thinking that he must be starting the grieving process. All his hard work and dedicated support of Trump and now devastating betrayal. I will pray for him.
I think Macron and Starmer are primarily supporting Ukraine in word only. Lots of talking and running around having meetings, saying grandiose things. But no substance, I’ll bet. These men have no heart.
“Sir Keir” is hardly different from what notorious Leninist Jeremy Corbyn would have been as PM. Most British conservatives seem to have decided, at least until now, that they will have to simply sit out this current far-left Labour government. But, snap-elections notwithstanding, this would mean another four years till the next parliamentary elections in the summer of 2029!
As for France, everybody can see that “la Grande Nation” has far fallen from her old greatness (and when has France ever been great, one might want to ask, since the days of the French Revolution). The country is merely dragging along the edge of collapse, with Macron, who is a leftist and a superficial media politician, unable to get his house back in order.
These are the two “nuclear powers”, nominally speaking, in Europe (quite apart from the minuscule size of their arsenals)! And if Friedrich Merz, Germany’s prospective next Chancellor, thinks he can build up a nuclear arsenal for Germany just like that, he will have easily 80 % of the country standing up against him.
Then there is President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, who effortlessly survived as a Federal Minister in all four cabinets under Comrade Merkel/Kasner/Kazmierczak. Von der Leyen has always shown herself a conservative-in-name-only. And what can she do?
Meloni of Italy, though essentially a post-fascist, has never given in to the pro-Moscow tide now so fashionable among the so-called alt-right. But her fervent allegiance to NATO and the United States is now going up in flames, thanks to Trump.
Rutte, as Secretary General of NATO, can only try to mediate and powerlessly watch as Trump is pulling the rug from under his feet.
By the way, the European Union’s so-called High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Kaja Kallas (* 1977) from Estonia, daughter of senior CPSU official and later EU Transport Commissioner from 2010 till 2014, Siim Kallas (* 1948) – it almost looks as if the old nomenklaturists from the East have imported their hereditary grip on power into the EU -, she was very quick, I would say: suspiciously quick, in stating (even though she wasn’t incorrect at all) that “the free world needs a new leader. It’s up to us to take this challenge” – and build that same-old “Common European Home from the Atlantic to Vladivostok”, one is tempted to add.
But then, NATO was already blown up by Trump in those few scandalous (and traitorous) minutes of “great television” performance.
The man should be immediately removed from office! But, like with Clinton, Obama and Biden, nobody will do a thing – and the hynotised MAGA claque will carry on praising their idol until it’s RED DAWN …
One such bizarre, even deranged, sycophant and MAGA cultist is the self-described guardian of Catholic Tradition and editor of The Remnant magazine, Michael J. Matt (* 1966). I placed an admonishing comment under one of his idiocies earlier this week. It didn’t survive much longer than for 12 hours …
And so I included same comment instead in an article on my own blog:
https://thecontemplativeobserver.wordpress.com/2025/03/07/has-the-political-right-including-catholic-tradition-now-entered-a-state-of-mass-psychosis-as-well/
Thank you for that insight, CO. Your article was very well done, and I intend to share it with some of the MAGAtroids around here, but I’ve already sent them a couple things that have mostly been received with silence. These are not good days for those who have been blessed to see through Trump and his administration, are they? But, I’d rather know the truth despite the anguish it can cause.
By their stubborn normalcy bias, they might soon have the opportunity to be silent for a long time, meaning forever – even though, by now, it’s no longer in the average Joe’s (or even in Congress’s) hands. It’s now: “Alea iacta est.”
You’re right
Yes. Things will play out in terrible sequence. The damage done is irreparable.
The truth is all we have.
That’s it.
The traditional Catholic press is full of Russian propaganda. I can now only read Lifesitenews as it pertains to life issues. Even Ann Barnhart at one point said she only listens to Jack Posobiec.
I’ve been reading Ann Barnhardt’s site, I think, for a decade, and I still do. And yes, she has taken, at some point, a very unfortunate turn as well.
The traditionalist site that I’ve always treasured is TraditionInAction.org. One of the main brains behind the site is a fine, close-to-aristocratic gentleman from Brazil, now in his late seventies, by name of Atila Sinke Guimarães. I would just wish they were a little more political over there. But it’s a great and extremely informative website, and they are strict Catholic traditionalists.
Radical stupidity affects all groups and all shades of opinion.
Oh, absolutely. Crypto-communist propaganda (and the “crypto” part is the only way it could work) and anti-anti-Putinism do grow and spread literally like a cancer. I kept warning people about just how effective Putin’s playacting with a crucifix in (KGB-controlled) Russian Orthodox churches, but it seems sadly, to have fallen on deaf ears for the most part.
It should read “just how effective Putin’s playacting with a crucifix in (KGB-controlled) Russian Orthodox churches would be,” but you understand my point.
Yes, agreed. And great piece “Contemplative Observer” !
You checked it out! Good on ya, as they would say down-under (but no kangaroos where I Iive). Like your new gravatar! I’ve never been to Ukraine, only once to Poland (Krakow and even Białystok). But I have a different déjà-vu with these colours: I’ve been to Sweden twice – and loved it. The wild forests of the Białowieża, Eastern Poland. where I went at the time, are right along the Belorussian border! It felt grim to be so close to the territory of the “former” USSR. And now, right behind that border, we can see their military buildup. It’s terrifying. As for Sweden, I once stayed for more than two months during the winter (!) in a small town not too far from Luleå, Norbotten province (only a degree of latitude below the arctic circle and on the shores of the northern end of the Baltic Sea). Unfortunately I’m no longer in contact with the people there, but they were lovely folks, and I fear for them (just as all of us are now under threat, everywhere).
As we are at it: This was the Ukrainian national anthem played in March 2022 at the Royal Albert Hall, London:
This has “hit home” long ago for me “so to speak”.
My son has a very close friend and high school classmate who is Ukrainian and himself has family still living in Ukraine and are affected by the Russian invaders themselves. So, I find myself defending Ukraine’s only response which is to fight the Communists, arguing with these rabid, conservative Republican MAGA loyalists who blindly believe their darling media personality Tucker Carlson’s pro Russia propaganda along with all his buddies on “Faux News”….Hannity, Ingraham, Waters…
Slava Ukraini!
Here is the speech of that right-of-center French Senator. A few exaggerations but important:
04-March-2025
Claude Malhuret, Senator in the French Senate
Speech on Situation in Ukraine and European security
March 4, 2025
Mr. President,
Mr. Prime Minister,
Ladies and Gentlemen Ministers
Dear colleagues,
Europe is at a critical juncture of its history. The American shield is shirking its responsibility, Ukraine runs the risk of being abandoned, and Russia empowered.
Washington has become the court of Nero. An incendiary emperor, surrounded by enslaved sycophants, and with a Ketamine-sedated buffoon put in charge of the cleansing of public function. It’s a tragedy for the free world, but it is foremost a tragedy for the United States.
Trump’s message is that there is no point being his ally since he will not defend you, he will impose more tariffs on you than on his enemies, and he will threaten to seize your territories while backing the dictatorships that are invading you.
The king of the deal is demonstrating to us the art of the deal on one’s knees. He thinks he can intimidate China by laying flat before Putin. But at the sight of this shipwreck, Xi Ji Ping is undoubtedly accelerating his preparations to invade Taiwan.
Never in the history of the United States has its president capitulated before the enemy. Never has a president backed an aggressor against an ally. Never has a president trampled on the US Constitution, or issued so many illegal orders, or dismissed the judges who could prevent him from doing so, or fired in one sweep the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the military, or weakened all the checks and balances, or taken control of the social media. This is not illiberal abuse; this is the beginning of the confiscation of democracy.
It took one month, three weeks and two days [for Hitler] to bring down the Weimar Republic and its constitution. I have faith in the resilience of the American democracy, and the country is already protesting. But in a mere one month, Trump has caused more harm to America than during the four years of his first term.
