Trump's Second Term

Ivor the Engineer said:
A BBC journalist made a good point last night. Trump and Vance have destroyed any remnants of US soft power. All it has left is hard power.

Trump's "America First" policy has turned into America Alone and untrustworthy.
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And it's a hard power America will be unwilling to wield IMO unless they're going to nuke the EU.
 
Overall, today's shouting affair in the Oval Office was a farce. Trump and Vance should have made certain Zelenskyy was willing to sign the deal. It also should have been clear that he wasn’t, but they went ahead with meeting anyway. Perhaps they were expecting that he would accept it anyway simply because he was in the Oval Office with the President and Vice-President of the Great United States of America. If that was the case, they certainly underestimated him.

I think Trump wanted this to be televised to the world to show "Here is the Great and Wonderful President Trump ending the war in Ukraine!", and more than likely ignoring concerns raised by hos diplomats. Those were probably in the daily presidential briefing, but Trump is famous for not reading it.

From what I see, what transpired was the US believes (voiced initially by Vance) that Ukraine should be grateful to the USA for actively trying to end the war, which has caused so much pain for Ukraine. On the other hand, Zelenslyy clearly doesn’t like the deal they’ve put on the table: demanding a good chunk of Ukraine’s natural resources while at the same time not offering any security guarantees should Putin fail to keep his side of the bargain. Which, as Zelenskyy pointed out, Putin has a history of doing. He noted the USA is protected from a ground invasion by a nice big ocean. Ukraine isn't.

What got on Trump's nerves appears to be Zelenskyy's comment "You have a nice ocean and don't feel [threatened or coerced] now. But you will feel it in the future." Trump didn't like the idea that Zelenskyy was "dictating" to him how "he should feel." (Which was a misinterpretation: I believe Zelenskyy was saying the USA wasn't feeling threatened or coerced.) I note that while it was Zelenskyy who started pushing back against Vance’s grand assertions, it was Trump who started talking over him and then shouting at him.

Another point of contention is that Trump thinks Putin will keep his promises because “he respects me.” A lot of people, probably Zelenskyy as well, see it as the opposite: Putin is playing Trump for a fool, and will gladly break any agreement because he believes Trump’s too caught up with his MAGA rhetoric to care much about Ukraine.

And, of course, the right wing in the States is playing this as a win for Trump for "standing up for America," when a close look shows it was a botched publicity stunt that went horribly wrong.
 
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Stacyhs said:
Try and remember that many of us hate Trump, too. Maybe restrict your vitriol to Trump supporters and not direct it at all of us?
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Americans -- left, right and center -- as well as nations the world over, judge other nations by their current leadership, policies and behavior, as a single state actor. There is no gold star for yesterday's glories when any state goes off the rails. Today's USA is the deadliest enemy the world has ever seen, a nuclear superpower with an unparalleled ability to place overwhelming conventional forces anywhere on the globe. The US Left has supported many evils since 9/11, including state-sanctioned torture, opening the gates to normalized cruelty, and in lock step, Trumpism.

It is entirely within common practice to call out all Americans -- the guilty, the innocent and the worst, the thumb-sucking oblivious.

It's all about denying resupply, closing bases, sinking carrier fleets now. I think the Mediterranean could credibly be denied to US fleets with relative ease. In fact, might just mosey on down to the Strait of G and toss off a few heartfelt vaffaculos myself.

So easy if I were Canadian. All you have to do is face True North, and Americans get a proper faceful of ass. How kind of Fate it should be so.

ETA: Form and join the American Resistance, and engage in sabotage. You will then once again have friends and allies.
 
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As of the close of the day on February 28, my positive/negative score on the Trump administration stands at -199.

28 February 2025
-2: Trump and VP Vance get into a shouting match with Ukrainian president Zelenskyy in the Oval Office (-2 for international)
-1: Lindsay Graham calls for Zelenskyy to resign over what happened in the Oval Office
-1: House Speaker Mike Johnson says "Only President Trump can put these two countries on a path to lasting peace." [59]
-1: Pete Hegseth says transgender soldiers have no place in the US military

Reference

59. Mike Johnson: "Thanks to President Trump - the days of America being taken advantage of and disrespected are OVER. The death and destruction of the Russian-provoked war needs to stop immediately, and only our American President can put these two countries on a path to lasting peace. President Zelenskyy needed to acknowledge that, and accept the extraordinary mineral rights partnership proposal that President Trump put on the table. What we witnessed in the Oval Office today was an American President putting America first."
 
