Putin’s beady-eyed point of view

From Heather Cox Richardson, arguably our greatest source of news, context and analysis:

During the 2024 campaign, Trump said repeatedly that he would end the war in Ukraine. Shortly after the election, a newspaper reporter asked Nikolai Patrushev, who is close to Putin, if Trump’s election would mean “positive changes from Russia’s point of view.” Patrushev answered: “To achieve success in the elections, Donald Trump relied on certain forces to which he has corresponding obligations. And as a responsible person, he will be obliged to fulfill them.”

Today, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told a reporter: “The new administration is rapidly changing all foreign policy configurations. This largely aligns with our vision.”

source

Narcissistic Abuse MAGA style

Narcissistic abuse is a term I had to learn not long ago, after I discovered that two of my longtime closest friends, a husband and wife team, flew into a united, endless, implacable rage when they felt “defied” by my attempt to negotiate about something they wanted us all to do. Perceived defiance is an intolerably painful injury to someone, irreparably damaged by earlier trauma, who can never be wrong. It challenges them in a way that infuriates them, plunges them into an unbearable childish rage that makes them violent and irrational.

So they raise their voice, they go silent, they glare, they change what happened, reverse cause and effect, forget details that show them partially at fault, they blame, they threaten, they lie, inventing contradictory reasons that show they are completely in the right. They will blame you for the entire, increasingly ugly conflict because it is 100% your fault for making them feel bad about themselves by defying their will. Since they can’t be even a little bit wrong, you have to be completely wrong, and if you won’t admit your fault, and take all blame, then you are the enemy. Here’s a little snapshot of this type:

We all have a breaking point for tolerating this kind of insane, abusive treatment. We can control our reactions, try to act with maturity, understand we are dealing with damaged people incapable of doing better, but at some point, provoked sharply enough, if we don’t get away in time, most of us will eventually roll our eyes or let a “shut the fuck up” slip out. In this moment, we become the aggressor, and have proved their point that we are the violent, enraged person, not them. The video of us snarling “shut the fuck up already” will be played to everyone over and over as proof of our abusiveness. This reaction is the desired outcome of narcissistic abuse, it proves they were right to treat us as a despicable, implacable enemy.

Look at this pile of shit, Lyin’ Ted, an intelligent, educated, morally bankrupt, Trump-smeared toady, making the case that Zelensky standing up for his country during a coordinated attack from his putative allies by stating the truth, while being angrily cut off and challenged by Trump, Vance and company, had “abused” and disrespected the Orange Pussy Grabber in Chief. Perfect snapshot of narcissistic abuse, on Ted’s and JD’s parts, as well as on their master’s, Putin’s BFF, part. Lyin’ Ted claims Trump was 100% correct to be infuriated by Zelensky trying to get a word in, Zelensky impertinently correcting a couple of Trump’s more outrageous lies. Shades of Bagpiper Bill Barr, identifying with Trump’s completely understandable “righteous anger” after the Mueller Report came out.

One of the hallmarks of narcissistic abuse is its utter irrationality. These morally paralyzed, reflexively childish dirty fighters engage in warfare to the death based entirely on their aggrieved will. They almost always need to lie, because “proving” their case is impossible, since their claims fly in the face of what people actually witnessed. If you can’t be wrong, and you are wrong, you will fight to the death, anybody, everybody. It is the nature of these stinking creatures. They can do nothing else.

Zelensky had a catastrophic meltdown in the Oval Office, according to MAGA. Note that this “meltdown” (something impossible to see in real time, except to the faithful, since there was no actual “meltdown”) gave Trump every right to say this, after becoming righteously, justifiably “infuriated”, according to Lyin’ Ted:

“Putin went through a hell of a lot with me. He went through a phony witch hunt where they used him and Russia… Russia, Russia, Russia—you ever hear of that deal?—that was a phony Hunter Biden, Joe Biden, scam. Hillary Clinton, shifty Adam Schiff, it was a Democrat scam. And he had to go through that. And he did go through it, and we didn’t end up in a war. And he went through it. He was accused of all that stuff. He had nothing to do with it. It came out of Hunter Biden’s bathroom.”

