There’s a problem with having a dementia patient in the Oval Office and that is that he can’t process the information that he’s given in any meaningful way. We have a new president, yes a recycled one, in a sense, but nevertheless it is the start of a new term for this former *commander in chief.* A new beginning by any interpretation. After one month the standard polls are coming out and they have been disastrous. So what does this *leader* do? Does he regroup? Does he look in the mirror and ask, “My God what have I done?” Hell, no. King Donald was even asked once if he had ever asked God’s forgiveness and his reply to that was that he had never done anything wrong. Given that mindset, look at what he fired out into cyberspace this morning after the recent polls were shared with him?
This is sheer fantasy. He won the election by 1.5%. He won the swing states but by slim margins. And as to “shifting all 50 states Republican” if anybody knows what he’s talking about, please share it with the rest of us. And then he flies straight in the face of reason, saying “I have the best polling numbers I’ve ever had.” No, you DON’T, Donald, or you wouldn’t be flipping out like this.
Rick Wilson dissected polls that just came out, but it’s the Quinnipiac poll that I wonder if Donald has seen. This is bound to drive him over the edge.
The Quinnipiac University Poll’s poll from this week shows how out of touch Trump is: 81% said Putin shouldn’t be trusted, with a whopping 73% agreeing.
Only 9% Putin should be trusted, which puts Donald in a percentile we call “gullible.”
And it’s not just the Quinnipiac poll. Fellow Republicans are turning on Trump for his pro-Putin stance as well. The National Review is running a piece, Ukraine Is Not The Problem and that flies in the face of all that Donald has been saying this week. For his part, Volodymyr Zelensky has said that Trump is “living in a bubble of disinformation,” as Trump continues to parrot pro-Putin talking points.
In breathtaking remarks to reporters, President Trump poured contempt on Ukraine for its frustration. “But today I heard, ‘Oh, well, we weren’t invited.’ Well, you’ve been there for three years,” Trump said of Russia’s second invasion of Ukraine. “You should’ve ended it in three years. You should have never started it. You could have made a deal.”
Uh, Ukraine didn’t fire Russian missiles at itself or direct a Russian armed column at its own capital in 2022. There’s moral equivalence, and then there’s a total moral inversion.
When Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky pushed back, Trump came back at him harder, calling him a “Dictator without Elections” who “probably wants to keep the ‘gravy train’ going.”
Ukraine is indeed under martial law at the moment because (see above) it’s been invaded by a hostile power and there’s a war on. You don’t need to portray Ukraine as a shining city on a hill to acknowledge that it is much more committed to democracy and the rule of law than is Russia, whose malign autocratic leader Trump never thinks to call “a dictator.”
Needless to say, Ukraine is not the problem here. As far as the Kremlin is concerned, its sins are its existence as a sovereign state with a national identity distinct from Russia’s, and its failure to roll over and accept its assigned role as a defenseless satellite state of Mother Russia. […]
Since 2014, Ukraine has been subjected to a level of violence and criminality that reflects Russia’s utter contempt for the laws of armed conflict.
The anti-Ukraine influencers and advisers in Trump’s ear contend that Ukraine antagonized Russia by seeking to join the Atlantic Alliance. In reality, Russia’s efforts to destabilize Ukraine began with the January 2005 “Orange Revolution,” in which pro-Western Viktor Yushchenko (who had been “mysteriously” poisoned with dioxin during the campaign) captured the presidency.
By 2010, Yushchenko was replaced by the “non-aligned” (read: pro-Putin) Viktor Yanukovych. But Yanukovych’s efforts to placate the Kremlin soon ran afoul of Ukraine’s parliament. In late 2013, he unilaterally abrogated a deal passed by the Ukrainian Rada that would have established free trade and travel relations with the European Union. Yanukovych’s maneuver ignited protests that culminated in the Maidan Revolution, in which over 100 civilians were killed by security forces before Yanukovych fled to exile in Russia.