We were at war against a dictator [Putin], but now we are fighting this dictator backed by a traitor [Trump]. Eight days ago, when Trump was patting Macron on the back at the White House, the United States was voting with Russia and North Korea against the Europeans. Two days later, in the oval office, the coward draft dodger Trump was lecturing the war hero Zelenskyy on strategy before dismissing him like a stable boy and ordering him to submit or resign.
What to do in view of this treason? The answer is simple: Confront.
But before all else, not make a mistake. The defeat of Ukraine will be the defeat of Europe. The Baltic states, Georgia, Moldavia are already on the list. Putin’s objective is to return to Yalta where half the continent was conceded to Stalin. The countries of the South are watching the outcome of the conflict before deciding if they should continue to respect Europe or if they are now free to trample it.
What Putin wants is an end to the world order put in place by the United States and its allies and whose first principle is to prohibit the acquisition of territories by force. This idea is the very foundation of the United Nations where the US nowadays votes for the aggressor and against the victim because Trump’s vision coincides with Putin’s: A return to the spheres of influence, where great powers dictate the fate of smaller countries. To me Greenland, Panama and Canada, to you Ukraine, the Baltic states and Eastern Europe, and to him Taiwan and the China Sea. In the evening parties of the Mar-a-Lago Gulf oligarchs, they call this “diplomatic realism”.
We are therefore alone. But to say that one cannot resist Putin is erroneous.
Contrary to Kremlin propaganda, Russia is not well. In three years, the so-called second army in the world has managed only to nibble crumbs from a country three times less populated. Interest rates are at 25%. Currency and gold reserves have collapsed, just as its demography. All of this shows that Russia is facing the abyss. The salvatory American nudge is by far the greatest strategic error ever to be committed during a war.
The blow is certainly violent, but it has a silver lining: The Europeans are walking out of denial. In one day in Munich they have understood that the survival of Ukraine and the future of Europe are in their own hands and that they have three imperatives:
Accelerate military aid to Ukraine to compensate for the American retreat. So that it holds the line. But also to impose its presence and that of Europe in any negotiation. It will be costly. We will have to break through the taboo of using the frozen Russian assets. We will have to go around Putin’s accomplices right here inside Europe, through a coalition of only those willing countries with, of course, the United Kingdom.
Second, demand that any deal include the return of the kidnapped children and the prisoners of Ukraine, and absolute security guarantees. After Budapest, Georgia and Minsk, we know the value of these deals with Putin. Those guarantees must rest on sufficient military force to deter a new invasion.
Finally, and this is the most urgent because it will take time, we must rebuild the defense of Europe, neglected because of the American umbrella in place since 1945, and undermined since the fall of the Berlin wall.
It’s a herculean task. But it is on its success or failure that the history books will judge the leaders of democratic Europe.
Friedrich Merz has just declared that Europe needs its own military alliance. Which is to admit that France has always been right for decades in pleading for a strategic autonomy. Now we must build it.
We will have to invest massively, boost the European Defense Fund outside of the framework of the Maastricht sustainability criteria, rationalize armaments and munitions systems, accelerate the entry into the Union of Ukraine whose army is the first European army, rethink the role and terms of the nuclear deterrent on the basis of French and British capabilities, and relaunch the programs of anti-missile shield and satellites.
More will be needed. Europe will not regain its military power unless it becomes an industrial power. Simply put, we must implement the Draghi report. For good.
But the real rearmament of Europe is its moral rearmament. We must convince public opinion against wariness and fear of war, and most of all against Putin’s sidekicks, namely the extreme right and the extreme left. Only yesterday at the National Assembly they were pleading against European unity, against European defense. They say they want peace. But what they or Trump do not say is that their peace is capitulation, the peace of defeat, the replacement of De Gaulle-Zelenskyy by a Ukrainian Petain under the jackboot of Putin. The peace of collaborators who for three years have refused any assistance to Ukraine.
Is this the end of the Atlantic Alliance? The risk is great. But for the past few days, Zelenskyy’s public humiliation and all the mad decisions taken over the past month have finally moved the American people. Polls are heading downwards, elected GOP representatives are shouted down by hostile crowds in their districts. Even Fox News has become critical. The Trumpians are no longer in the forefront. They control the executive, Parliament, the Supreme Court, and the social media, but throughout American history, the partisans of freedom have always overcome the odds and are now beginning to raise their heads.
The fate of Ukraine will be determined in the trenches, but it also depends on those in the United States who want to defend democracy and our own capacity here to unite the Europeans, to find the means of their own common defense, and to remake of Europe the power that it once was but which it is hesitating at reassuming. Our parents vanquished Fascism and Communism but paid the price of all sacrifices. The task of our generation is to vanquish the totalitarianisms of the 21st century.
Long live free Ukraine. Long live Democratic Europe.
Thank you for sharing.
If you “liked” that propaganda, you should see what the once-great Free Republic has devolved into. If you can stomach it. It’s not even the Two Minutes’ Hate over there, but the Three Years’ Hate (and counting!) whenever Ukraine comes up. The shills, dupes, propagandists, terminally demoralized, and actual (very chauvinistic, at that) Russians run absolutely rampant with the vilest stuff possible while the pro-Ukraine crowd are, at best, third-class citizens. The moderation team and administrators know what’s going on, by the way. They either just don’t care or approve of it.
To be fair, there are still a few intrepid souls fighting the good fight over there, but they’re like the Spartans at Thermopylae: We ALL know what’s going to happen to them eventually.
We are overrun by rabble.
@ brcc661: Last December I went for a couple of days to the marvellously beautiful Austrian city of Salzburg (which from 1945 till 1955 was blessed to be under American, as opposed to French or even Soviet occupation). I went up to Mt. Untersberg by cable car (and caught a terrible cold by the ghastly winds up there). On the way down I looked to the right, that is in southern direction, into the Berchtesgaden lands, which is already on the German side, where Hitler had been sitting already for five years before the Anschluss of Austria and on the exact same geographical longitude as Salzburg’s cathedral! Anyway, when I took a public bus back into the city, I bumped into a couple from the state of Texas, both exceptionally wonderful people (I should have exchanged addresses with them), and we were talking politics and world politics. I should add the man was probably in his late thirties, very thoughtful and mature, and his appearance was impressive: Very tall, but also strong and athletic; a well-kept mane of red hair, along with a majestic beard! His blue eyes revealed both intelligence and goodness. At some point, Fox News came up in our conversation. He looked at me with a stern face and said: “They are controlled opposition.”
A very smart Texan!
This is an excellent speech by the French senator. I like how he calls out both the far right and the far left as working for Russia. I hope that despite their leftist socialist tendencies, the Europeans can get their act together enough to stop Russia from achieving complete victory Europe. They and Japan are our only hope now, unless there is a huge popular revolt against Trump by the American people.
If we survive, it will be owing to our allies.
Excellent comments and information from Contemplative Observer.
As a traditional Catholic, I am stunned that people like Matt and Vigano have forgotten Our Lady’s words of about a hundred years ago that “Russia will be the instrument of chastisement for the whole world.” Plus, what do they think will happen to the six or seven million Catholics in the west of Ukraine under a Russian regime?!?
It is shocking that they have forgotten the original message. But this is what we see from the culture as a whole. There is an inability to delve deep into subjects, to think and understand what is happening. The superficiality of thought, the lack of curiosity and humility, is everywhere in evidence.
They are clearly all out of their minds (which is frightening, because it reminds one of 1930s’ Germany). When I watch Michael J. Matt talk on his video presentations, I’m not even sure whether the man is in a state of total depression (and, who knows, maybe he is even an alcoholic). Did you read Mr. Nyquist’s piece of April 6, 2022, titled, “Monsignor Viganò Justifies Ukraine’s Destruction”? Here it is: https://jrnyquist.blog/2022/04/06/monseigneur-vigano-justifies-ukraines-destruction-an-essay-and-a-further-conversation-with-trevor-loudon/
They have another organ missing as well.
