< war|300||"I don't like it, and it better stop" says our president>
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 Nations he had the U.S. vote against a resolution condemning Russia for its aggression against Ukraine, taking Russia’s side along with North Korea, Belarus, Israel (!), and fourteen other countries in Russia’s orbit.
Day One
On taking office a second time, Mr. Trump apparently surmised that he had fostered a glowing relationship with Mr. Putin, who would succumb to the force of his personality and obligingly call a halt to the war. He had many times said what he told the crowd at a campaign rally a year ago:
”Before I even arrive at the Oval Office , shortly after we win the presidency…I will have the horrible war between Russia and Ukraine settled. I know ’em both. I will get it settled.”
That became the repeated refrain, that he would have the war ended on “Day 1”, in “24 hours” after taking the oath.
Instead, Trump has found Putin intransigent, refusing to agree to a 30-day cease fire despite the White House having conceded everything in the Kremlin’s favor and to the detriment of Ukraine – no joining NATO, no security guarantee, even acceding to negotiations before any cease fire while Russia continues hammering Ukraine’s cities. Russia only asks for more, the latest “unacceptable demands” being that Ukraine withdraw its forces from large swaths of its own territory.
Zelenskyy went to peace talks in Istanbul between Ukraine and Russia two weeks ago but Putin was a no-show, sending only an adviser. Trump waived off Putin’s rebuff saying nothing will happen short of a face-to-face meeting between himself and the Russian leader, claiming after the fact a prediction he had not made:
“They all said Putin was going and Zelenskyy was going. And I said, ‘If I don’t go, I guarantee Putin is not going,’ and he didn’t go.”
Putin took the opposite course, doubling down by launching massive waves of drone attacks against Ukraine’s cities, the biggest of the entire war. 
Ukrainian President Volodymyir Zelenskyy with troops.
More than 355 drones the night of May 25. The night before: 298 drones and more than 69 ballistic and cruise missiles. “Russian strikes are becoming increasingly brazen and large-scale every night,” Zelenskyy said in his daily address — some 900 drones and missiles launched at Ukraine in just the three days of what for the U.S. was the Memorial Day weekend. Putin is launching these strike while negotiations are going on and just days after Trump says he talked to Putin for two hours by phone.
exasperation
With his extravagant claims of influence over Putin a bust, Trump finds he has painted himself into a corner. His tweet shows a helplessness:
”He is needlessly killing a lot of people, and I’m not just talking about soldiers. Missiles and drones are being shot into Cities in Ukraine for no reason whatsoever… I don’t like it, and it better stop.”
To reporters he said the same:
”I’m surprised. I’m very surprised. We’ll see what we’re gonna do. I don’t like what Putin is doing, not even a little bit. He’s killing people. And something happened to this guy. And I don’t like it”
Two days later Trump said,
“I’m very disappointed at what happened a couple of nights now where people were killed in the middle of what you would call a negotiation. I’m very disappointed by that.”
He shows Putin he doesn’t have the cards, to use the phrase he used on Zelenskyy, that the Russian dictator has the stronger hand by the U.S. having yielded everything and asking nothing in return. This has led Putin to think he has a clear shot at taking Ukraine entirely.
an ethos of war
Moreover, Putin wants to continue the war. The Russians just celebrated the 80th anniversary of the defeat of the Germans in World War II, in which at least 20 million of their people died. May 9th is their most important holiday of the year, whereas few Americans even know as little as the date — May 8th for our GIs. A strong argument can be made that war is an indispensable part of how Russians see the world and their place in it, says the 2017 book “Russia: The Story of War” by Tufts professor Gregory Carleton. Putin evidently sees himself as continuing the long sweep of Russia battling invading Mongols, Swedes, the French, the Germans — all on native soil. In 1898, Nikolai Sukhotin, director of the General Staff Academy, the Russian West Point, calculated that Russia had waged war for 353 of the previous 525 years, two-thirds of its history as a nation, and even that span doesn’t reach back far enough to include perhaps Russia’s greatest hero (made Orthodox Church saint) Alexander Nevsky battling both Swedes and Germans in the 13th Century.