All perfectly reasonable, if you’re an insane psychopath, I suppose. Of course it was all Hunter Fucking Biden’s fault, of course it was, sir, the fault of his disgusting bathroom with all those stolen classified documents in it (spoken with those proverbial tears of sincerity running down my face, sir). Also, I note your great restraint, sir, in not including Rosie O’Donnell, Lawrence O’Donnell, Mitch McConnell, Liz Cheney, the AP, PBS, NPR, Adam Kinsinger, Birdbrain Nikki Haley or any of your other sick, dangerous enemies, in your righteously infuriated closing statement, right before you kicked Zelensky out of the White House, as the greatest diplomats do when engaged in delicate negotiations.

By the way, Little Marco, who signed off on the three volume Senate Committee report detailing over 140 acts of coordination between the 2016 Trump campaign and Putin, including the sharing of sensitive polling data between Paul Manafort and a Russian agent named Konstantin Kilimnik, was never smaller or more humiliated and compromised than sitting passively near his boss, as Secretary of State, while an enraged Trump righteously snarled “Russia, Russia, Russia…” as he betrayed our ally and shared the true pain he’d gone through with his comrade/business partner/benefactor/blackmailer, Vladimir, at the hands of their mutual enemies, the nefarious agents of world democracy.

God bless these United Shayyysssshhh…

Cowardly tag team bullying of Volodymyr Zelenskyy

The cowardly tag teaming of Zelenskyy yesterday in the Oval Office, the public betrayal of a democratic ally by supporters of a brazen war criminal, was a new low for these modern day American Nazis. The only things missing were the swastika armbands and the snarled word “Jew” every time they cut Zelenskyy off, yelled at him, confronted him with lie after deliberate, knowing lie. I love that Marjorie Taylor Greene’s new boyfriend snarled a challenge at Zelenskyy for disrespecting the Oval Office by showing up dressed like fucking Elon Musk. They surrounded the Ukrainian president and sneered at him from all sides. Considering the ferocity of the attack, the lone Ukrainian in the room held up pretty well.

Heather Cox Richardson notes that the scene, staged as a performance to discredit Ukraine, who Trump is poised to betray, played out live in front of the media: “Those reporters included one from Russian state media, but no one from the Associated Press or Reuters, who were not granted access.” Heather lays out the whole sordid story briefly and much better than I can at the moment. Her account is here: source

Here is a typical American corporate news report of this disgusting performance art betrayal. It states that Ukrainian/Americans were blindsided by Zelenskyy’s refusal to … well, they don’t say exactly. Except that you don’t talk to a wannabe Hitler and his heir apparent in that tone of voice unless you clearly want what you do not want. I include this only for the general tone, which suggests Trump good, Zelenskyy maybe not good. A short watch should be enough to get the tone. The other clips (Chris Hayes long form and two quick shorts) are actually worth watching.

Entire seven minute public “negotiation” between Zelensky, JD and Trump

A very childish and stupid question posed by a Fox talking head— thoughtful, intelligent answer given by Ukrainian president. Fox headline and MAGA talking point: Zelensky unapologetic and ungrateful, disrespectful to the Big Orange Leader.

It goes without saying that Vance lied, he channeled his inner Matt Gaetz to jump in, impress the boss. and the base (al Q’eada in Arabic), with his savagery and bully somebody already outnumbered and being shouted down. Truth and lies matter, what actually happened, what you saw with your own eyes and heard with your own ears matters, no matter how many times liars call people telling the truth liars.

Case in point, MAGA rationality

“When you see prices go up at the grocery store, the prices are going up because of excess government spending,” he [Elon Musk] said in an online conversation with, among others, Vivek Ramaswamy and Senator Joni Ernst of Iowa. “It’s very important to connect these dots. The supermarkets are not taking advantage of you. It’s not price gouging; it’s that the government spent too much.” (This, it must be said, makes no sense.)

from a recent NY Times op ed by Jamelle Bouie

This idiotic, easily refuted, childishly phrased, false statement is worthy of Musk’s fellow genius Jared Kushner, or the surrogate father he is angrily wrestling with, Jared’s father-in-law, what’s his name.