It was Ukraine’s integration with the European Union, not NATO, that inflamed Moscow, and it was the ouster of their puppet in Kyiv that occasioned the first invasion of Crimea and the Donbas in early 2014.
The fact that Russia failed in its subsequent attempt to swallow Ukraine whole in 2022 is a testament both to the determination of the country’s defenders as well as Moscow’s atrophied military and dated tactics. But Moscow’s adventurism still poses a real threat to U.S. security and that of its treaty-bound allies on NATO’s frontiers.
It is certainly true, as we noted the other day, that Ukraine isn’t going to get all of its territory back or join NATO. Acknowledging this is cold-eyed realism; humiliating and undercutting an ally, perhaps with worse to come in the form of a sweetheart deal for Moscow, is not.
But humiliating and undercutting our ally, Ukraine, is precisely what Trump is doing. And it is so ugly. In fact, it’s been compared to a mafia shakedown.
Six administration officials told Axios that five incidents over the last five days angered Trump and his top officials, and he and vice president J.D. Vance have warned Zelenskyy to keep his criticism to himself after U.S. officials pushed him to hand over perpetual control of half of Ukraine’s natural resources and selected infrastructure – in a deal that’s been compared to a “mafia shakedown.”
“It’s a sh*t sandwich,” a Trump administration official agreed. “But Ukraine is going to have to eat it because [Trump] has made clear this is no longer our problem.”
Trump claims the Ukraine president was “rude” and delayed a Feb. 12 meeting in Kyiv with treasury secretary Scott Bessent, who first presented the proposal, and Zelenskyy surprised Vance and secretary of state Marco Rubio two days later by saying he couldn’t approve the deal without parliament.
“Zelenskyy is an actor who committed a common mistake of theater kids: He started to think he’s the character he plays on TV,” said one White House official involved in the talks. “Yes, he has been brave and stood up to Russia. But he would be six feet under if it wasn’t for the millions we spent, and he needs to exit stage right with all the drama.”
Zelenskyy publicly rejected and criticized the offer Feb. 15 at the Munich Security Conference after making positive remarks about it on X, and Trump became furious after he complained that Ukraine representatives had not been invited to discuss a peace agreement in Saudi Arabia with high-ranking Russian and U.S. officials.
“In the course of a week, Zelensky rebuffed president Trump’s treasury secretary, his secretary of state and his vice president, all before moving on to personally insulting president Trump in the press,” another administration official said. “What did Zelenskyy think was going to happen?”
The Ukraine president further angered Trump by claiming he “lives in a disinformation space,” and the U.S. president called Zelenskyy a dictator and demanded new elections, which parliament had agreed to cancel next year due to the ongoing Russian invasion.
“We created a monster with Zelenskyy,” said another official involved in the negotiations, “and these Trump-deranged Europeans who won’t send troops are giving him terrible advice.”
And you notice how anybody who sees Trump’s madness for what it is, is somehow “deranged.” That includes not only leaders in Europe but the yous and mes here in the states.
I don’t pretend to know how we’re going to get through the next four years. But one thing I do see, is that the wheels are coming off this wagon faster than anybody anticipated. I have long predicted that after Trump finishes destroying the Republican party and wrecking America’s standing in the world, that his colleagues and enablers now will do a Nuremburg trial stance and claim that they never really were MAGA, they just went along to get along. I see that beginning right now.
Let’s put it this way: never, in the history of any administration, including Trump’s first one, has the level of chaos and contention been so high one month out like it is now. And as you see from Trump’s Truth post, he hasn’t got the ability to even understand what’s happening around him much less the ability to do anything about it.
Color this situation out of control.
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So much projection going on with the MAGA crowd. Invert every statement and it makes perfect sense.
At least one thing’s now abundantly clear to everyone with even half a functioning brain: the famous “Russia Russia Hoax” was no hoax.