Gary Saul Morson, in an article in “Commentary” a year ago, observed that in our war movies the heroes (mostly) survive whereas Russian war movies and novels feature as much death as possible, including the heroes. No greater claim to heroism can there be than giving up their lives for the mother Russia. Morson writes:
“Stories of mass death redeem Russia’s defeats, whether in World War I, Chechnya, or Afghanistan. The standard plot is that, against all odds, Russian defenders continue fighting even when defeat is certain and there is no hope of escape.”
This goes a long way to explaining Putin’s indifference to the terrible death toll of Russian soldiers in Ukraine as he conscripts ever more thousands and empties the prisons onto the battlefield.
“Also clear is his confidence that Russia can outlast its foes and that Western powers will tire of paying for a war before Russians tire of dying in it.”
A while back, our July 2022 article “The West Needs Constant Reminding, Putin Won’t Stop at Ukraine” reported on Putin becoming imbued with Russian history which tells him Ukraine cannot be separate because in lore Kyiv was Ur Russia’s wellspring city. Moscow came later. He is perceived to have adopted a civilizational view of where Russia fits in the world, with emphasis on Russian Orthodox Christianity. In 2013 he went to Kyiv and spoke of Ukraine as “our common Fatherland, Great Rus”. For Putin, Ukraine is part of Russia, and he will destroy it and its people rather than give it up.
If Donald Trump thought on returning to the White House he could just pick up the phone for a cordial chat with Vladimir and make the Ukraine problem just go away, he showed he had no knowledge of Russian history and its war ethos. The 2022 article quoted François Hollande, the former French president:
“We did not realize that Putin had spun himself into a historical mythology and was thinking in categories of a 1,000-year empire. You cannot deter someone like thata with sanctions.”
on the horns of…
Yet sanctions are what some Republicans in Congress have in mind. A number of them, seeing a bleak outcome if the U.S. fails to support Ukraine, are pressing Trump to take action against Putin to force an end to the war. Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley even resorted to social media to urge the president to act. South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham has a “neutron bomb” sanctions regimen that would impose 500% tariffs on any country importing Russian oil, gas, petroleum products or uranium from Russia. He says he’s got more than 80 senators on board to pass this bill. Graham needs reminding that Putin has actual bombs, and of the thermonuclear sort — that it’s best not to press too hard.
Trump has not decided what to do. Questions are met with his standard ‘We’ll see what happens”, as was one reporter’s question last week about sanctions or military assistance. Asked, “Mr. President, what do you want to do about that?”, Trump replied,
“What, am I going to tell you? You’re the fake news aren’t you? You’re totally fake.”
Asked by a reporter two days ago, “What stopped you from imposing new sanctions on Russia?”, Mr. Trump’s answer…
“Only the fact that, if I think I’m close to getting a deal I don’t want to screw it up by doing that”
…betrays his belief that he can win Putin over, even tossing in “Lemme tell ya, I’m a lot tougher than the people you’re talking about” to the British-accented reporter.
Putin’s showing no interest in ending the war makes this delusional. Trump will be faced with the dilemma of whether to issue harsher sanctions, go on funding Ukraine’s weapon purchases, or continue permitting European countries buying weapons from the U.S. for transshipment to Ukraine.
Instead he wants to divorce himself from the war, always calling it “Biden’s war”, as if to say Joe was at fault for helping Ukrainians thwart the Russian takeover of their country. In that same presser, he said:
“This isn’t my war, this is Biden’s war, Zelenskyy’s war, and Putin’s war. This isn’t Trump’s war. I’m only here for one thing, to see if I can end it, to save 5,000 lives a week.”
It sounds like he is seeding the ground for abandonment. He has said, absurdly, “This is a war that would never have started if I were President”, which is as valid as his boast of ending the war “in 24 hours” after taking office. He needs to know that, if he ends U.S. support and allows the Russian conquest of Ukraine, it will not only be Trump’s war but a Chamberlain-level ignominy that will live on in history, and by the way, dwarf Biden’s shambolic evacuation of Afghanistan that he so often brings up.