The major supermarket chains, who increased profits heroically during the post-Covid supply chain disruption and associated inflation, did this by increasing their prices. Even Musk’s fellow enraged, entitled, sub-normal, professional golfer Donald Trump, conceded there’s little even the all-powerful president can do to reduce grocery prices. He’d been lying when he vowed bring grocery prices down on day one, as it happens.

The Unitary Executive would be able to control prices, if the US government had any role in setting prices for private businesses, like supermarkets. Nothing about this hopped up South African asshole’s statement makes a lick of sense. In fact, it doesn’t withstand the weight of a single question. Disinformation (deliberate lies told to advance a political agenda) is their entire game. They don’t have facts, or law, on their side, only will, divisive lies and the lawless exercise of state-sponsored brutality.

Irrationality does not make truth, fact, evidence, law, cause and effect, moral values disappear. It only obscures the real world behind a tsunami of pernicious lies. It is our duty as citizens, and human beings, to keep the line between reality-based rationality and fantasy-based fascism as clear as we can. There is almost no overlap between those two worlds, which is also by design of the irrationalists, keep everything black and white, and something to rage about. Our job is to protect nuance and mutual conversation in all its human dimensions.

The triumph of irrationality

Irrationality, and the insane cruelty that flows from it, is, to me, the most terrifying force in the world. Destroy objective reality, replace it with a violent fantasy that makes no sense, and you can get some people to do anything. The project of the far-right “Libertarian” Koch network, for generations, has been to create an eternal battle of subjective, antithetical worldviews. Truth is what we say, the courts and all critics are enemies to be destroyed, if they don’t accept our side of our irrefutable truth.

Example: the Jews control the world and are manipulating majoritarian tyranny by convincing stupid colored people to do their bidding in a fake election-based “democracy”. Any election we lose, that’s why. When we win, even by 1%, that is a mandate, a historically powerful mandate, the true, irrepressible voice of the People, speaking as one in support of the Leader.

Consider the perfection of this loop: if you say that I always need to be right, and that I’ll lie to destroy you if we are in a conflict, then this proves that YOU always need to be right and are lying to destroy me. Therefore, it’s a draw, which makes me right. People who love you (if there are any such creatures) may believe your lies, everybody else will believe my truths.

Once everything is reduced to the realm of feelings, loyalty, love, communal obedience, good/evil, black/white, there is no factual basis for deciding anything. True faith settles every question, and faith, the faithful are told, is a far greater thing than the vanity of those who cite the so-called facts of a difficult and dangerous world. The only safety in such a world is the sanctuary of true belief.

In our current predicament, I’ve been taking some consolation in the sheer stupidity, incompetence and blind adherence of those loyal to a grandiose, pathologically greedy, perpetually enraged fool and his “transactional” worldview. I am thinking now that this consolation may be misplaced. Stupid people, angry stupid, manifestly unqualified people, those incapable of weighing facts reasonably, are capable of the worst atrocities imaginable. This is particularly true if they are given unchecked power to carry out their leader’s most insane plans.

Why not torture 30,000 random immigrants in a tent city on a piece of Cuba that is not subject to American law or the Geneva Conventions? “Let’s fucking do it!” Even if our actions are criminal, the Big Guy can pardon us, and no pardon may ever be questioned.

Why not cut off food and medical supplies to the world’s most desperately poor children? Why not end health care for millions of America’s most vulnerable children and old people? Why not remove every government regulator of waste, fraud and corruption, in the name of smashing waste fraud and corruption? With me, everybody “USA! USA!!!!”