Yes indeed. I think Zelenskiy may be the only non-eunuch on the world stage at this time.
Zekenskyy was polite and reasonable under tremendous pressure.
Yes he was. Never did he raise his voice. The guy has a law degree. (Unbeknownst to the hoards of conservative, Fox News
Idiots who sit in front of their TV screen and believe what the traitor Tucker Carlson spews) Zelensky knows how to deal with emotion as was evidenced with the ignorant responses via Trump and the overbearing VP Vance.
And English is his third language (after Russian and Ukrainian), which must have greatly increased that pressure. Mistaking tone, nuance, or colloquialisms can sink you. But a question: Is it true that Zelensky called Vance the b* word under his breath?
I have talked to Ukrainians about this and no, this accusation against Zelenskyy is contrived. He almost seems to say “Screw me,” under his breath, but even that is not entirely audible.
🤣
Well said CMA. I don’t understand this arbitrary separation that Trevor is trying to put up between Trump’s (good) domestic and (bad) foreign policies. It smells like hopium with a side of denial. He thinks that as long as RFK Jr and Musk stay in their lanes (healthcare and govt efficiency) they will be okay. But you can’t control for that, and the way Trump governs the actual job titles of these people don’t matter. There’s no reason why all the pro-Russia people in the admin would stay in their lanes. Trump doesn’t read intelligence briefings and doesn’t listen to knowledgeable people, he only listens to people he personally likes who flatter him shamelessly. That was always the danger when he picked so many pro-Russia people to be in his admin.
I think Loudon will admit it to himself soon.
Trump is a traitor but I still don’t see the Russkies or CCP prevailing. It’s clear that the Trump/Russian project of forcing Ukraine to capitulate is a failure. Instead, the end result will be Europe, or at least some of Europe, spending hundreds of billions to re-arm. Ukraine, instead of being abandoned, survives with its usual ingenuity and with the help of Europe. Ukraine will continue pummeling Russia and knocking out oil refineries as the Russian economy finally teeters over and dies. China’s economy also continues to collapse, thanks to the US economy also collapsing under Trump. Trump’s tariffs hurt us but also hurt China even more, since China needs the USA more than the USA needs China.
Yes, Trump ruins the country. Currently the DOJ, FBI, SEC are all being dismantled. Multiple investigations into Elon Musk just coincidentally ended. Elon Musk has also spent the past week or so on Twitter badmouthing the FCC and Verizon Wireless over incompetently doing something with the FCC’s systems, even though Verizon hasn’t even started work on their contract. It turns out Elon is convincing Trump to let him replace Verizon with Starlink probably to the tune of billions. Pure, blatant, ugly corruption. They WERE going to award Elon a contract with the Cybertruck but had to back off when it became public. Probably they’ll approve it later quietly. IRS next on the list for dismantling (the one I actually support because I owe about 40k to the Feds). Pentagon next on the list after that. Bottom line: the country is going to be in shambles maybe even faster than the midterms can happen to strip MAGA of some power.
Oh well. But Ukraine will survive. Europe will be growing stronger militarily. And the Russian and Chinese economies will delay the great war for years.
Time is of the essence. Grey Terror may be coming fast.
I’m praying Russian and Chinese incompetence prevents this from happening.
“Oh well. But Ukraine will survive. Europe will be growing stronger militarily. And the Russian and Chinese economies will delay the great war for years.”
Would encourage you to watch the satellite imagery shown in the latter half of Mr. Nyquist’s discussion with Lee Wheelbarger (KLW news – the last linked video this article). The Russians appear to be massing personnel and equipment for assaults into Poland and the Baltic states.
Way ahead of ya Anthony. Watched it days ago with Lee
Wheelbarger. Actually spoke of it in my initial comment here. Catch up.
He was talking to Ricardo.
I do not think Trump and Musk are compromised or criminal. Neither do I accept the diagnosis of Trump as a malignant narcissist. Regular old egotistical, yes. I do think he believes he can play the Kremlin with such a spotlighted rejection of Zelinsky, and then play the Kremlin and the CCP against eachother. Low odds, but I’m not so sure that they can’t be played as they have their own conceits.
But I always assume too that there are shadowy things in play far beyond our perception. And just maybe, gloriously hopeful things too.
The destruction of NATO, once begun, cannot be undone. Trust between America and Europe is gone. Japan must feel it, soon, as well. There can be nothing glorious or hopeful in this moment.
I only meant that while opportunity is being lost in the visible world, just maybe the spiritual layer hasn’t abandoned us yet. But yes, things are looking grimdark. Regardless of the Trumpian reasons, a chance for well-led alliance appears to be kicked to the curb. Does there remain any chance to recover?
An appeal will be made to the Great One. We shall see.
What makes you think Trump is somehow different than any other American political leader before him in that somehow the Russians are mesmerized by him or his ability to “make a deal”? It has been proven time and time again, for decades, that the Soviets use any type of agreement to gain an edge over their enemy the United States of America. Treaty after treaty, agreement after agreement…it is simply a tactical maneuver for these people to make our own “leaders” believe that they will abide by our rules.
Trump is a legend in his own mind.
That’s the problem. Plus, he has no idea of history or foreign policy . He doesn’t listen to his own advisors. He chooses to listen only to those who tickle his ear with accolades and suck up to him.
I’ve often wondered what the late Rush Limbaugh might opine about his close friend Trump’s foreign policy moves these days. Limbaugh was a Party loyalist but was always pushing his own faithful followers to believe that Donald Trump was a patriot and had his country at heart first and foremost.
Here we are 2025. Limbaugh is gone and we see Trump’s actions in the past week as anything but America first.
John P Chabot, so you’re a mealey mouthed conservative, pro Trumper who believes somehow this all gets “smoothed out in the wash” .? Donald Trump has drawn a line in the sand. He’s all in (any negotiations) for Putin. F*ck Ukraine. Period.
There’s no providential aspect toward DJT. This man is simply proving that the U.S. will be a non factor (if you want to point to the Bible prophecy as so many want to these days). The U.S. falls. Period.
The Soviets will advance upon Europe when Ukraine falls. Zelensky will fall into exile, courtesy Donald Trump policy today. NATO will be attacked Fall 2025 and Russia will be successful in reestablishing the communist controlled Soviet Union. Poland, Latvia, Lithuania will fall.
You guys always want to point to a component, a spiritual realm?
Here is your reality. America has fallen short. Never mentioned in your prophecies regarding the movements of Gog, Magog or any other….We, America, have been blessed for centuries….now cursed. We, me, mine, and my neighbors…soon fight for our existence.
So, nothing you say from this point on means anything.
It is what it is.
Lock and load folks. America’s “Republican” leadership has been compromised. Just as one wants to accuse the Democrat Party of.
You say Trump 2025 is “America First”? Pffft.
Donald Trump assists our enemy Russia in its own mission to destroy America. He disses Ukraine and praises comrade Putin in 2025. What’s wrong with this picture? Russia still considers the U.S. its #1 enemy.
John P Chabot? What say you?
Treason. Find it.
Jeff, I’m glad to hear you say the word treason toward these individuals.
John P Chabot seems to be a guy that straddles the fence. When the SHTF? Guys like him? Will be left dead hanging on that fence.
Once we engage, many will get off the fence. I hope.
I hope to God we have a chance to resist. That the initial attacks don’t wipe us all out. If I didn’t have family right here who will need me, I think I would try to go to Ukraine. You know, in Vance’s place. Even though they are suffering tremendously, they are still getting the honor of taking out many Communist murderers. If only MAGA were rightly oriented…
Relegating whole nations to slavery….
I don’t know if the topic of Trump being a Russian agent is relevant any more. I watched this video in Russian with two commentators
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g9-LM7c3kmg
One commentator is Mark Feigin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Feygin
The second guy is Sergey Zhyrnov, allegedly ex-Russian spy living now in France.
