It looks like the man-child in the White House finally 'got’ Putin. This is a chance that we pro-Ukrainians cannot pass up. Of course, there's a risk that Trump will be back in love next week....
Trump as usual had a shot at Zelenskyy too, so I hold no expectation that he will do the right thing… I mean based on his completely unhinged performance at West Point frankly I think he’s finished certainly in terms of being able to come to grips with complex problems….so I would count the US out completely.
Count me among the Krasnov school. However that does not exclude the likelihood that both explanations are correct: he's an eight-year-old man child flattered by the Russians years ago into the role of Krasnov. They are masters at exploiting the weaknesses of foreigners.
I do believe that if everything is viewed through the lens of getting bank-rolled in the 90's by Deutsche Bank and getting tonnes of cash from russian gangsters, and understanding that this is/was an "understanding" with attendant IOUs, everything about how tRump behaves with Putin makes sense.
I wouldn’t get too excited, whatever else he is His Malignancy is addicted to being the center of attention and will say whatever it takes to hold our attention- when he’s not performing it’s probably because he doesn’t want anyone to notice what he’s actually doing at that moment.
Few words capture Donald Trump quite like feckless. Behind the bluster and bravado is a man wholly unfit for leadership—an attention addict who shirks responsibility, evades accountability, and governs with the discipline of a toddler mid-meltdown. His decisions are driven not by principle, but by impulse, grievance, and the promise of applause. He talks like a strongman, but history will remember him as a weak man playing dress-up.
Nowhere is Trump’s fecklessness more grotesquely apparent than in his decade-long submission to Vladimir Putin. This week, after Russia launched its deadliest aerial assault on Ukraine since the war began—leaving dozens dead—Trump responded with a limp, self-serving post claiming Putin was “playing with fire” and that “really bad things” would’ve happened to Russia without him. No sanctions. No support for Ukraine. Just hollow chest-thumping, followed by total inaction. Putin bombed civilians; Trump posted nonsense.
But this isn’t new—it’s his original sin. Trump owes his rise, in part, to Putin’s 2016 election sabotage—an act of foreign interference that Trump amplified by parroting Kremlin propaganda. A hostile autocrat helped install a man so vain, so malleable, so staggeringly ignorant, he could be played like a balalaika. For years, Trump has fawned over Putin, even as Russian forces kidnapped children, bombed hospitals, and executed civilians. His admiration has never been for democracy or decency—but for unchallenged power, no matter how brutal.
There is no ideology here. No strategy. Just one man’s bottomless narcissism—desperate for validation, incapable of courage, and loyal only to those who flatter him.
Real presidents confront tyrants.
Trump curtsies.
A real leader defends freedom.
A feckless one folds.
••••
“Rage, Reason, and Righteous Mockery. Mersault writes what the moment demands.” – New York Magazine
Well put, one correction of note. Trump is a spoiled rich child from Queens (a NYC outer borough), not Manhattan- a big difference that also accounts for at least some of his inferiority complex, bitterness and resentments.
So embarrassing to have a President who communicates like a petulant fifth-grader. And a fifth-grader that's not at the top of his class, if you catch my drift. He's"all hat and no cattle," as we say in the American West. Ask him to elaborate? He doesn't handle followup questions well. That's, of course, because he rarely has any detailed knowledge or understanding of any issue. His cognitive decline has only made things worse. Anyway, thanks for a great read.
Yeap, no knowledge or understanding of anything for sure. On Trump admitting to being surprised by Putin’s blatant brutality - this is indicative of how "low-information" a man-child the President is. Maybe someone needs to wise Trump up to "Ryazan Sugar" (it refers to an incident in 1999 when the FSB was busted placing sacks of explosive in an apartment block basement in the city of Ryazan, it looked like "sugar" but it was not sugar, it was an explosive called RDX and had timers and batteries with wires set to go off at 5:30am). These FSB apartment bombings were the pretext that led to the second Chechen War. Czar putin's war was responsible for the deaths of around 250,000 Chechens, most of them civilians. putin was and always will be brutal. It's nothing new. I doubt DJT is aware of any of this.