The real terror of these merciless, idiot motherfuckers is not their bluster, their rage, their plans to inflict actual pain on their perceived inferiors and enemies. It is how far they have pushed the irrational, and the outright lies that “support” it, into the middle of our political discourse. Putin did not invade Ukraine, Ukraine was the aggressor. Putin wanted peace, Ukraine refused to talk. Putin no dictator, Zelensky dictator. Putin not fascist, Ukraine Nazi, also run by Jews. NATO attacked Russia, Putin only defend self. Putin honest, Ukraine liar. Trump not Putin puppet, only do what is right, for Trump. US veto UN on Putin’s behalf. Fuck Ukraine, America First!

The impossible thing about irrationality is that you can’t defeat it with all the reason, evidence, proof, and every demonstration of cause and effect in the world. Irrationality does not bend to anyone. Fuck you, I’m rational, YOU ARE IRRATIONAL, is the likeliest response after every available proof is put on the table.

I experienced this first hand from an old friend a couple of years ago. It was one of the most chilling demonstrations of this irrational, shapeshifting insistence on anything that could possibly make a person right, blameless and perfect and, the enemy, in this case me, the vicious persecutor. Her husband had proposed mediation to work out a simple conflict that had turned into an ugly year-long war. We met to prepare for the session, after I pointed out it was crucial for us to bring the mediator everything we agreed about so she could help us meet somewhere in the middle.

My old friend had told me when her husband, who hadn’t consulted her, informed her that Seedj and I might be amenable to mediation: “I fell on the kitchen floor and literally couldn’t move until it was time to walk to my car and drive to work.”

When I reminded her of this, she angrily told me I was lying. “Daniel must have told you that, it never happened, he was lying.” No, actually you told it to me. “I never said it, you’re lying.” I gave her the context, reminded her when she said it. “You’re lying, that never happened.” A moment later she said “I remember exactly how it happened and it was nothing like what you said. Dolly was there, and when Daniel told me he’d talked to you about mediation I did fall on the floor, but not for the reasons you said. It had nothing to do with mediation. I was just so sick of all this talk of ‘feelings, feelings, feelings’!”

And so she won that battle, ending our long friendship finally. She had already convinced all of our common friends that I’d been sadistically torturing her innocent husband for over a year to “bend him to my will” and that, in spite of countless apologies from her and her husband, I refused to forgive them. Set and match. The facts? What actually happened, who said what to who, who behaved with cruelty and who attempted to make peace? Totally irrelevant. We all believe in love, community, loyalty and forgiveness. We can never forgive someone who can’t forgive.

An angry insistence on the irrational is deadly. We don’t need no stinkin’ evidence, it’s obvious by the fact we can’t produce it that the (fill in the pejorative blank) stole and destroyed the evidence, otherwise we’d easily win this case. We are not lying, and 42% of Americans believe we are not lying, as our poll clearly shows. Therefore, the prosecutors, judges, grand juries, witnesses, the laws themselves are the fucking liars and WE WILL NEVER BOW TO FUCKING LIARS! Welcome to MAGA, boys and girls.

Even language itself is destroyed in this fusillade of incoherence. The goons call themselves conservatives. Conservatives traditionally want to preserve the status quo. MAGA is explicitly a radical, far-right reactionary movement. They want to restore a status quo that was overruled by decades, if not centuries, of a march toward a more perfect union. They want the original union, with the right of the White Man to rule his women, his children, his racial and social inferiors. Is there anything conservative about a group that is actively decapitating our democracy by illegal means? Not remotely.

To those not familiar with the Nazi seizure of power, once they hear the details they’re shocked by the one on one, on the nose, identical nature of what Project 2025 is carrying out. Purge the civil service, institute loyalty oaths to the leader, act with brazen ruthlessness to demoralize enemies, imprison critics, start killing people. If the leader says it’s a moral imperative to kill people, who are we subordinates to argue with someone sent by God? The “logic” of the Third Reich was also identical to Trump’s incoherent exposition of reality — anything that suits the Leader is true, all else, lies punishable by a violent, sadistically imposed slow death. As the First Amendment still allows me to write and post here: fuck those fucking Nazi putos.