They discuss, why Trump could be a Russian agent. They don’t insist on anything, just explore the topic. I found it interesting. Following are just things that stuck in my mind.
For one, when his first wife Ivanna left Soviet block for the West, she had to sign paper, that she is a collaborator with KGB. Everybody leaving Communist country had to do it. Because everybody signs these papers, they are rarely taken seriously. She and Trump also had to have many discussions with KGB representatives. This is a standard procedure. So, there would be multiple opportunities to pull him to Russian side.
Whenever Trump visited Russia and stayed in a hotel for international visitors, every single person working there was a KGB agent, cleaners, drivers, and so on. He was surrounded by them.
Why it is impossible to prove anything in USA court about Trump being agent? Because there would be no witnesses. It would require big bravery to be a witness in this case. And they could disappear before the hearing. Written information is also hidden in archives. Russia still keeps secret even many Stalin’s crimes.
How Russia would keep him under control? Subject of Trumps sexual deviations had been overused and would not be working any more. But Trump has huge ego. That could be played in different ways. Putin did praise Trump several times in open sources, enough to win him over. As to blackmail, the commentators in the video suggested, that Russia might know (and having helped him through several bankruptcies they can have details enough to prove) that Trump is not as great of a businessman as he wants to appear, not as successful. It would be a blow to his ego if that information would come out. Or they could bribe him with access to Russia’s riches. He is too old to have it for himself, but he might want to provide some wealth for his posterity.
There were many other interesting points, but that’s all I remember for now.
Interesting!
Meanwhile, in the U.K., there is now a debate going on about King Charles honouring the Muslim fasting month of Ramadhan, but having forgotten about Ash Wednesday! The criticism is of course mostly targeting Charles’s “multiculturalism”, but is there more to it? After all, his great sympathies for Islam are no secret. It’s mostly brushed off as unfounded rumours, but there are indications that he could indeed be an actual crypto-Muslim. I heard it some twenty years ago from followers of the then-Naqshbandi Sufi Shaykh Nazim al Haqqani (of Cyprus), that Charles at some point travelled to Sovietsky Uzbekistan, in the company of the Shaykh’s deputy at the time, Sh. Hisham Kabbani, to visit the splendid mausoleum of the Naqshbandi order’s founder, Shah Bahauddin Naqshband, in Bukhara! Also Shaykh Nazim was regularly bragging about Charles being his mureed, meaning disciple …
Brcc661, my opinion is not religious at all, especially not of the Christian Revelations variety. I’m just open to admitting that some things we don’t know. And I’m not suggesting Trump is capable of pulling off anything – merely suggesting that he seems to think he can. I won’t like what he decided to do so far, and I couldn’t be more concerned.
This may seem like a trick question, but considering that communists are using the word globalism and denouncing globalists and their lackeys in the Western governments (and we know that much of this information about the financial elite is correct), don’t you think that Western leftists can use the anti-communist rhetoric and steal it from the conservatives? Since there is a bunch of MAGA right-wingers following the communist script (even if it’s another name – Eurasianism, neo-fascism, etc…), that refuse to position themselves against communism, the CFR, the Trilateral Commission, the Bilderberg group, etc…, all these groups that unite the Western elite can find a propaganda breach, so they can use the anti-communist appeal literally overnight, stealing it from the conservative political field.
What anti-communist appeal? I don’t understand the question.
When they (democrats and western globalists) accuse Donald Trump of being a KGB agent and a traitor, with old ties to the USSR, they are positioning themselves as protectors of the nation against the russian influence, which is connected to communism and the Kremlin nomenklatura. Usually, you would disarm those arguments and show the ties between the Clintons, Bidens or other politicians and the russians/chinese communists. Like Kamala Harris’ marxist background.
So either Trump is indeed an agent or he was just foolish enough to accept this slanderous label. But it has already become crystallized in public opinion that he is indeed a partner of the Russians, by his own fault, by the way. We can’t say “the russian hoax” anymore, because he confirms it everyday by his actions (i know he just began his term and may be too soon to judge), but following that course of action, then the situation is reversed, the traitorous Democrats with Russian-Chinese connections can perfectly fabricate an image from which they are more anti-communist than the Republicans. MAGA communism has infected the right-wing camp, the leftists can successfully spread propaganda according to which they serve national interests, preserve coalitions (do not sabotage NATO) and reject the communism embodied by MAGA.
People will start thinking the democrats are the lesser evil and there is no place for anticommunism on the Republican party.
And what’s worse, the Republicans will become the Trojan horse that makes the country capitulate to the external enemy. The exact position that was previously attributed to the Democrats (they were supposed to be the communist moles). The deep state, which is the internal enemy that should be drained, and which has communist connections, can use patriotic and anti-communist rhetoric to expel the right-wingers, because they have renounced true anti-communism.
There are even these documentaries about Trump and the KGB (like the one you mentioned), as well as several montages of JD Vance and Trump with communist aesthetics. I don’t think all of this is an organic movement.
Aguia: This is a key point. We are seeing a game unfold. The Russian shills in the Democratic Party have become the opponents of Russia. But is this opposition authentic? No. It is part of the larger scissors strategy to associate the anti communist or anti-socialists with the external enemy. Second, using Duginist-type figures like Curtis Yarvin, they will paint us as anti-democratic and opposed to the Constitution. Once Trump’s blunders unravel the West, we will be all labeled fascists and arrested and imprisoned. It is important for conservatives to avoid this trap.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/07/trump-says-it-is-easier-to-deal-with-russia-and-putin-wants-to-end-the-war. Trump says Putin launching massive strike on Ukraine is ‘what anybody would do’
US president says he finds Russia easier to deal with than Ukraine after cutting off intelligence and weapons to Kyiv
“We’re doing very well with Russia. But right now they’re bombing the hell out of Ukraine.”
“I think he [Putin] wants to get it stopped and settled and I think he’s hitting them harder than he’s been hitting them and I think probably anybody in that position would be doing that right now.”
“Despite the Russia, Russia, Russia hoax I’ve always had a good relationship with Putin,” Trump said. “He wants to end the war. And I think he’s going to be more generous than he has to be.”
Trump is despicable and evil. He’s living vicariously through Putin, and MAGA is living vicariously through Trump. I think both Trump and MAGA crave the absolute power that Putin has, and it is starting to show.
Sadism….
An example of Trump’s idiocy.
Ah, but indeed your opinions are indeed all about a religious reflection.
“I only meant that while opportunity is being lost in the visible world, just maybe the spiritual layer hasn’t abandoned us yet. “
Our current leader, Trump is misguided. Has nothing to do with an assassination attempt, missing him via an earlobe. He’s no George Washington, a man of integrity and morals as if Trump has this attitude he is invincible now? Foolish
My intent in posting under this latest essay of Jeff’s is to comment on that essay, just as with each essay. I only meant to relate that I don’t think the Malignant Narcissist angle is accurate. There is certainly evidence and reason to see it that way , but I think that arrogance and conceit without the more poisoness edge is closer to what he is. Then I tried to suggest that I think Trump believes he can out-deal the reds. I suggested that maybe they are susceptible. I mentioned the spiritual angle only as a way to admit my knowledge is limited and hopefully what is unknown isn’t dark but instead hopeful. And then comments blew up on me. To clarify my stand on the main issue, I think Trump should have and still should put all effort into reinforcing NATO and our Pacific allies/partners. Beyond that I don’t know what else can be done.
Jeff, not sure if you can comment, I was talking with Albert last night and something very crucial from the presentation on Hong Kong that both of us has missed out is that the four olds of Hong Kong which the British built up since the 1890s is now being destroyed or has been destroyed in Hong Kong it’s nearly like the Cultural Revolution that Xi Van Fleet talks about where Mao destroyed the four olds and also Albert told me that the Hong Kong people are being converted to or brought in line with their mainland chinese counterparts and it is literally wiping out the Hong Kong identity which the Hong Kong ‘Pro-Democracy’ Movement and their overseas groups are complicit in
Also about the recording on Feb 28 first part of the recording, if you would like it to be done again, me and Albert are open to it, we’ll stick to what was written in the power poinr
Let me know what you want to do.
