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Putin's American Puppets Are Ready to Sell Out Ukraine, NATO [1]
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Date: 2025-02-17
Donald Trump is a puppet of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The four-time indicted, twice impeached, sexual assaulter, tax fraudster, insurrection inspirer, wannabe fascist dictator, convicted felon, president will do whatever Putin wants him to do. Oh, he may do this or that to make it look like he’s tough on Russia or that Putin isn’t getting everything he wants, but that’s just window dressing.
You’re going to see it in the so-called peace negotiations between Ukraine and Russia. You’ll see it if he pulls the United States out of NATO, isolating Europe to hold the fort against any future aggression by the Kremlin. You’ll see it as he embraces and props up dictators and far-right leaders with the hope the MAGA doctrine will spread over as much of the world as possible.
Hey Ukraine. Hey NATO. He’s going to try to screw you. He’s going to try to weaken you. He’s going to try to abandon you. At least that’s what he wants. And he wants that in part because he either doesn’t understand or doesn’t care about the damage he’s doing to the United States and the world, but mainly because this is exactly what Putin wants.
How far he goes will be determined by whether Republicans in Congress see enough possible damage that they, at least temporarily, grow enough of a spine to stand up to him. Don’t bet on it. Don’t count on them coming out of the fetal position Trump has put them in.
There’s a lot going on, and Trump, along with Vice President JD Vance, co-president Elon Musk, and the rest of the administration are moving on different fronts. Let’s take a look at three of them.
Undermining Ukraine
Trump had a 90-minute telephone call with Putin last week, after which he echoed the Russian president’s rationale for his attack on Ukraine, Heather Cox Richardson wrote in a recent newsletter.
Trump announced he’ll be sending some heavy hitters – Secretary of State Marco Rubio and National Security Adviser Michael Waltz -- to Saudi Arabia to begin negotiations with Russia about ending its war with Ukraine.
Funny thing though, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and representatives from the European countries that have been just as committed to supporting Ukraine as we have were not invited.
How do you negotiate the end of a war when you don’t offer the country that was actually attacked, along with long-time allies helping in the effort, to seats at the table. Simple, the game is rigged.
Here’s more proof the fix is in: Accused drunk/sexual assaulter/incompetent boob Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told a gathering of defense secretaries that returning to Ukraine’s pre-2014 borders -- before Russia annexed Crimea and parts of other regions -- was “unrealistic,” and that the United States will not support NATO membership for Ukraine, Richardson reported.
Now, those two things are pretty much at the top of Putin’s wish list. So, if you want us to take seriously that you’re conducting good-faith negotiations then don’t tell us you plan to start out by giving one side maybe the two most important things it wants. Before you even sit down at the negotiating table.
I know, the art of the deal.
The New York Times reported that “European officials said they had tried, unsuccessfully, to extract from Mr. Trump’s national security team any plan for making sure that Mr. Putin did not simply use a cease-fire to rebuild his decimated military and, in a few years, return to take the rest of Ukraine.”
Ukraine, I hate to tell you this, but right now it looks like you’re toast.
Undermining Europe and NATO
Richardson reported on something else interesting that the babbling Hegseth said: That he wanted to “directly and unambiguously express that stark strategic realities prevent the United States of America from being primarily focused on the security of Europe.”
In fact, the Times reported Hegseth saying that, if a deal was reached, no American troops would take part in a peacekeeping force in Ukraine territory. That task would fall to the Europeans and would be designated a non-NATO force.
Why is it so important to the Trump administration that it be a non-NATO force? Because then if it came under attack from Russia our country wouldn’t be committed to helping our NATO allies, as is required by the organization’s charter.
All this is music to Putin’s ears. He hates NATO, and Trump will do what he can, even if it means ending our 75-year membership in probably the most important international coalition we’ve ever been involved in, to weaken it
That will leave Europe to stand alone against Russian aggression while the United States sits across the Atlantic Ocean playing with itself as its position of leadership on the world stage suffers an ignominious death.