A quick reminder about the danger of an irrational leader in times of peril:

Grey Lady boldly headlines Trump’s lies…

Alternate reality, based in a faith-based world of alternative facts, admittedly, is also, applying basic common sense and language usage, a lie, and a deliberate “distortion” of reality (more accurately, disinformation), but what are you going to do, especially when that alternate reality TV show shit seems to be working (he won the popular vote, everyone seems to agree) and is backed by virtually all of our greatest and most principled billionaires?

When news reporters feel they have to take sides, where do you draw the line? You can see the distinguished Grey Lady’s editorial dilemma.

Online committees of correspondence

Every citizen who can gather and analyze news from multiple sources, and write with any degree of clarity, should be doing it in the public forum. We need to constantly push back against the calculated ambiguity of corporate mass media. In a tsunami of disinformation and misinformation (Trump administration official submits affidavit swearing that Elon Musk is neither head of the fictional DOGE nor calling the shots as his youthful team of hackers continues to breach secure citizen data and ignore court orders to fucking stop) we need truth tellers calling out these lies. Trump, the five dimensional chess champion, after one of his flunkies submitted the lying sworn statement in federal court the other day, immediately reiterated on live TV that Elon is doing a great job as head of the “government department” illegally assembled after being pulled out of autocrat Charles Koch’s crusty old asshole.

The aligned interests of corporate mass media conglomerates and our greatest, and most pathologically greedy and savagely competitive billionaire citizens, ensure that the news reporting we get is filtered to their monetary advantage. We saw this in the lead up to the 2024 election, when first Biden and then Harris were raked over the coals for perceived infirmities and inconsistencies, challenged about a claimed lack of detailed policy plans, while the billionaire’s candidate, Donald Trump, got a pass for a stream of colorful, incendiary, non sequiturs, lies, mental lapses and constant denials that the blueprint for his regime, Project 2025, although written by loyal members of his first administration, had anything to do with him. He knew nothing about it, he’d never read it, and he also disagreed with a lot of it, he said. That he is carrying it out point by point and that the primary author, a radical reactionary named Russ Vought, is now his confirmed director of the Office of Management and Budget, pure chance, one supposes.

The head of “DOGE” (an illegally created government “agency”) is a racist, an actual Nazi supporter and spreader of hate speech (in the name of free speech absolutism, as long as nobody says anything bad about him or Trump). The world’s richest man, outside of the oil sheiks and Mr. Putin, gives two sneering Nazi salutes, on live TV during the inauguration festivities. He directed these “sieg heils” to invited visiting members of the present day German Nazi-like party, the AfD, a party he is financially backing.

There follows a collective wringing of hands in legacy media over whether the autistic, socially awkward, dorkish, racist Mr. Musk, meant to just give a heartfelt gesture when he inadvertently sneered and raised a stiff arm in an unambiguous Nazi salute, twice. Steve Bannon, international fascist (figure that one out), recently gave a public Hitler salute to a far-right audience he urged to “fight, fight, fight” and the news discusses what he might have meant, in a non-Hitler kind of way. And of course, all this Heil Hitler shit is just to distract us from the real damage these pricks are doing as they decapitate the government that represents we the people.

This is where citizen journalists come in. Historian Heather Cox Richardson, brilliant author of the nightly Letters from an American, is probably my favorite, but there are a number of excellent writers who are fleshing out truthful accounts and informed perspectives of ominous things that are happening behind the obscuring fog of “legacy media”. Robert Reich’s analysis is great, Allison Gill is fantastic, as is Timothy Snyder, a historian specialized in fascism and the lead up to War Two and its murderous excesses. Snyder offers imaginative, provocative thought experiments based on history. Brian Tyler Cohen partners with Marc Elias, of Democracy Docket, and former federal prosecutor Glenn Kirschner, two very sharp legal minds, and provides very important updates on the fascist agenda. Mary Trump is doing great work. David Feldman provides important news with a sardonic sense of humor. The Meidas Touch network is a source of actual news and analysis, with a shout out to Lee McGowan, the Politics Girl. Mehdi Hassan is another important voice, and source of rational analysis, with his independent news service, Zeteo. Amy Goodman and her team continue to provide indispensable perspective with the War and Peace Report on Democracy Now! David Pakman gives an intelligent take on what’s happening in our country. Wikipedia provides an important, instant source of fact checking, as do websites like Snopes. None of these news sources are answerable to corporate overlords and the inviolable financial bottom line.