May 30 2025 | Posted in
Foreign Policy |
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< corruption|306||>
“My goal is to keep foreign money out of American politics,” Trump said at the October 2016 debate for the presidency. “Hillary Clinton’s goal is to put the Oval Office up for sale to whatever country offers the highest price.”
What a difference a few years make, as Trump, in his first foreign trip since retaking the presidency, again 
goes first to Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) because that’s where the Trump family has megadollar deals in the works and where influence into the White House is up for sale. Connecticut Democrat Sen. Chris Murphy is the most outspoken of the very few in Congress who have anything to say:
”Let’s be clear what this trip is about. This is Trump’s corruption tour of the Middle East. He is going to the Gulf in order to collect tribute. What’s happening here is an extraordinary level of corruption. “
During Mr. Trump’s first term, the family agreed not to sign any new international deals while he was in office. This time, they issued an ethics statement that said only that they would have “no new transactions with foreign governments”. Just two weeks before papa’s trip, the Trump Organization signed onto a deal to develop in Qatar a $5.5 billion golf and resort. The deal is with a Qatari company called Qatari Diar which happens to be owned by the Qatari government. So much for their ethics statement.
They are doing much the same in Oman (not on the president’s itinerary) – a luxury hotel and golf combination. It’s on government-owned land and the government will get a share. In Dubai (UAE) there is to be the 80-story $1.15 billion Trump International Hotel and Tower, but this time seemingly built by a non-government company. A fund backed by Abu Dhabi (another of the seven emirates) announced it would be making a $2 billion business deal using the Trump firm’s digital coins as currency, for which the Trump company takes a fee.
Trump can rebut this by saying that the Saudis have pledged to invest $600 billion in the United States over the next four years. Trump tried to get them to boost it to $1 trillion. On he went to the UAE which did top a billion — $1.4 billion over 10 years. Pledges say that these kingdoms do not have any specific business plans in the U.S. , else plans rather than pledges would have been announced. That in turn says that Trump has extracted these favors so that the president can boast of his triumphant trip. Unsaid is what pledges Trump has made in turn. A security guarantee has been bruited about, but for the U.S. to make military commitments to these Arab kingdoms in the face of the rising threat of China, and to protect the Trump family interests, is why Chris Murphy is outraged.
More concrete is the deal signed for the Saudis to buy $142 billion of U.S. weaponry described as “state-of-the-art warfighting equipment and services from over a dozen U.S. defense firms.” And while Trump was in Qatar, Boeing secured a $96 billion deal to produce for the Gulf state up to 210 jets, Boeing’s “largest-ever” widebody order, the ailing company said.
road to damascus
The most significant and unexpected development is Trump agreeing to lift sanctions against Syria, to “give them a chance at greatness”. The State Department had already drafted a carefully staged plan to roll back the layers of sanctions, each step in return for specific Syrian actions. Trump impetuously blew that up, agreeing to remove all sanctions all at once.
He said the Saudis persuaded him to do so, and arranged for Syria’s new president to come to Riyadh and meet with President Trump. As said above, what a difference a few years make. Trump had in 2018 issued a $10 million bounty for the taking of Ahmed al Sharaa, a jihadist whose militia was allied with al Qaeda, now redeemed for 
At left, Syria’s new president, Ahmed al Sharaa.
leading the overthrow of the Assad regime in December. “Young, attractive guy, very strong past, fighter”, is the president’s changed view. Turns out it was less foreign policy than a business deal. “He told me he wants a Trump Tower in Damascus”.
the plane
But it is the proposed gift of Qatar ruling monarch‘s Boeing 747-8 “Palace in the Sky” that won the headlines. The world’s most luxuriously appointed aircraft is 13 years old but in its new state would cost roughly $400 million. Decked out in leather, gold, and burlwood accents, it has three lounges, two bedrooms, a private office, five galleys, and nine bathrooms, some even with showers, and at least one with a bidet.
Trump cannot stand not to have it and filled the Internet with posts arguing why he should.
”Only a FOOL would not accept this gift on behalf of our Country.”
He said to Fox News’s Sean Hannity, on board Air Force One on the Mid-East trip,
“The plane that you’re on right now is almost 40 years old. When you land and you see Saudi Arabia, and you see UAE, and you see Qatar, and you see all this, and they have these brand new Boeing 747s mostly, and you see ours next to it, this is like a totally different plane.”