Putins cowardice and craven bending over for the West during the course of the SMO has been a huge wake call proving that Russia is run criminals no different than those running the West in general. Time has proved men I used to mock like Strelkov correct. One prediction of mine at the beginning of the SMO that has held up well though is that eventually we would see Ukrainians and pro Ukrainians crying about how Washington, Brussels etc isn't doing enough for Ukraine and Kiev is being
stabbed in the back lol. Like Ukraine is entitled to 3 trillion dollars from the US printing press every month and not just 1.5 or that NATO should be launching hundreds of cruise missiles into Russia instead of dozens. Keep crying, its people like the writers and commenters here that encouraged Ukrainians to trust the West in the first place. If you are unhappy with the level of support Ukraine is receiving its actually kind of your fault for giving Ukrainians false expectations by convincing them that the West is somehow more benovelent, moral and reliable than Russia.
Lesson 1: Trump is inclined to disengage from the Ukraine quagmire and focus on China as the greater strategic threat.
Lesson 2: Trump is being bullied by the Establishment, which wants endless war in Ukraine (to bleed Russia), and which controls the mainstream narrative whitewashing Ukraine and demonizing Russia
I am dead serious. The mainstream news media constantly recycles Ukrainian government propaganda without mentioning the Russian side of the latest fake atrocity.
I remember, leading up to the first Gulf War, apathetic popular opinion was whipped up into a hate-filled frenzy by the completely bogus story that Saddam Hussein's soldiers dumped premature babies out of incubators at a Kuwaiti hospital, leaving them to die on the floor. After the war, the New York Times and everybody else admitted that the story was a big lie.
And here is a 150-year-old quote from John Swinton, former editor-in-chief of the New York Times:
"There is no such thing, at this date of the world’s history, in America, as an independent press. You know it and I know it.
‘There is not one of you who dares to write your honest opinions, and if you did, you know beforehand that it would never appear in print. I am paid weekly for keeping my honest opinion out of the paper I am connected with. Others of you are paid similar salaries for similar things, and any of you who would be so foolish as to write honest opinions would be out on the streets looking for another job. If I allowed my honest opinions to appear in one issue of my paper, before twenty four hours my occupation would be gone.
‘The business of the journalists is to destroy the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to vilify, to fawn at the feet of mammon, and to sell his country and his race for his daily bread. You know it and I know it, and what folly is this toasting an independent press?
‘We are the tools and vassals of rich men behind the scenes. We are the jumping jacks, they pull the strings and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities and our lives are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes.” (Source: Labor’s Untold Story, by Richard O. Boyer and Herbert M. Morais, published by United Electrical, Radio & Machine Workers of America, NY, 1955/1979.)
--
My third example is Davison Budhoo's broken-hearted 1989 hundred-page resignation leetter from the International Monetary Fund, in which he confesses to crimes against humanity in "our own peculiar Holocaust." This was an international sensation, but it was blacked out of the U.S. news media. Some brief quotes:
"To me resignation is a priceless liberation, for with it I have taken the first big step to that place where I may hope to wash my hands of what in my mind’s eye is the blood of millions of poor and starving peoples. Mr. Camdessus, the blood is so much, you know, it runs in rivers."
"The charges that I make are not light charges - they are charges that touch at the very heart of western society and western morality and post-war inter-governmental institutionalism that have degenerated into fake and sham under the pretext of establishing and maintaining international economic order and global efficiency."
"Will the world be content merely to brand our institution as among the most insidious enemies of humankind? Will our fellowmen condemn us thus and let the matter rest? Or will the heirs of those whom we have dismembered in our own peculiar Holocaust clamor for another Nuremberg?
"I don’t mind telling you that this matter has haunted me; it has haunted me particularly over the past five years. It has haunted me because I know that if I am tried I will be found guilty, very guilty, without extenuating circumstance."
The NATO countries (with the United States as the heavyweight) have voting control at the IMF, which made war in the Donbass a prerequisite for servicing Ukraine's unpayable debt, with the NATO countries providing weapons and ammunition to enable Ukraine to continue sacrificing pounds and pounds of bloody flesh at the altar of Mammon.
To what extent have Establishment pundits been corrupted by Chinese money? China has all these surplus depreciating dollars, and what better use then to brainwash the American people into supporting an endless war that saps the strength of both of China's potential rivals?
Trump as usual had a shot at Zelenskyy too, so I hold no expectation that he will do the right thing… I mean based on his completely unhinged performance at West Point frankly I think he’s finished certainly in terms of being able to come to grips with complex problems….so I would count the US out completely.
i liked because I agree, not becaseu i like the situation you laid out
Count me among the Krasnov school. However that does not exclude the likelihood that both explanations are correct: he's an eight-year-old man child flattered by the Russians years ago into the role of Krasnov. They are masters at exploiting the weaknesses of foreigners.