The original resistance to monarchy’s overbearing exploitation of its American colonies took the form of Committees of Correspondence. These writers informed citizens in other colonies of Britain’s predations and excesses in their particular colony. The back and forth of these committees resulted in the first gatherings of representatives of the various colonies to organize and fight back against a King, who sat by Divine Right, imposing his will on subjects thousands of miles away who had no voice in anything that that God’s ordained ruler decided to impose on those unrepresented subjects. The District of Columbia and Puerto Rico come to mind.

I wrote a series of pieces on Substack putting together everything I could learn about fucking Looey DeJoy, the Trump megadonor whose mission was to bankrupt the US Postal Service (carriers of the correspondence the original resistance committees sent each other) and make sure millions of selected mail-in ballots went quietly, untraceably undelivered. Few read what I was able to gather, and no politician or media organization, or anyone listed above, for that matter, answered my many urgent queries, but it is important to have the information out there. DeJoy lost $9,500,000,000 for the USPS in 2024 it was revealed in a December Senate hearing the pugnacious partisan attended. There’s no way to know how many ballots were undelivered, in the first election since 2008 where the number of ballots didn’t increase, in fact, fell by upwards of 20,000,000. Now Looey, his barely compensated work done, steps down and Trump himself has stated he is going to personally take over the USPS, after illegally dissolving the board of governors.

Make no mistake what we are up against. These loyal kamikazes Trump has assembled, based primarily on their expressed love of the taste of his “ring”, are no different, in any meaningful way, than anyone who joined the National Socialist German Workers Party in 1933 when it became clear that radical measures were needed to restore the right people to absolute power over “majoritarian tyranny.”

Nazi salute, some critics claim

The Grey Lady, doing what she does best:

A raised-arm salute by Stephen K. Bannon that to many resembled a Nazi gesture incited an outcry on Friday not just from liberal critics of President Trump and his allies but also from a leader of the European right.

It came a month after Elon Musk made a similar salute, and at a combustible moment when the administration of Mr. Trump, who has long been dogged by charges of encouraging far-right extremism, appears to be leaning more aggressively into far-right alliances around the world.

Of course, critics on the left and the far right could be mistaken, because sometimes a Nazi salute, used to indicate an iron-willed commitment to final “victory”, is not a Nazi salute, even when used to emotionally punctuate a far right call to fight to the death for victory.

Führer oath MAGA style

Everything old is new again, as they never tire of reminding us. The oath of personal, unconditional loyalty to Adolf Hitler got a nice 2025 makeover during MAGA’s return to power. The only people eligible to serve in Trump’s administration are those who swear that the 2020 election was stolen from the Leader (or at least refuse to admit Trump’s loss was legitimate), that the Leader was the innocent victim of a weaponized DOJ’s “lawfare” and selective prosecution for totally lawful acts, that transsexuals pose an existential threat to America, that Ukraine started the war with Russia in 2022, that our country is a corrupt, smoking, crime infested ruin run by a secret cabal of godless commies, and whatever else pops out of the big orange guy’s mouth.

Here are the old Hilter oaths, for comparison to the oath of personal loyalty to Mr. T. that Kashyap Patel, Tulsi Gabbard, Pete Hegseth, Marco Rubio, Dr. Brainworm [1] and company have taken to their Leader in order to narrowly secure their party-line cabinet positions.