The plane would be taken in by the Defense Department to be used as an Air Force One, but would be transferred to the Trump Library when he leaves office, if he leaves office, at which point he would own it, free to use it personally. The president tweeted:
”The Boeing 747 is being given to the United States Air Force/Department of Defense, NOT TO ME!”
”No one contradicts Donald Trump better then Donald Trump” quipped MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell, when no sooner had he written that, did he say to Sean Hannity…
“Some people say ‘Oh, you shouldn’t accept gifts’ for the country. My attitude is, why wouldn’t I accept a gift? We’re giving to everyone else. Why wouldn’t I accept a gift?”
Attorney General Pam Bondi was quick to oblige, determining along with the Justice Department’s office of the White House Counsel that the library could legally be given the plane. She had not bothered to recuse herself from this decision for having herself been a lobbyist for the dictator Emir of Qatar. And so was FBI Director Kash Patel. And EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin. And even Trump’s Chief of Staff, Susie Wiles. All these officials at the top of our government on the payroll of Qatar. (Can this get any more sordid?). Bondi was paid $115,000 a month. She said before Congress that was for the staff in her company as well. What were they doing for Qatar that was worth $115,000 a month?
Bondi used for precedent that the Air Force One in the service of President Ronald Reagan was transferred to his library. But, contrary to Mr. Trump’s eager intent, Reagan never used it for flight again. (Missing from all of this is, why does a plane belong in a library?)
Accepting the plane is of course illegal, but like Trump, she has no intention of following the Constitution which says in Section 9 of Article I that no officer…
“shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.”
Mr. Trump has no such scruples. Maryland’s Jamie Raskin, the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, issued a report that tallied $8 million Trump had taken in from foreign governments during his first term, a pittance compared to the current haul. In another instance of the Supreme Court dragging out cases to Trump’s benefit, in January 2021 they dropped an emoluments lawsuit over his profiting from foreign dignitaries booking rooms and spending lavishly at Trump’s hotel in D.C., astonishingly saying the case was moot for Trump no longer being in office.
it won’t happen
It won’t happen because it can’t happen. To install all the technology and security needed for Air Force One, the plane would have to be stripped to its rivets, tearing out all the luxury that has Trump salivating, reduced to just a shell. It must be outfitted with secure communications facilities to enable to president to connect with the world and the military at all times, electronics to thwart eavesdropping, cyber attacks, spoofing, jamming — which is why it must be so thoroughly stripped. Intelligence agencies from around the world will try to get at that plane to hide bugging devices, otherwise. One of the reasons the new Air Force Ones at Boeing are well behind schedule is that everyone working on the planes must have security clearance.
And finally, all that luxe has to be reinstalled, just as it was, because that’s the whole point for Trump. He’ll want to wash his “beautiful hair” in those showers, gaze upon the gold leaf, stroke the burlwood.
”So the fact that the Defense Department is getting a GIFT, FREE OF CHARGE…so bothers the Crooked Democrats that they insist we pay, TOP DOLLAR, for the plane.”
No, it will be far from free. Various estimates figure the overall cost to be a few hundred millions of dollars and will take as long as Boeing getting their job done, now that this kerfuffle has probably roused them from their torpor.
pushback
Even some Republicans have diffidently voiced concern. Senate Majority Leader John Thune couched the gift as a “hypothetical”, but assures us of “plenty of scrutiny” should it became an actual.
“Obviously, people don’t just give you things without expecting something in return”. Alaska’s Senator. Lisa Murkowski said the same.Right-wing podcaster Ben Shapiro chastised Trump:
“Like, please define ‘America First’ in a way that says you should take sacks of cash from the Qatari royals. It just isn’t ‘America First’ in any conceivable way.”
Robert Weissman, a co-president of Public Citizen, a consumer advocacy organization, was equally cutting:
“Even in a presidency defined by grift, this move is shocking, It makes clear that U.S. foreign policy under Donald Trump is up for sale.”