Jeff, do you remember how Trump secretly warned several European heads of state about Putin during his first presidency? What do you make of those reports now? Could there be any chance that the purpose of Trump’s apparent abandonment of NATO is to force Europe to prepare for what’s inevitably coming their way? THIS— and only THIS— has clearly finally awoken them from their deep slumber. There have been statements of alarm across the board. Suddenly there is mobilization in multiple countries. Poland is training every man of fighting age. Are we sure this isn’t actually strategy (however misguided)? What if Europe mobilizes and the US joins them in their fight, just as in World War I and World War II? What if Trump realized that NATO is fundamentally flawed in that it is actually the socialization of Europe’s defense? If no one in Europe mobilizes because they believe the US will “just take care of it,” that is actually a terrible problem that must somehow be remedied.
That argument might be more plausible if Trump hadn’t taken active steps to crush Ukraine. The only way Europe has enough time to rearm is if Ukraine holds out for another year or so *and* if Russia’s economy collapses. But if Ukraine falls and Russia quickly moves to invade the Baltics and Poland in September, that’s not enough time to do much of anything. Forget France and the UK building up their nuclear deterrent, there might not even be enough time to replace the satellites, radar, ISR intelligence and all the conventional things that Europe is dependent on the US for. I’ve heard many British analysts point out that the military systems of NATO countries were designed to be integrated and work together with the US military. It will be a mammoth task for most member countries to completely re-model their armies in a few months, not to mention the fact that they need more time to build up their defense industries.
Also, Trump is now taking steps to undermine NATO not just politically, but on the ground. By the end of next week I expect the US will be giving to Russia military intelligence and all the aid allocated to Ukraine that’s sitting in Poland. It’s clear that, as Michael Weiss noted on X, Trump’s repeated argument that Europe should pay more for defense was just an excuse to subtly chip away at Article 5. Now that European countries are serious about rearming, Trump calls them warmongers. It makes sense if you think back to Trump taking out full-page ad questioning why the US was paying for the defense of NATO countries after returning from USSR in 1987.
https://x. com/michaeldweiss/ status/1897013522439266773 (remove the spaces)
The UK-France focus on peacekeepers in Ukraine as part a post-war settlement is premature and misguided. Europe should be doing everything possible to make up for the gap in intelligence and equipment to Ukraine, now that the US has pulled its support. The goal should be making sure that Ukraine can hold out for another year until Russia collapses.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/us/politics/2025/03/07/donald-trump-considers-pulling-troops-out-of-germany/
“The Telegraph understands that the president is considering redeploying troops from Germany to Hungary, which has maintained a close relationship with Russia.”
…The US president, who has repeatedly warned that Europe must commit more to its defensive capabilities, is becoming increasingly frustrated that the continent is “pushing for war”, sources close to the administration said.
… In January, it was reported that the president wants to reduce the American contingent in Europe by 20 per cent and plans to ask for a “financial contribution” for the maintenance of the remaining troops.
Ukrainian UAV operations are 15% less effective because of the US intel cut off. And the US is depriving the Ukrainians not only of weapons, but also medical supplies. All of this is done to get Ukraine to “settle” because continuing the war that Russia is losing badly at the moment is unacceptable.
https: //x. com/ PhillipsPOBrien/status/1897983630275702927 (remove the spaces)
https://time.com/7265679/satellites-front-failing-hundreds-dead-fallout-trump-ukraine-aid-pause/
I doubt Russia will wait for EU to rebuild its military. And when Russia gets really serious the nukes and bio weapons will come out. The talk of winning Ukraine in 3 days would have involved nukes.
Thank you for your response, Laura. Those are persuasive arguments. I’m still holding out hope that this is the “Art of the Deal” in action— a bluff to get Europe, Ukraine and Russia all to come to the bargaining table. As we have seen with the tariffs, Trump is a master at pressuring countries to do exactly what he wants them to do. And clearly he wants that Nobel Peace Prize. Here in a few months we’ll know a lot more, I’m sure. This would certainly be a worst-case scenario.
Yes, the cut-off seriously affects Ukraine’s defense. It is a very dangerous move.
Russia is preparing to move soon, and Europe may not have time.
https://ibb.co/nV76g9G
The Trump administration has piled further pressure on Ukraine amid apparent US attempts to replace Zelenskyy. “I think Ukraine wants to make a deal because they don’t have a choice,” Trump said on Thursday. “I also think that Russia wants to make a deal because in a certain different way – a different way that only I know – they have no choice either.”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/07/trump-says-it-is-easier-to-deal-with-russia-and-putin-wants-to-end-the-war
Any Ifeas on why Trump thinks he’s the only one that knows why Rusdia had no choice but to end the war? While they mass on NATOs borders as Lee from KLM interview showed?
Maybe he’s threatening them with some sort of sanction that he thinks will collapse their economy? That’s one strange quote…
Taking into account what happened this week, I can’t see Trump’s ambiguous statements as anything other than a deliberate strategy to confuse and bamboozle the American people. It’s also a good way of keeping on board conservatives who are still in denial about Trump. Add to this the breathless day-to-day media coverage of his latest flip-flop and it’s easy to lose track of the big picture, that Ukraine and Europe are being served up to the bloodthirsty Neo-USSR while America’s defenses are being hollowed out.
Yes. What Trump says can’t be trusted anymore than what Putin says. As Jeff pointed out, he’s a liar.
Ukraine has already suffered a military reversal due to Trump’s cut-off of intelligence. Is he moving to save the endangered Ukrainian units? No. Trump makes so many false statements one must look at the pattern. That pattern is found in his deeds. He is helping Russia. I said this on a chat I have been involved with since the war started and half the members denounced me and left the platform. There is a violent unwillingness to admit what Trump is doing.
I think part of Trump’s task is to cover for Putin. So of course he pretends that Putin is being conciliatory and is ‘desperate’ for a deal. He can’t say the truth, that he wants all of Ukraine under his control as a stepping stone to taking Europe.
Based on what Trump said during the Oval Office conference, it sounds like he already has an agreement in place with Putin and the only obstacle is that Ukraine keeps fighting. During their many phone calls, Putin evidently convinced him that he, Putin, suffered just as much as Trump during the ‘Russian collusion’ scandal. Why won’t anybody think of poor Putin!
Trump quotes from the conference with Zelensky:
>> Trump: I’ve known Putin for a long time. He had to suffer through the Russia hoax too, but that had nothing to do with him. It was all Biden. [What happened to Hillary?]
>> Trump after a reporter asked what if Russia breaks the ceasefire: What if anything what if a bomb drops on your head right now. Okay what if did they break it. I don’t know, they broke it with Biden because 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 … 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 had to put up with that, he was being accused of all that stuff … I don’t know what happened but he didn’t break any [deals] with me. He wants to make a deal.
>> Trump: I’ve spoken to Putin on numerous occasions.
Reporter: How was the latest call what did you discuss how did you—
Trump: It went well, I think we’re going to have a deal.
>> Trump: Russia will not try to invade those areas [of Ukraine where American companies are extracting minerals]. If I thought that was going to happen, I wouldn’t have made a deal. [He’s admitting he already has a deal with Russia!]
>> Trump: Well if I didn’t align myself with both of them you’d never have a deal…I want to get this thing over with. You see the hatred he’s got for Putin it’s very tough for me to make a deal with that kind of –he’s got tremendous hatred. [If the only thing holding up the deal is Zelensky’s “hatred”, that implies Trump already reached an agreement with Putin.]