You make a good point, sir
I do believe that if everything is viewed through the lens of getting bank-rolled in the 90's by Deutsche Bank and getting tonnes of cash from russian gangsters, and understanding that this is/was an "understanding" with attendant IOUs, everything about how tRump behaves with Putin makes sense.
Exactly so. Trump's "transactional" way of thinking, shared with his Russian benefactors, is in my view the only way his behavior makes sense.
I wouldn’t get too excited, whatever else he is His Malignancy is addicted to being the center of attention and will say whatever it takes to hold our attention- when he’s not performing it’s probably because he doesn’t want anyone to notice what he’s actually doing at that moment.
Few words capture Donald Trump quite like feckless. Behind the bluster and bravado is a man wholly unfit for leadership—an attention addict who shirks responsibility, evades accountability, and governs with the discipline of a toddler mid-meltdown. His decisions are driven not by principle, but by impulse, grievance, and the promise of applause. He talks like a strongman, but history will remember him as a weak man playing dress-up.
Nowhere is Trump’s fecklessness more grotesquely apparent than in his decade-long submission to Vladimir Putin. This week, after Russia launched its deadliest aerial assault on Ukraine since the war began—leaving dozens dead—Trump responded with a limp, self-serving post claiming Putin was “playing with fire” and that “really bad things” would’ve happened to Russia without him. No sanctions. No support for Ukraine. Just hollow chest-thumping, followed by total inaction. Putin bombed civilians; Trump posted nonsense.
But this isn’t new—it’s his original sin. Trump owes his rise, in part, to Putin’s 2016 election sabotage—an act of foreign interference that Trump amplified by parroting Kremlin propaganda. A hostile autocrat helped install a man so vain, so malleable, so staggeringly ignorant, he could be played like a balalaika. For years, Trump has fawned over Putin, even as Russian forces kidnapped children, bombed hospitals, and executed civilians. His admiration has never been for democracy or decency—but for unchallenged power, no matter how brutal.
There is no ideology here. No strategy. Just one man’s bottomless narcissism—desperate for validation, incapable of courage, and loyal only to those who flatter him.
Real presidents confront tyrants.
Trump curtsies.
A real leader defends freedom.
A feckless one folds.
••••
“Rage, Reason, and Righteous Mockery. Mersault writes what the moment demands.” – New York Magazine
Subscribe » Open Letters by Mersault
One can hope…..
Well put, one correction of note. Trump is a spoiled rich child from Queens (a NYC outer borough), not Manhattan- a big difference that also accounts for at least some of his inferiority complex, bitterness and resentments.
The best way to peace imho would be Trump being flown to Moskau, but without a return ticket.
So embarrassing to have a President who communicates like a petulant fifth-grader. And a fifth-grader that's not at the top of his class, if you catch my drift. He's"all hat and no cattle," as we say in the American West. Ask him to elaborate? He doesn't handle followup questions well. That's, of course, because he rarely has any detailed knowledge or understanding of any issue. His cognitive decline has only made things worse. Anyway, thanks for a great read.
Yeap, no knowledge or understanding of anything for sure. On Trump admitting to being surprised by Putin’s blatant brutality - this is indicative of how "low-information" a man-child the President is. Maybe someone needs to wise Trump up to "Ryazan Sugar" (it refers to an incident in 1999 when the FSB was busted placing sacks of explosive in an apartment block basement in the city of Ryazan, it looked like "sugar" but it was not sugar, it was an explosive called RDX and had timers and batteries with wires set to go off at 5:30am). These FSB apartment bombings were the pretext that led to the second Chechen War. Czar putin's war was responsible for the deaths of around 250,000 Chechens, most of them civilians. putin was and always will be brutal. It's nothing new. I doubt DJT is aware of any of this.