On the left, Congressman Raskin reached back to our beginnings:
“Donald Trump doesn’t know a lot about the founders, but the founders knew a lot about him and his type, and they were afraid that you’d get someone as president who’d be willing, essentially, to sell the interests of the country out to specific foreign governments who would do business with him.”
As for the plane, George W. Bush’s ethics lawyer Richard Painter lamented:
“It’s humiliating — humiliating for the United States to have Qatar provide the plane for the president of the United States.”
The host of MSNBC’s “The Last Word With Lawrence O’Donnell” gets the last word:
“The president of the United States, who just last week was telling American kids how many toys they could have for Christmas, is now humiliating himself with those Middle Eastern dictators by showing them just how much he covets their toys.”
May 16 2025 | Posted in
Corruption |
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< foreign policy|243||>
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%. On Friday Trump backed down, tweeting on Truth Social, “80% Tariff on China seems right! Up to Scott B.” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer are now in Switzerland for talks with China. Wasn’t it Trump to do all the deals?
befuddlement
Okay, that’s the latest that we report dutifully but the real story is the madcap confusion that has consumed the administration since the pause was announced.
About three weeks ago, the president sat for an interview by Time magazine. There was this bewildering exchange:
Time: Your trade adviser, Peter Navarro, says 90 deals in 90 days is possible. We’re now 13 days into the point from when you lifted the reciprocal, the discounted reciprocal tariffs. There’s zero deals so far. Why is that?
Trump: No, there’s many deals.
Time: When are they going to be announced?
Trump: You have to understand, I’m dealing with all the companies [sic], very friendly countries. We’re meeting with China. We’re doing fine with everybody. But ultimately, I’ve made all the deals.
Time: Not one has been announced yet. When are you going to announce them?
Trump: I’ve made 200 deals.
Time: You’ve made 200 deals?
Trump: 100%.
A week ago in a Washington Post op-ed, Vice President JD Vance wrote:
“In the weeks since Liberation Day, the Trump administration has heard from 130 different trading partners seeking negotiations, with nearly 20 already having sent written proposals.”
Really? None accepted? Only the U.K. framework so far?
Trump has endlessly lied to hoodwink his MAGA cohort into believing that other countries pay the tariffs. His inner circle has had to parrot the lie, or in the case of Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent in mid-week before Congress, go to lengths to avoid contradicting the lie. Wisconsin Democratic Representative Mark Pocan asked him a simple question:
Pocan: Who pays tariffs?
Bessent: Sorry, well,…
Pocan: Mr. Secretary, Who pays tariffs?
Bessent: Well, Congressman, if the exporters dislike tariffs so much, why wouldn’t they if, I think what you’re trying to get me to say…
Pocan: Do you remember the question? I’m not sure you did. Who pays tariffs?
Bessent: That, the, it’s a very complicated question.
Pocan: People pay tariffs, right? I’m assuming.
Bessent: The history would show that it is a complicated mix of who pays the tariffs over various periods of time.
Perhaps he didn’t realize that Trump had already blown cover. In telling America’s little girls that they would have to settle for two dolls for Christmas instead of 30 under his austerity plan, he let slip that “maybe the two dolls will cost a couple of bucks more than they would normally”. Oops, that admitted that tariffs are tacked on at this end, not paid by exporting countries. The dolls incident filled the media. Even Karl Rove, once senior advisor and deputy chief of staff for George W. Bush, took Trump to task on Fox News saying:
“It sounds like Mr. Scrooge…The ordinary American is like, ‘Wait a minute, I thought you were on my side. I didn’t think you were on the side of saying I need to do with less. You’ve got plenty of money. I’ve got to make mine stretch as far as I can.’”
Trump called him “a total loser”.
Punchbowl News got wind of a shopping unit at Amazon planning to show the cost of the tariff alongside every item’s price at checkout. The White House blew a fuse on hearing of this, with press secretary Karoline Leavitt calling it “a hostile and political act”. It was in fact entirely justified, no different from showing sales taxes, excise taxes, etc. Trump called Amazon founder Jeff Bezos who, subservient again to the regime, had his Amazon quash the plan instanter. MSNBC’s Elise Jordan quipped, “For about thirty seconds it seemed like Amazon cared more about customers than the White House, but nope.”