>> Trump: You want me to be tough, I could be tougher than any human being you’ve ever seen I’d be so tough. But you’re never going to get a deal that way. [So Trump is admitting to being weak on Russia and that he already has a deal? And notice the hypocrisy as Trump is being tough on Ukraine and praising Russia’s “toughness” ie. bombardment of civilians.]
So tough he is HUGELY tough.
When he made that comment…sitting next to tough Zelenskiy…who represented the tough Ukrainians…while basically being a little helper for Putin in ambushing -no, bushwhacking-him in front of the world…I was thinking, how extremely ridiculous Trump looked saying that.
It’s usually not the man who is running his mouth about how tough and bad he is that’s tough. It’s the man who calm, quietly just is tough. Like Zelenskiy and the people he represents.
Trump emphasized that he is actually a weak, cowardly, bully with that statement.
Someone ought to make a video clip/montage showing the toughness of the Ukrainians, with Trump saying that throughout. That would be awesome.
And really, doesn’t that show his extreme narcissism and radical stupidity? He was sitting in the presence of toughness, both Zelenskiy and the country he represents, and was boasting about how tough he can be. That shows a real lack of awareness too. He’s so absorbed with projecting his supposed toughness, he failed to recognize the real thing not three feet away.
Trump is a loser, really. And, I’m not speaking out if anger or emotion. I’ve always thought that.
Think about it. A lot of his businesse has been built on vice and low-end entertainment. Not on culturally-enriching, or society-serving things.
Just the things that appeal to distraction and vice.
He’s a loser.
Trump is a TV personality. He is a fiction.
Trump was never a real businessman, he just played one on TV. He was a celebrity ‘businessman’. He was and continues to be a salesman and a showman, pandering to the lowest common denominator. Years ago when Trump first ran for president, I remember reading that his whole business now is licensing his name and brand. He hasn’t run a real business or tried to build anything for a long time, probably because no legitimate financial institution would lend him money. If it weren’t for Russian money he would have even more bankruptcies to his name.
This is the sad truth.
Trump is going to be so surprised, when Putin turns against him. Like Zelenskiy was surprised on the morning of the invasion, being completely sure it wouldn’t happen. But Trump’s delusion is so much more dangerous and affects a much bigger number of people. It is catastrophic. It is scary to witness this in real time.
Trump is going to be surprised when all the Chinese operatives and soldiers in our midst and at our borders suddenly get their fighting orders, and the missiles fly, or however that plays out. And none of our countries care to help.
I meant, none of our *allies*
I had not read John Mosier until he was recommended in the last blog. He was praised highly in the last blog; hopefully I won’t get him crucified in this one. I went back and read several of his Substack posts. In two of them (https://mosier.substack.com/p/updates-the-game-has-changed on January 12 and https://mosier.substack.com/p/global-threat-analysis on February 1), he made the argument that Russia had depleted its war-making capacity that had been built up over several decades and that it would take years to rebuild it. And then I come here and find through various commenters that Russian troops are massing to invade Europe and that all of Europe – indeed all of the West – is about to fall. The gulf between these two assessments is as wide as the Gulf of Mexico, er … America.
I understand everyone is angry, but strong emotions rarely make for sound analysis.
That’s an excellent point, and I hope Jeff will weigh in on that.
Jeff has said before that according to his sources, Russia has been secretly keeping its elite forces in the Far East for war against the US. Maybe Russia is redeploying those forces against Europe? I can only hope Russia is overextending itself with the planned invasion of the Baltics/ Poland, and that it will fail more horribly than the Battle of Kyiv. But even then, Russia still has nukes and bioweapons to play with.
Wheelbarger’s information depends on Russian mobilizing more men. Russia has mostly infrastructure prepared. Where are the men? They are arriving in the next six months. Mosier doubts they can do this. It will be interesting to see who is right.
I was listening to the Inside Russia guy and he said starting March 25 all the men in different industries that got a pass on fighting in the war will now be drafted. He said that most people in Russia don’t know this.
Large call-ups in Russia are to be expected, especially if Europe starts to rearm.
I sent him your video discussion with Lee.
It’s possible the men come from other countries of the bloc, right? I remember a year or two ago, seeing a video, I think on a Communist Telegram site, of Chinese and Belorusian soldiers training together in Belarus.
Mosier is praiseworthy for his predictions to date. He always said Ukraine would lose if key support from the West was removed. The invasion of the Baltic’s could be stopped if Trump decided…. Trump is refusing.
I was initially excited about the Trump administration, particularly because they dismantled USAID, which had been pushing the woke agenda globally. However, Trump is now dividing the West and eroding trust in the United States in a way that leftist presidents never managed to do.
This concern was reinforced when I read a statement from China. According to Lu Shaye, China’s special representative for European affairs:
“A peace agreement for Ukraine shouldn’t be determined only between the US and Russia.
When you look at how the Trump administration has implemented a brazen and domineering policy towards Europe, treating its allies in this way, honestly, from a European perspective, it’s quite appalling.
I believe European friends should reflect on this and compare the Trump administration’s policies with those of the Chinese government.
In doing so, they will see that China’s diplomatic approach emphasises peace, friendship, goodwill and win-win cooperation.”
This growing divide in the West is clearly benefiting Beijing and Moscow. I don’t believe China will succeed in pulling Europe into its sphere of influence. Instead, I think Trump might create the perfect conditions for war to break out, such as pushing the United States to exit NATO before Europe can organize militarily.
On top of that, I saw a report about China rushing to build a new “Chinese Pentagon,” far larger and more robust than its American counterpart. The speed of this project suggests they’re accelerating their preparation to seize a window of opportunity that might be drawing near.
May God have mercy on us.
USAID was also sending humanitarian aid to Ukraine and medical assistance to wounded soldiers. But everyone focused on the woke stuff and didn’t care that the baby was being thrown out with the bathwater. The ‘anti-woke’ and ‘protecting taxpayers’ money’ mantras will be used to dismantle a lot of programs that are important to national security or to projecting good American soft power abroad. Instead of careful review and reform of government agencies to make them serve American interests better, there is a mania for downsizing government for the sake of downsizing. Qui bono?
I understand people’s disgust with bureaucracy and government wastefulness. But the US government needs to be reformed, not dismantled. We should really be more worried about the ‘deep state’ in Moscow and Beijing, which is at least 10-20 times larger than the one in Washington. For those cheering the demise of the IRS and falling tax revenues, just remember that the federal government will not have the funds to rebuild its military and nuclear deterrent even if it wanted to. While many criticisms about the US government may have been true, we are now seeing the intended fruits of this 5+ year obsession with the Deep State. The one-sided narrative that the right bought into was being pushed by Russia and China for a reason.
Yes.
It looks like every pretext is used, that the good cause becomes camouflage for the bad. This happened on the left and now on the right. Who benefits? Always, the enemy benefits.
Musk and his father with the quasi socialist technocracy ideology. Musk talking Universal Basic income and praising Chinese efficiency and and ability to subordinate for economic goals(5 year plan).
And we can’t forget Musk and his fathers quasi socialist technocrachy ideas on basic standard income and praise for Chinese efficiency. You and Jeff have it right.
Interesting thing is, the communist bloc, pretty much all ruled by “former” commies and their wretched offspring having almost complete control of the state(s) while giving the plebs a token amount of freedom is the literal definition of a “deep state.”
Even more curious: When I would bring up this fact in a previous life, it got almost no traction. Hmm, curious indeed, huh?
I never thought I would view NATO as a mistake. But the wisdom of Washington’s words ring true for me this morning:
“It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world; so far, I mean, as we are now at liberty to do it; for let me not be understood as capable of patronizing infidelity to existing engagements. I hold the maxim no less applicable to public than to private affairs, that honesty is always the best policy. I repeat it, therefore, let those engagements be observed in their genuine sense. But, in my opinion, it is unnecessary and would be unwise to extend them.
“Taking care always to keep ourselves by suitable establishments on a respectable defensive posture, we may safely trust to temporary alliances for extraordinary emergencies.”