Blue Mountain said:
Overall, today's shouting affair in the Oval Office was a farce. Trump and Vance should have made certain Zelenskyy was willing to sign the deal. It also should have been clear that he wasn’t, but they went ahead with meeting anyway. Perhaps they were expecting that he would accept it anyway simply because he was in the Oval Office with the President and Vice-President of the Great United States of America. If that was the case, they certainly underestimated him.

I think Trump wanted this to be televised to the world to show "Here is the Great and Wonderful President Trump ending the war in Ukraine!", and more than likely ignoring concerns raised by the diplomats. Those were probably in the daily presidential briefing, but Trump is famous for not reading it.

From what I see, what transpired was the US believes (voiced initially by Vance) that Ukraine should be grateful to the USA for actively trying to end the war, which has caused so much pain for Ukraine. On the other hand, Zelenslyy clearly doesn’t like the deal they’ve put on the table: demanding a good chunk of Ukraine’s natural resources while at the same time not offering any security guarantees should Putin fail to keep his side of the bargain. Which, as Zelenskyy pointed out, Putin has a history of doing. He noted the USA is protected from a ground invasion by a nice big ocean. Ukraine isn't.

What got on Trump's nerves appears to be Zelenskyy's comment "You have a nice ocean and don't feel [threatened or coerced] now. But you will feel it in the future." Trump didn't like the idea that Zelenskyy was "dictacting" to him how "he should feel." (Which was a misinterpretation: I believe Zelenskyy was saying the USA wasn't feeling threatened or coerced.) I note that while it was Zelenskyy who started pushing back against Vance’s grand assertions, it was Trump who started talking over him and then shouting at him.

Another point of contention is that Trump thinks Putin will keep his promises because “he respects me.” A lot of people, probably Zelenskyy as well, see it as the opposite: Putin is playing Trump for a fool, and will gladly break any agreement because he believes Trump’s too caught up with his MAGA rhetoric to care much about Ukraine.

And, of course, the right wing in the States is playing this as a win for Trump for "standing up for America," when a close look shows it was a botched publicity stunt that went horribly wrong.
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IMO that describes the whole of Trump's second term so far. What is DOGE if not a lot of noise and nonsense with no useful outcome ?
 
Hlafordlaes said:
So easy if I were Canadian. All you have to do is face True North, and Americans get a proper faceful of ass. How kind of Fate it should be so.
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The Golden Boy (currently pictured in my avatar) stands atop the legislative building in Winnipeg. He faces north and is naked, so he's been mooning the US for 105 years now.
 
Everything Trump has ever touched has always been a botched publicity stunt that has gone horribly wrong. What I fail to understand is why so many Americans still fall for it every time. I guess these are the same people who still think WWE was real, and The Apprentice was real business and wasn't scripted.
 
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arthwollipot said:
America is now firmly positioned on the world stage as an enemy of Europe and an ally of Russia. It's not being swept under the rug any more. Nobody's trying to hide it or hedge around it. It's out in the open.

Enemy of Europe.

Ally of Russia.
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Yep. We'll see if two common enemies manage to unite Europe!
 
arthwollipot said:
America is now firmly positioned on the world stage as an enemy of Europe and an ally of Russia. It's not being swept under the rug any more. Nobody's trying to hide it or hedge around it. It's out in the open.

Enemy of Europe.

Ally of Russia.
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Trampy is busy positioning the US as enemy of all mankind, the little nazi ◊◊◊◊ that he is.
 
Blue Mountain said:
From what I see, what transpired was the US believes (voiced initially by Vance) that Ukraine should be grateful to the USA for actively trying to end the war, which has caused so much pain for Ukraine.
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Quibble - "the US believes" is sorta meaningless here. It elevates Trump and co to being the US (which is reflexively objectionable, but still passable given that they officially represent the US currently) and Trump and co are rather infamously total BSers who lie all the time. May as well just say that Trump and co were trying to pretend that Ukraine is the US' puppet, under the US' nigh complete control, like Russia's been trying to pretend for a long time as one of the many lines of BS in their firehose of falsehood. Alternately said, when vranyo, or attempted vranyo, is in play, I quite object to describing that as "believes," because that gives a free and easy excuse for brazenly lying.
 
What I want to know is: what on earth made a coward who managed to weasel his way out of national service think he could bully the leader who stood firm in his capital city as invaders with a far superior military force marched on it, turning down multiple offers for safe haven elsewhere? Zelensky is a hundred times the man Trump is, the chances he would meekly surrender to verbal bullying were zero.
 
Pixel42 said:
What I want to know is: what on earth made a coward who managed to weasel his way out of national service think he could bully the leader who stood firm in his capital city as invaders with a far superior military force marched on it, turning down multiple offers for safe haven elsewhere? Zelensky is a hundred times the man Trump is, the chances he would meekly surrender to verbal bullying were zero.
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I saw a boy trying to be his dad collecting rent.
 