In a post at his Truth Social a week ago, with his usual strange notion of capitalization, the president decreed:
”I am authorizing the Department of Commerce, and the United States Trade Representative to immediately begin the process of instituting a 100% Tariff on all Movies coming into our Country that are produced in Foreign Lands.”
Trump dictates tariffs under an “emergency” he has declared that trade imbalances constitute a national security threat; foreign films evidently pose a danger we hadn’t realized. It is a puzzle to figure out just what to tariff – the production budget? Every ticket at the box office?
Canada’s newly-elected Prime Minister Mark Carney was sitting in the Oval Office this week when Mr. Trump became exasperated with reporters’ nagging questions about when is he going to sign tariff deals, with a third of his 90 days gone. It was a huh? moment:
“We don’t have to sign deals. We could sign 25 deals right now, if we wanted. You keep writing about deals, deals, when are we going to sign? I wish they’d keep, you know, stop asking how many deals are you signing this week? Because one day we’ll come and we’ll give you a hundred deals, and they don’t have to sign.”
Because he will adjust tariffs on trading partners if there hasn’t been an agreement, he said. His baffling ramble then had the U.S. as producer selling goods rather than buying from abroad. In the Time interview, he had said, “We are a department store, and we set the price.”With Carney sitting alongside, he voiced that peculiar analogy again:
“We will sign some deals, but much bigger than that is we’re going to put down the price that people will have to pay to shop in the United States. Think of us as a super luxury store, a store that has the goods.”
May 10 2025 | Posted in
Foreign Policy |
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< the presidency|280||>
On the last day of April, President Trump was giving ABC’s Terry Moran a tour of the Oval Office.
“Over here you have the original of Abe Lincoln and George Washington and of course you have the Declaration of Independence”
He was pointing to a framed copy on a wall. Moran asked, “What does it mean to you?” Trump replied:
“Well it means exactly what it says. It’s a declaration, it’s a declaration of unity and love and respect and it means a lot, and it’s something very special to our country.”
Moran looked dumbstruck. Very special it is, but the antitheses of “unity and love and respect”. Trump revealed he had no idea what the document was about.
Last Sunday on “Meet the Press”, the president was interviewed by NBC’s Kristen Welker. Part of the interview went as follows:
Welker: Your secretary of state says everyone who’s here, citizens and non-citizens, deserve due process. Do you agree, Mr. President?
Trump: I don’t know. I’m not, I’m not a lawyer. I don’t know.
Welker: Well, the Fifth Amendment says as much.
Trump: I don’t know…
He continued with his constantly repeated refrain of “thousands of people that are some murderers and some drug dealers and some of the worst people on Earth”.
Welker: Don’t you need to uphold the Constitution of the United States as president?
Trump: I don’t know. I have to respond by saying, again, I have brilliant lawyers that work for me, and they are going to obviously follow what the Supreme Court said.
Not long before, on January 20th, he had sworn to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States”, but here he shows himself to know nothing of one of its fundamental precepts, the right to due process. He needs “brilliant lawyers” to explain it to him. Emitting a miasma of uncertainty with his non-answers effectively tells his followers, whom he supposes to be equally ignorant of the Constitution, that its inarguable words are subject to differing interpretations.
Trump once boasted of his Ivy League education at the University of Pennsylvania, which he is now attacking along with other élite universities. But his was an undergraduate offering of Penn’s Wharton School, not the renowned graduate-level business school’s degree; where he apparently took little other than real estate courses. (He has refused to release the transcript of his grades, nor will the university, per its standard privacy policy). Before that, he went to an educationally undistinguished private military school where, classmates reported, he learned to be a bully. So he never was grounded in the values of what America is about.
How counterfeit was it therefore that in September 2020 Trump set up the “1776 Commission” to espouse a “patriotic education” that would restore reverence of the nation’s fundamental mores — the same Donald Trump who a few months later, having lost the election, would incite an insurrection to overthrow the government so he could retain power.