Promoting far-right Nazism
Vance addressed the Munich Security Conference last week in what The Guardian called “a brutal ideological assault” against Europe. He claimed he’s upset that Europe is censoring free speech, but make no mistake about it, he’s talking about the free speech of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) Party, Richardson explained.
After the fall of Adolf Hitler (seems he gets mentioned a lot lately), Germany banned Nazi propaganda and set limits on hate speech, which is right in the wheelhouse of the AfD. Trump and his gang apparently want to make sure they have every opportunity to grow and maybe someday run the country.
The Trump administration is so enamored with this Nazi organization that Vance eschewed meeting with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, the actual head of that country, but made sure he had a sit-down with AfD leader Alice Weidel.
Musk, he of the famous Nazi salute when speaking to a crowd on inauguration day, is a big backer of AfD. And he hasn’t stopped there. He’s supported far-right movements in Brazil, Ireland, Argentina, Italy, New Zealand, South Africa, the Netherlands, and other countries, Richardson wrote.
There’s no mixed message here. There’s only one message: The U.S. government is a supporter of far-right, Nazi parties over those with more democratic, inclusive policies. They want to see that culture spread across as much of the European continent and the world as possible.
As the Guardian wrote: “The Trump administration appeared to be making a large bet on some of the continent’s most toxic parties in opposition to the sitting governments in the UK, Germany, and other major allies.”
Is this a surprise? It’s been written here before that the next four years will see an attempt to make the United States as much as a Christian nationalist and white nationalist country as possible. That includes a strong anti-immigrant posture.
It starts at the top with Trump, Vance, and Musk, and they’re working their corrupt asses off to help it infiltrate up and down our government. Looks like they’re off to a good start.
***
Richardson included some really good quotes in her newsletter. Here’re three of them:
Bill Kristol of The Bulwark posted: “It’s heartening that today the leaders of the two major parties in Germany are unequivocally anti-Nazi and anti-fascist. It’s horrifying that today the president and vice president of the United States are not.”
British journalist Nick Cohen wrote: “The radical right in the U.S. is not engaged in a grand geopolitical strategy. It is pursuing an ideological campaign against its true enemy, which is not China or Russia but liberalism. The U.S. culture war has gone global. The Trump administration hates liberals at home and liberal democracies abroad.”
Political scientist Stathis Kalyvas offered: “The U.S. government has been taken over by a clique of extremists who have embarked on a process of regime change in the world’s oldest democracy. … The arrogance on display is staggering. They think their actions will increase U.S. power, but they are in fact wrecking their own country and, in the process, everyone else. … The only hope lies in the sheer enormity of the threat: it might awake us out of our slumber before it is too late.”
Take note at Kalyvas’s final comment: “it might awake us out of our slumber before it is too late.”
You can say that about the world. Hopefully plans have been underway by our allies all over the globe concerning what to do if they lose the support of the United States. Are they organizing their militaries to joint maximum strength? Are they looking to reconfigure or to establish new trading partnerships? What about coordinated efforts against Trump’s weaponization of tariffs?
Do they realize that the time may be coming when they must minimize the United States? They can’t minimize the size of our military or our general wealth, but they may need to minimize us in importance.
Does the United States need to go from being the most popular girl at the dance to the wallflower sitting in the corner, hoping someone will notice her?
This would all hurt our country, which I’m 100 percent for if it can head off the disastrous national and geopolitical course Trump, Vance, Musk, and a compliant, corrupt Republican Party have set us on.
And are we going to wake up? We’re not looking in to the abyss, folks. We’re in the abyss.
Are we going to do what’s needed – including civil disobedience, non-violent disruption, and political activism? Are we up to that? Do we have what it takes?
As has been said here before: We’ll see.
***
Thank you for reading my post. You can see my other writings on my blog: Musings of a Nobody. Please share and subscribe for free via email on its home page.
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