NATO is the reason Europe is unprepared. NATO prevented Europe from following Washington’s wise principles that most countries follow when they rely only on themselves. But everyone instead relied on the United States for defense. Europe’s armies allowed their equipment to be integrated and run by American computer systems. And now one man, one man compromised by Europe’s enemies, is betraying them and handing them on a platter to Putin. If NATO had never been created, Europe might have been more prepared. Of course, we might also have fought this war a lot sooner. But better to fight early and win than to delay the fight and lose.
Has anyone else been replaying Yeltsin and Clinton’s conversation as though it were between Putin and Trump?
Putin: Donald, Donald. I got your note. It went into all these things in incredible detail. I read it and was satisfied. I’ve not yet ceased to believe in you.
I ask you one thing. Just give Europe to Russia. The U.S. is not in Europe. Europe should be the business of Europeans. Russia is half European and half Asian.
Trump: So you want Asia, too?
Putin: Sure, sure, Donald. Eventually, we will have to agree on all of this.
Trump: I don’t think the Europeans would like this very much.
Putin: Not all. But I am a European. I live in Moscow. Moscow is in Europe and I like it. You can take all the other states and provide security for them. I will take Europe and provide them security. Well, not I. Russia will….
Donald, I am serious. Give Europe to Europe itself. Europe never felt as close to Russia as it does now…
The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and Hitler’s declaration of war on America rendered Washington’s 18th century advice obsolete. Intercontinental bombers and missiles rendered these words null and void. The existence of a powerful communist bloc made isolationism a dangerous policy.
I’m not advocating for isolationism at all. I am advocating for every country taking responsibility for its own defenses. Everyone relying on the US has resulted in disaster. Europe could have had a standing army of millions* if they had not been totally dependent upon us for their security. Instead they have nothing. They have shovels instead of guns. Because who was providing free guns? The Americans! We built a defense welfare system for Europe! Now I see the wisdom of temporary* alliances— this is how WWI and WWII were won. It is how WWIII could have been won. Permanent alliances are proving disastrous. They encourage complacency and irresponsibility. Everyone would rather spend their defense allocations elsewhere. What I didn’t see before, but I do now, is that NATO is fundamentally flawed in that it is actually the socialization of Europe’s defense. Britain should have been responsible for Britain. France should have been responsible for France. What if each European country had had a standing army a million strong, or a half million strong, at this point in time? Things would be playing out very differently than they are right now. No, I don’t believe Washington’s words above have been rendered obsolete— not even slightly.
Do I think we should be abandoning Europe in this moment? Of course not. But the reality is, we are. Trump is. But the mistake began back in 1949 with a permanent alliance!
I understand. But I would explain that NATO was once well equipped. The nations were carrying their load. What disarmed NATO was the supposed fall of communism.
I still think things might have been better off without NATO. At least then each country would have had its own equipment, and not US equipment that cannot even be used without software updates! Additionally, not everyone might have been duped by Russia’s “collapse”— some countries along the border might have remained vigilant and maintained better defenses.
My worst fear was that Trump would abandon Ukraine. I didn’t anticipate that he would abandon all of Europe and side with Russia! What we couldn’t even imagine is being realized right before our eyes.
Yes, as someone said above, may God have mercy on us. And may God have mercy on Europe.
K, your theory is very flawed. A system of temporary ad hoc alliances can never work for countering a united and determined Communist Bloc. If the West has no sense of unity or shared destiny, then any small country can be bought off one by one until the few remaining big(ger) countries are completely isolated. Looking at Europe specifically, how can any country plan for its defense in case of attack by Russia, if it doesn’t even know which neighboring countries it can count on for help? Russia is huge, and all European countries are very small by comparison. The only chance they have against Russia is if they all work together, and to actually succeed they need to have in place a well-oiled and well coordinated military system at the European level.
The problem with NATO was not that it created European dependency on the US, but that it was allowed to become a paper tiger alliance. There is an argument to be made for the decentralization of some military systems, so that if one big member of the alliance withdraws or becomes compromised, the whole alliance system is not put in jeopardy. But the solution is not ad hoc alliances. The solution is eternal vigilance and knowledge of the enemy, so that individual governments don’t end up becoming compromised by Russia or China.
That’s mucking right Laura.
I’m still very conflicted about this, Laura. Yesterday I would have agreed with you. But this simply should not have been allowed to happen. The atrocities we have seen in Ukraine are about to be wrought on all of Europe. It just shouldn’t have been possible for Russia to co-opt one rich American and defeat all of Europe! George Washington’s intelligence was far beyond any of ours. Not only was he an eminent statesman, but he was a brilliant military leader. If he said that military alliances should be temporary, I’m prepared to listen to him now, especially after seeing this fiasco play out firsthand. Even if NATO was working well at one point, it really doesn’t matter, because ultimately it will have caused Europe’s swift defeat. Even after Russia “removed the image of [our] enemy,” if Europe had not been in NATO, I really believe they would have kept up much better individual defenses. No country dependent on only itself for defense would have been training troops with brooms or shovels. No country the size of Britain, dependent only on itself for its defenses, would have a standing army of only 18,000 men. Europe would be far better off right now if every country had taken responsibility for itself. I have a sneaking suspicion that if Washington were here today, he would point at NATO as an example of what he feared might happen.
Please don’t mishear me: I’m not saying we should abandon NATO or Ukraine. That is the absolute last thing we should do now. All I’m saying is that perhaps— perhaps— we should entertain the notion that Washington was in fact right after all. (And I have argued in the past that he was wrong.)
It is alleged that Washington had a vision during a desperate winter in Valley Forge where he saw the future of America. The final trial of the Republic was encirclement and invasion.
US Warned of Caribbean Becoming ‘Chinese Lake’
Published Mar 09, 2025 at 4:00 AM EDT
https://www.newsweek.com/us-warned-caribbean-becoming-chinese-lake-2041296
China Raises Military Budget as Trump Nominee Warns of ‘Catastrophic’ War
Published Mar 05, 2025 at 2:31 PM EST
Updated Mar 05, 2025 at 9:35 PM EST
https://www.newsweek.com/china-increase-defense-budget-elbridge-colby-nominee-trump-pentagon-2040045
You
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‘Conservative realist’ Pentagon nominee to face Senate grilling on China views:
Defense policy candidate says defending Taiwan is not an ‘existential’ U.S. interest:
President Trump’s pick to be the next undersecretary of defense for policy, a key position, will face off against senators during a Senate Armed Services Committee confirmation hearing on his nomination Tuesday.
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2025/mar/3/conservative-realist-pentagon-nominee-face-senate-grilling-china/
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Pentagon policy nominee says U.S. must act or risk losing war with China:
Colby vows to adopt America first and peace through strength:
The risk of war with China is real and the United States risks losing the conflict unless greater preparations are made, President Trump’s pick for a key Pentagon policy post told a Senate confirmation hearing on Tuesday.
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2025/mar/4/pentagon-policy-nominee-says-us-must-act-risk-losing-war-china/
So is the working theory, then, that Trump is giving Russia Europe in exchange for Russia’s help countering China? Is that the most likely thing Trump has been told? He believes he’s saving the US from war with China by sacrificing Europe?
In this context then what would this statement mean?
“I also think that Russia wants to make a deal because in a certain different way – a different way that only I know – they have no choice either.”
Do they have “no choice” because Trump has given them such a sweetheart deal that they cannot pass it up? Is the deal that the US will leave Europe, once and for all, in exchange for a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine, and the promise of Russia’s help countering China? Could Trump really be this naïve? I hope not, but narcissists are unpredictable in the face of flattery. The irony of starting World War III in pursuit of a Nobel Peace Prize is downright Shakespearean!
If Trump is turning on Europe, does he also plan to invade Greenland in the name of US security? Will he attack Canada? Where does this end?