Putins cowardice and craven bending over for the West during the course of the SMO has been a huge wake call proving that Russia is run criminals no different than those running the West in general. Time has proved men I used to mock like Strelkov correct. One prediction of mine at the beginning of the SMO that has held up well though is that eventually we would see Ukrainians and pro Ukrainians crying about how Washington, Brussels etc isn't doing enough for Ukraine and Kiev is being
stabbed in the back lol. Like Ukraine is entitled to 3 trillion dollars from the US printing press every month and not just 1.5 or that NATO should be launching hundreds of cruise missiles into Russia instead of dozens. Keep crying, its people like the writers and commenters here that encouraged Ukrainians to trust the West in the first place. If you are unhappy with the level of support Ukraine is receiving its actually kind of your fault for giving Ukrainians false expectations by convincing them that the West is somehow more benovelent, moral and reliable than Russia.
Lesson 1: Trump is inclined to disengage from the Ukraine quagmire and focus on China as the greater strategic threat.
Lesson 2: Trump is being bullied by the Establishment, which wants endless war in Ukraine (to bleed Russia), and which controls the mainstream narrative whitewashing Ukraine and demonizing Russia
John,
Your lesson 1 could certainly have something for it.
Your lesson 2 is .... you cannot be serious.
I am dead serious. The mainstream news media constantly recycles Ukrainian government propaganda without mentioning the Russian side of the latest fake atrocity.
I remember, leading up to the first Gulf War, apathetic popular opinion was whipped up into a hate-filled frenzy by the completely bogus story that Saddam Hussein's soldiers dumped premature babies out of incubators at a Kuwaiti hospital, leaving them to die on the floor. After the war, the New York Times and everybody else admitted that the story was a big lie.
And here is a 150-year-old quote from John Swinton, former editor-in-chief of the New York Times:
https://adrienne-morris.com/2014/12/08/there-is-no-such-thing-at-this-date-of-the-worlds-history-in-america-as-an-independent-press-you-know-it-and-i-know-it-john-swinton-1880/
"There is no such thing, at this date of the world’s history, in America, as an independent press. You know it and I know it.
‘There is not one of you who dares to write your honest opinions, and if you did, you know beforehand that it would never appear in print. I am paid weekly for keeping my honest opinion out of the paper I am connected with. Others of you are paid similar salaries for similar things, and any of you who would be so foolish as to write honest opinions would be out on the streets looking for another job. If I allowed my honest opinions to appear in one issue of my paper, before twenty four hours my occupation would be gone.
‘The business of the journalists is to destroy the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to vilify, to fawn at the feet of mammon, and to sell his country and his race for his daily bread. You know it and I know it, and what folly is this toasting an independent press?
‘We are the tools and vassals of rich men behind the scenes. We are the jumping jacks, they pull the strings and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities and our lives are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes.” (Source: Labor’s Untold Story, by Richard O. Boyer and Herbert M. Morais, published by United Electrical, Radio & Machine Workers of America, NY, 1955/1979.)
--
My third example is Davison Budhoo's broken-hearted 1989 hundred-page resignation leetter from the International Monetary Fund, in which he confesses to crimes against humanity in "our own peculiar Holocaust." This was an international sensation, but it was blacked out of the U.S. news media. Some brief quotes:
"To me resignation is a priceless liberation, for with it I have taken the first big step to that place where I may hope to wash my hands of what in my mind’s eye is the blood of millions of poor and starving peoples. Mr. Camdessus, the blood is so much, you know, it runs in rivers."
"The charges that I make are not light charges - they are charges that touch at the very heart of western society and western morality and post-war inter-governmental institutionalism that have degenerated into fake and sham under the pretext of establishing and maintaining international economic order and global efficiency."
"Will the world be content merely to brand our institution as among the most insidious enemies of humankind? Will our fellowmen condemn us thus and let the matter rest? Or will the heirs of those whom we have dismembered in our own peculiar Holocaust clamor for another Nuremberg?
"I don’t mind telling you that this matter has haunted me; it has haunted me particularly over the past five years. It has haunted me because I know that if I am tried I will be found guilty, very guilty, without extenuating circumstance."
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1oJzvpfFzIKu76oE1CkzZlarRiVpYIggFMFzSt6OgHx0/mobilebasic"
--
The NATO countries (with the United States as the heavyweight) have voting control at the IMF, which made war in the Donbass a prerequisite for servicing Ukraine's unpayable debt, with the NATO countries providing weapons and ammunition to enable Ukraine to continue sacrificing pounds and pounds of bloody flesh at the altar of Mammon.
To what extent have Establishment pundits been corrupted by Chinese money? China has all these surplus depreciating dollars, and what better use then to brainwash the American people into supporting an endless war that saps the strength of both of China's potential rivals?