Wehrmacht oath

On 16 March 1935 the German government renamed the Reichswehr as the Wehrmacht (Defence Force)^[7]

Ich schwöre bei Gott diesen heiligen Eid,
daß ich dem Führer des Deutschen Reiches und Volkes
Adolf Hitler, dem Oberbefehlshaber der Wehrmacht,
unbedingten Gehorsam leisten und als tapferer Soldat bereit sein will,
jederzeit für diesen Eid mein Leben einzusetzen.

English translation

“I swear by God this holy oath
that I shall render unconditional obedience
to the Leader of the German Reich and people,
Adolf Hitler, supreme commander of the armed forces,
and that as a brave soldier I shall at all times be prepared
to give my life for this oath.”^[8]

When the oath became law in July 1935, civilian officials would swear a similar oath.

Civil servant oath

Diensteid der öffentlichen Beamten

Ich schwöre: Ich werde dem Führer des Deutschen Reiches und Volkes
Adolf Hitler treu und gehorsam sein, die Gesetze beachten,
und meine Amtspflichten gewissenhaft erfüllen, so wahr mir Gott helfe.

English translation

“I swear: I will be faithful and obedient
to the leader of the German Reich and people, Adolf Hitler,
to observe the law, and to conscientiously fulfil my official duties, so help me God!”^[8]

Oathtakers then sang both Deutschland Über Alles and the Nazi anthem Horst-Wessel-Lied.^[9]

Horst Wessel, by the way, was a young Nazi street fighter killed by the antifa of his day. He became a martyr to the Nazi cause and a song for him, with lyrics by the poetic young Nazi Horst, if I recall correctly, was sung at all Nazi functions. Think of Wessel as Ashley Babbit. All Ashley did, on January 6, 2021, was try to lead a crowd of peaceful, respectful rioters through a broken window into the hall leading directly to the legislators the mob was trying to get at. As she pushed through the broken window she was warned by armed Capitol police to stop. Being a true patriot and a martyr, she refused to stop, was shot dead, and became a martyr to the Trump Brigade, the recently pardoned battle tested maniacs who overran Capitol police, sent more than a hundred to the hospital, all in perfectly “legitimate political discourse.” If you think MAGA is not composed of modern day American Nazis, you never read a history book on the Nazi seizure of power.

[1]

The Rusher Hoax 2.0

Just because then-senator Marco Rubio’s committee concluded that Putin had indeed done everything possible to tip the election to Trump in 2016, after Robert Mueller documented 140 incidents of coordination between Trump’s campaign and Putin’s administration in the lead up to the election, there is no reason, except for the facts themselves, to believe that the whole “Russia thing” was anything more than a vicious hoax perpetuated by insane enemies afflicted with Trump Derangement Syndrome.

Look, Putin and Trump are just friends, very good friends. They speak on the phone every so often, as they did during Trump’s four years as an “ordinary citizen” and it’s nobody’s business what they talk about. Trump may or may not have shared top secret defense documents he illegally took when he left the White House, then had his lawyers lie about having returned, as he held off Merrick Garland and his team until his handpicked MAGA judge could dismiss the Espionage Act case with an audaciously novel repudiation of the Special Counsel statute. Putin may well have sent his protege a handsome gratuity for strategic information supplied by his useful idiot friend, also nobody’s business. Now Donald is back to work, securing a future safe for plutocrats, autocrats and kleptocrats. It’s the persecuted billionaires against the rest of us, and Trump is determined to make his side immune from law and all other consequences.

Here’s Heather Cox Richardson with some recent history as background for the latest tour de force of brazen Trumpian Trumpishness:

The struggle for Ukraine to maintain its sovereignty, independence, and territory has become a fight for the principles established by the United Nations, organized in the wake of World War II by the allied countries in that war, to establish international rules that would, as the U.N. charter said, prevent “the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind, and to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights.” Central to those principles and rules was that members would not attack the “territorial integrity or political independence” of any other country. In 1949 the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) came together to hold back growing Soviet aggression under a pact that an attack on any of the member states would be considered an attack on all.

