The Russian president “has gone absolutely CRAZY!”, President Trump tweeted last Sunday on his Truth Social site. Clearly bewildered, he bemoaned, "I've always had a very good relationship with Vladimir Putin of Russia, but something has happened to him”.
Might Trump be coming to the realization that he has been played all along? From the outset he was taken with Putin and made vulnerable thereby. In a Larry King interview in 2013 he said, “I think he's done a really great job of outsmarting our country". In 2015 he predicted, "I think I'd get along very well with Vladimir Putin”. That same year on the phone with “Morning Joe” he said, "He's running his country and at least he's a leader unlike what we have in this country." Putin saw his opportunity and won Trump over by flattery:
"He called me a genius. He said Donald Trump is a genius and he's gonna be the leader of the party and he's gonna be the leader of the world or something. He said some good stuff about me."
Trump took Putin’s word over his own intelligence agencies’ assessment of Russian election interference when he famously said in Helsinki in 2018,
”He just said it's not Russia. I will say this: I don't see any reason why it would be."
And Ukraine? When the Kremlin recognized the independence of two Russian separatist-controlled regions in eastern Ukraine, Trump said the day before Russia invaded,
"So Putin is now saying it's independent, a large section of Ukraine. I said, how smart is that? And he's going to go in and be a peacekeeper. You've gotta say, that's pretty savvy."
Ukraine apartment building destroyed in Putin's campaign
against the civilian population.
Weeks ago he even called Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy “a dictator” and said it was Ukraine that started the war. At the United…
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On April 9th, President Trump rolled back the high tariff schedule he had announced on April 2nd, his “Liberation Day”, allowing 90 days for the world's 195 countries to come forward to offer concessions for his consideration. In the interim, tariffs worldwide are 10% in almost all cases, but 145% for China.
On May 8th, twenty-nine days into the pause, he announced the first agreement. Great Britain’s tariff would stay at 10%, in return for U.S. access to their markets, specifically mentioning beef, ethanol, and other farm products. It’s a framework; details to be worked out.
It’s hardly a triumph. The United Kingdom is one of the very few with which we have a trade surplus. They buy more from the U.S. than we buy from them. They didn’t need fixing. And it was immediately pointed out that the British market is already wide open to our products, including beef, ethanol, etc.
China said it would not negotiate until the U.S. lowers the 145%.…
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