There’s an old expression, “You can’t bullshit a bullshitter,” and we have lived to see the consummate bullshitter of the ages, Donald Trump, wake up to the fact that he’s being played. Finally. Pundits are doubling over at this revelation of Trump’s, calling it “the epiphany ten years in the making.” Think about that for just a minute: every other president or presidential candidate that we have seen in office or running for office has known the truth about Vladimir Putin from the get go. But not Trump. He and he alone believed the flattery and bombast coming at him from the Russian dictator and it’s only now that he’s starting to wake up and smell the coffee. This is how long it takes the stable genius to see the obvious. That should make you lose sleep.
Now what would be comical, if the topic wasn’t life and death, is that both Trump and Pete Hegseth are finally waking up to smell the coffee and doing a 180 on their previous positions.
For a fleeting moment, Ukraine’s conflict may have come full circle.
In the past 48 hours, US President Donald Trump has perhaps said his most forcefully direct words yet on arming Ukraine. And in the same period, the Kremlin have given their blankest indication to this White House that they are not interested in a realistic, negotiated settlement to the war.
Let us start with Trump’s comments on arming Ukraine, a reversion to a basic bedrock of US foreign policy for decades – opposing Russian aggression. “We’re going to send some more weapons,” the president said Monday of Ukraine. “We have to – they have to be able to defend themselves. They’re getting hit very hard.”
Behind him, his Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth nodded, despite this contradiction of the administration’s announcement days earlier of military shipments being stopped. What did Trump actually mean? He was short on detail.
This is the new normal, folks. Whatever Hegseth claims on any given day, take it with a grain of salt. His master can tug on his leash and steer him a different direction at any time. The big picture here, and don’t expect it to get a lot of press, is that finally Trump and Hegseth have been persuaded that there is a bigger global picture at stake and that Trump is not on top of it like his ego has led him to believe.
Hegseth looks all the more the fool today. If you cast your mind back to previous administrations and presidents discussing escalations of conflicts, it is always with the Secretary of Defense explaining the situation and taking a leadership role. Trump doesn’t ask Hegseth to say one word because Hegseth is not involved in these decisions. He’s the front man, the TV talking head for the Department of Defense, but other people are in fact doing his job. It has never been made so clear as it is today.
A Pentagon spokesman later said that “at President Trump’s direction, the Department of Defense is sending additional defensive weapons to Ukraine to ensure the Ukrainians can defend themselves while we work to secure a lasting peace and ensure the killing stops.”
The about-face came days after Volodymyr Zelensky’s call with Trump on Friday, in which the Ukrainian leader said the two men spoke of joint weapons production, and air defense.
Zelensky urgently needs more Patriot interceptor missiles, which are the only way of taking down Russian ballistic missiles, and which only the US can authorize trade in. Trump spoke a day earlier with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who has offered to buy Patriots from the US to supply to Ukraine. Enough is afoot to have led Zelensky to declare on Saturday his Trump call was “the best conversation we have had during this whole time, the most productive.”
Zelensky probably explained to Trump, “We can stop this conflict in my backyard, or in Poland’s or in yours. Where would you like to stop it?” And that’s true enough. Vladimir Putin is like a mad bus driver, he’ll steer his global domination bus as far as he can. It’s up to other countries to tell him where he can or can’t take it. Zelensky is finally getting through to Trump about what’s really at stake, it sounds like.
This is a far cry from Zelensky being responsible for the attack on his own country. Let’s see where this goes now. As always in Trump world, we are on terra incognita. Trump is reversing policy, Hegseth has nothing to do with it, and in point of fact, Hegseth might be a tad closer to the door if Trump can find a way to get a better front man and not lose face.
How much longer will national defense policy be decided on a whim?
How much longer will lives be decided on a whim?
Until we get rid of these morons.