The principle of national sovereignty is being tested in Ukraine. After the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991, Ukraine held about a third of the USSR’s nuclear weapons but gave them up in exchange for payments and security assurances from Russia, the United States, and the United Kingdom that they would respect Ukraine’s sovereignty within its existing borders. But Ukraine sits between Russia and Europe, and as Ukraine increasingly showed an inclination to turn toward Europe rather than Russia, Russian leader Putin worked to put his own puppets at the head of the Ukrainian government with the expectation that they would keep Ukraine, with its vast resources, tethered to Russia.

In 2004 it appeared that Russian-backed politician Viktor Yanukovych had won the presidency of Ukraine, but the election was so full of fraud, including the poisoning of a key rival who wanted to break ties with Russia and align Ukraine with Europe, that the U.S. government and other international observers did not recognize the election results. The Ukrainian government voided the election and called for a do-over.

To rehabilitate his image, Yanukovych turned to American political consultant Paul Manafort, who was already working for Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska. With Manafort’s help, Yanukovych won the presidency in 2010 and began to turn Ukraine toward Russia. When Yanukovych suddenly reversed Ukraine’s course toward cooperation with the European Union and instead took a $3 billion loan from Russia, Ukrainian students protested. On February 18, 2014, after months of popular protests, Ukrainians ousted Yanukovych from power in the Maidan Revolution, also known as the Revolution of Dignity, and he fled to Russia.

Shortly after Yanukovych’s ouster, Russia invaded Ukraine’s Crimea and annexed it. The invasion prompted the United States and the European Union to impose economic sanctions on Russia and on specific Russian businesses and oligarchs, prohibiting them from doing business in U.S. territories. E.U. sanctions froze assets, banned goods from Crimea, and banned travel of certain Russians to Europe.

Yanukovych’s fall had left Manafort both without a patron and with about $17 million worth of debt to Deripaska. Back in the U.S., in 2016, television personality Donald Trump was running for the presidency, but his campaign was foundering. Manafort stepped in to help. He didn’t take a salary but reached out to Deripaska through one of his Ukrainian business partners, Konstantin Kilimnik, immediately after landing the job, asking him, “How do we use to get whole? Has OVD [Oleg Vladimirovich Deripaska] operation seen?”

Journalist Jim Rutenberg established that in 2016, Russian operatives presented Manafort a plan “for the creation of an autonomous republic in Ukraine’s east, giving Putin effective control of the country’s industrial heartland.” In exchange for weakening NATO and U.S. support for Ukraine, looking the other way as Russia took eastern Ukraine, and removing U.S. sanctions from Russian entities, Russian operatives were willing to help Trump win the White House. The Republican-dominated Senate Intelligence Committee in 2020 established that Manafort’s Ukrainian business partner Kilimnik, whom it described as a “Russian intelligence officer,” acted as a liaison between Manafort and Deripaska while Manafort ran Trump’s campaign.

Government officials knew that something was happening between the Trump campaign and Russia. By the end of July 2016, FBI director James Comey opened a counterintelligence investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. After Trump won, the FBI caught Trump national security advisor Lieutenant General Michael Flynn assuring Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak that the new administration would change U.S. policy toward Russia. Shortly after Trump took office, Flynn had to resign, and Trump asked Comey to drop the investigation into Flynn. When Comey refused, Trump fired him. The next day, he told a Russian delegation he was hosting in the Oval Office: “I just fired the head of the F.B.I. He was crazy, a real nut job…. I faced great pressure because of Russia. That’s taken off.”

Or, as Putin’s BFF pronounced recently, with characteristic humility, truthfulness and presidential gravitas:

“I think I have the power to end this war, and I think it’s going very well. But today I heard, ‘Oh, well, we [Ukraine] weren’t invited.’ Well, you’ve been there for three years,” Trump told reporters at his Mar-a-Lago resort. “You should have never started it. You could have made a deal.”

The art of the deal, and who should know it better than the Michelangelo of strategic bankruptcy?