A couple of days ago, I half wondered if Trump was serious about the ‘pivot to Asia’ or if it was just a ruse to keep the Republican hawks on board while he cozied up to Russia. Now with the latest news of Trump questioning the defense treaty with Japan, it’s clear. Even before that, he had ignored the lawful TikTok ban, he only placed 10% tariffs on China, and he publicly welcomed more Chinese investors into the US. And this was just for starters. Now we hear from Trump’s nominee Colby that the US doesn’t see Taiwan as an ‘existential’ US interest. Taiwan is critical to America’s chip industry, and is viewed by Japan as essential to its security. The message to Japan and the rest of the East Asian allies couldn’t be more clear. I think all of this goes back to what Jeff was speculating about at the end of the last Anti-Communist conference. He said that it was almost as if Putin had struck a grand bargain with Trump where the world would be split into three spheres of influence –Russia, America and China. So now we’re seeing the 3rd sphere materialize with the US pulling out of Asia.
What are the chances that in return for the Panama Canal, Trump will make a deal with China and serve up Japan, Taiwan and South Korea as a peace offering to Xi? The China hawks will not be able to complain much because, hey Trump got the Panama Canal back! I’m sure the Chinese will generously let him “keep” it until they are totally done with him. Then when they and the Russians are ready, they will launch the big attack against the USA.
As Jeff noted, Trump is a liar and we cannot take anything he says seriously, especially about Russia. His words are only true in the sense of showing allies that America is unreliable and maybe even an adversary.
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This post explains that under the treaty the US is obligated to defend Japan. Since a treaty is law, am I right to think that breaking it would be an impeachable offense?
https://x.com/Tomo20309138/status/1897872719687172283
I wonder if Trump abandoning NATO countries when they are attacked would also be an impeachable offense?
Trump is following the Curtis Yarvin strategy. America divides the world with Russia and China. America gets Canada, Greenland, and Latin America.
Would make sense given the talk of Gulf of America, Canada 51st state. Holy crap wtf is happening.
Giant chipmaker TSMC to spend $100B to expand chip manufacturing in US, Trump announces. 3 plants in Arizona. Let China have Taiwan and Japan we will have best of Taiwan in the US? Is that part of the plan?
First time as tragedy second as farce. Nixon played the China card, now Trump will play the Russia card?
Good use of Marx’s formulation! It is indeed apt. I will steal it.
“Wealthy Chinese investors are quietly funnelling tens of millions of dollars into private companies controlled by Elon Musk using an arrangement that shields their identities from public view, according to asset managers and investors involved in the transactions.”
https://archive.is/NUw7C
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“US ‘to cease all future military exercises in Europe’”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/us/politics/2025/03/08/us-to-cease-all-future-military-exercises-in-europe-reports/
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Can US turn off EU weapons systems?
https://archive.is/GCWGk
K: Thank you very much for this.
Jeff, This peace through strength saying hasn’t sat well with me since I heard it and I couldn’t figure out why and then you explained it somewhere but now I can’t find where you said it. Would you please refresh my memory.
Retreating from the enemy in Ukraine and Europe is not “peace through strength,” as the administration maintains. It is weakness that will guarantee a larger war.
Thanks. Yes, after you explained that it is retreating I figured out why I was so bothered.
jeff nyquist you were right that trump would hand over ukraine now do you think that with the promises of european rearmament putin can attack accelerate his plan and attack otam and try to dominate europe believing that the us will not intervene? If Putin feels confident that the US will not attack to defend Europe, do you think he can attack Europe this year? Do you think we could see war in Europe this year? If he attacks Europe will he also attack the USA at the same time?
It is possible the larger war will begin this year. It depends on how long Ukraine can hold out. Russia is now confronted with a timetable if Europe rearms. Russia cannot allow Europe to rearm. That means Russia must act quickly to break out. Only if Putin dies will there be a different solution. Russia is mobilized for war and can continue if Ukraine is beaten and Europe relatively helpless (absent American support). The logic of Russia’s next moves is clear. China’s logic also engages. If they are not confident, they will settle for Ukraine and wait. It depends on what happens in the next few months.
Given time Europe could build up alot, but I’m very skeptical they will do very much in a timely fashion even if they had the time.
The thing is, they may not have time.
You’re welcome, Jeff. I’m listening to your interview on KLW World News right now and the info being presented is jaw dropping. I’m only about halfway through the second half, and then I need to go back and watch the first hour. Two thoughts. First, has this buildup in Belarus and Kaliningrad been happening since right before Trump won the election? In other words, as soon as it became clear that Trump was going to beat Kamala? If so, it seems like that might be evidence right there that Russia controls Trump!
Second, what do you think Trump’s response to Lithuania, Latvia and northern Poland being invaded will be if he IS a Russian agent vs if he is NOT a Russian agent?
I can’t believe these poor, unsuspecting, peaceful countries are going to be sucked into this war. I feel so grieved for Poland, especially. They supported Trump so fiercely!
Trump won’t be in contention for a Nobel Peace Prize, he’ll be in contention for a Darwin Award! The man who single-handedly sank the West!
Trump is unleashing Russia. He is a useless man.
Jeff, not sure if you can comment, in regards to Hong Kong, I have noticed some thing that has become apparent since 1997 where Xi Van Fleet talks about the destruction of the four olds in China under Mao during the cultural revolution and Yuri Bezmenov’s four stages of subversion.
Starting from 1997, when the CCP got the sovereignty on Hong Kong, the four olds were being destroyed, the society that the British built in Hong Kong is being destroyed or by this point completely destroyed, this was evident in 2019 when the protests took place
In terms of Yuri Bezmenov’s 4 stages of subversion, it seems Demoralization and Destablization was done together and the Hong Kong ‘Pro-Democracy’ Movement was instrumental in this, when these 2 phases were in action on Hong Kong, large numbers of people from the Mainland were brought into Hong Kong. Yuri Bezmenov’s crisis phase literally took place in 2019
The Hong Kong identity is not only being destroyed, the people of Hong Kong are being moulded into like their mainland counterparts as well and eventually they are sent to the US or UK, this is frightening.
The whole world is next.
Also, Jeff, if Trump is at best appeasing Russia (and China), and at worst working for Russia (and China), do you think we’ll continue to see China at peace while Russia fights, or will China invade Taiwan (or South Korea, or Japan) simultaneously as Russia attacks the Baltics and Poland, since neither will need to worry about US interference?
I expect that China will watch for its opening to attack. Probably when America is in chaos and Europe surrenders to Russia or is invaded.
“DONALD Trump has warned “monster” nuclear weapons could “end the world” as he sounded the alarm over atomic armageddon.
“The President issued the stark warning in a TV interview on Sunday morning after he floated new arms controls with Russia and China.
“Speaking on Fox, Trump said: “We spend a lot of money of nuclear weapons – the level of destruction is beyond anything you can imagine.
“It’s just bad that you have to spend all this money on something that if it’s used, it’s probably the end of the world.”
“The 78-year-old went on to say that too many people are focused on claims of climate change – rather than tackling the global threat posed by nukes.
“The greatest is sitting on shelves in various countries called ‘nuclear weapons’ that are big monsters that can blow your heads off for miles and miles and miles.”
“Trump has long vowed to be the president of peace and said he wants to end wars worldwide – especially the raging conflict in Ukraine.
“His comments came mere days after he revealed on Friday that it would be “great” for the world to “get rid of nuclear weapons” – prompting a response from the Kremlin.
“China will have an equal amount within 4-5 years.
“It would be great if we could all denuclearise because the power of nuclear weapons is crazy.”
https://www.the-sun.com/news/13734407/donald-trump-monster-nukes-end-of-world/
Note: This is excepted. Click on the link for the full article.
Nuclear disarmament rhetoric prevents us from rebuilding our rotting arsenal. This fool is destroying our country. Nuclear weapons cannot cause the end of the world. The Russians and Chinese know this well.