Hlafordlaes said:
ETA: Form and join the American Resistance, and engage in sabotage. You will then once again have friends and allies.
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The USA now has new friends and allies. It's the reason why TASS was at the Oval Office instead of AP and Reuters yesterday.
The old guard is out, and the new guys know how to obey, and they no longer think what they used to think just a couple of days ago:
‘This is the point you resign’: Former U.S. National Security Advisor calls on Marco Rubio to resign (MSNBC on YouTube, Feb 28, 2025 - 9:19 min.)
John Bolton, former U.S. National Security Advisor, Alexander Vindman, former Director of European Affairs for the National Security Council and John Brennan, former CIA Director join Nicolle Wallace on Deadline White House with reaction to the Oval Office ambush conducted by Donald Trump and JD Vance on an American ally, and how it flies in the face to the diplomatic careers of individuals like Secretary of State Marco Rubio, National Security Advisor Mike Waltz, and Senator Lindsey Graham.
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Marco Rubio resign?! Why on earth would he resign when it is so much easier to change his mind?
Rubio points finger at Zelensky for breakdown of Trump meeting (CNN on YouTube, Mar 1, 2025 - 10:06 min.)
CNN’s Kaitlan Collins talks with Secretary of State Marco Rubio about the fiery meeting between President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
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ETA: A little bit from the Cuba thread about the kind of guy Marco Rubio is.
 
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Pixel42 said:
What I want to know is: what on earth made a coward who managed to weasel his way out of national service think he could bully the leader who stood firm in his capital city as invaders with a far superior military force marched on it, turning down multiple offers for safe haven elsewhere? Zelensky is a hundred times the man Trump is, the chances he would meekly surrender to verbal bullying were zero.
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Look, Zelensky wasn't particularly brave.
He believed that NATO, i.e. the USA and Europe, had his back, but they never seriously did. So instead of giving up a couple of territories where the majority of the population would rather belong to Russia than to Ukraine, he expected the help from the powers that he thought were his allies, but they never intended to seriously get into a real war with Russia. Instead, they gave Ukraine just enough weapons to be able to let the war continue with no end in sight, much like what happened when Russia invaded Afghanistan back in the 1970s and 1980s.

But now the top dog in NATO has decided to ally itself with Russia.

The metaphor of "the leader who stood firm in his capital city as invaders with a far superior military force marched on it" is trying to achieve something that is very far from the truth. Zelensky had been led to believe that he was backed up by an even more superior military force, NATO, and he was too naive to realize that NATO would only supply him with just enough weapons to keep the war going, which had also been what NATO did in the Soviet-Afghan war: It was to be a thorn in the side of Putin, the same way that the Soviet-Afghan* war had been a thorn in the side of a couple of Soviet presidents (four, I think).

* ETA: The guy dressed up as a Mujahedin and carrying an AK47 is the current Danish minister of foreign affairs.
www.dr.dk

Lars Løkke Rasmussen: Afghaner-billedet er blevet misbrugt

Som ung formand for Venstres Ungdom rejste statsministeren på en farlig, spændende og til tider absurd tur til Afghanistan.
www.dr.dk www.dr.dk
 
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dann said:
Look, Zelensky wasn't particularly brave.
He believed that NATO, i.e. the USA and Europe had his back, but they never seriously did. So instead of giving up a couple of territories where the majority of the population would rather belong to Russia than to Ukraine, he expected the help from the powers that he thought were his allies, but they never intended to seriously get into a real war with Russia. Instead, they gave Ukraine just enough weapons to be able to let the war continue with no end in sight, much like what happened when Russia invaded Afghanistan back in the 1970s and 1980s.

But now the top dog in NATO has decided to ally itself with Russia.

The metaphor of "the leader who stood firm in his capital city as invaders with a far superior military force marched on it" is trying to achieve something that is very far from the truth. Zelensky had been led to believe that he was backed up by an even more superior military force, NATO, and he was too naive to realize that NATO would only supply justs enough weapons to keep the war going, which had also been what NATO did in the Soviet-Afghan war: It was to be a thorn in the side of Putin, the same way that the Soviet-Afghan war had been a thorn in the side of a couple of Soviet presidents (four, I think).
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That... sounds like an interesting spin to create a narrative that suits you. To keep things simple, it leaves out things of relevance and evaluates Zelensky and what he actually believes in ways not well reflected by the evidence at hand. That's not to say that it's totally wrong, of course, but there's good reason for why it's said that the best lies contain a grain of truth.
 
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