The commission was charged with developing a “pro-American curriculum” that would put an end to the “twisted web of lies” taught in our schools about slavery, racism, the sordid episodes of our history, saying that “teaching this horrible doctrine to our children is a form of child abuse”. The report unsurprisingly turns to religion, families need to pray together where they may acknowledge “the providence of the Almighty God who gave them their sacred liberty”. We are told that religious faith “indispensable to the success of republican government”. And, of course, they mean Christianity.
commander in chief
The president’s historical bent is the pomp of the military. He was much taken with the Bastille Day parade on the Champs-Élysées in the heart of Paris on a 2017 visit. A parade during his first term was cancelled for reasons of cost, but Trump has now ordered the U.S. Army to stage a “big, beautiful” parade. Ostensibly to celebrate the service’s 250th anniversary, which knows no specific date, you would at least expect July 4th to be chosen. Instead it will be on Flag Day, June 14th, which, whad’ya know, just happens to be Trump’s birthday. While at it, Congress could pass New York Republican Rep. Claudia Tenney’s bill that would make his birthday a national holiday, “to recognize him as the founder of America’s Golden Age.”
For the five times draft-deferred Trump (ultimately for a bone spur on which foot he doesn’t remember), 6,600 soldiers, 150 vehicles, 50 helicopters, and, yes, tanks, will pass in review at a cost expected to be in the tens of millions of dollars. Vehicles and armament must be brought in from all over, troop billets must be set up, etc. Our military eschews such display, it should be noted, and had no plans for parades for its 250th.
War on the grand scale is the history that matters for the president, not the troops who fight and die in them, whom he has called “losers” and “suckers”. He wants to rename November 11th’s Veterans Day “Victory Day for World War I”. Fair enough. It was originally called Armistice Day, the date in 1918 when hostilities ceased to end the First World War.
But Trump also intends to designate May 8th as World War II “Victory Day”, writing on Truth Social that, because the date is celebrated by “many of our allies and friends” as “Victory in Europe Day”, we should do the same, because…
“we did more than any other Country, by far, in producing a victorious result.”
First, May 8th as World War II victory day is an in excusable slight to those who lost their lives in the Pacific theater; he is ignorant that the war for the U.S. didn’t end until August 15, 1945, when the Japanese surrendered. But his statement of “more than any other country” is a shameful boast. Instrumental as was the U.S. all over the globe, it’s another slight to pay no homage to our Allies and especially the Soviet Union which suffered Hitler’s massive invasion, unlike us fought the war on their own soil, ground the Germans to standstills in the yearlong sieges of Leningrad and Stalingrad and the battle for Moscow, and then turned the tide, sweeping west to Berlin, with a loss of over 20 million soldiers and civilians.
veni, vidi, vici
In the interview with Kristen Welker, Mr. Trump did not rule out the use of that military to satisfy his imperialist aspirations. When he first became president, Putin had already taken Crimea and the ongoing contest for the Donbas region of Ukraine stayed at a simmer. But now that he has seen Putin launch an all out invasion, Trump seems to think that to be a strongman dictator on the same par, he too must make expansionist moves to take land from other countries.
He told Welker that the Panama Canal was taken over by China, effectively, but now they seem to have left. The notion of annexing Canada is preposterous, but with Canada’s newly elected prime minister, Mark Carney, sitting at his side in the Oval Office, with appallingly boorish arrogance Trump went on at length about the “tremendous benefits to the Canadian citizens” would be their country becoming the 51st state. In a deft put down, a composed Carney responded:
”Well, if I may, as you know from real estate, there are some places that are never for sale…. We’re sitting in one right now. Buckingham Palace, that you visited as well… And having met with the owners of Canada over the course of the campaign, last several months, it’s not for sale. It won’t be for sale ever.”
“Never say never” was Trump’s reply. Jesse Watters on Fox, often effective but this time a twit, told his audience that Joe Biden had proposed marriage to Jill seven times before she said yes, as if we should just keep asking and Canada will give in.
But there’s always Greenland. Asked by Welker whether he is ruling out military force to take Greenland one day, the president answered…
”I don’t rule it out. I don’t say I’m going to do it, but I don’t rule out anything…We need Greenland very badly.”
So who knows, maybe he’ll decide to use his “big, beautiful” military to conquer an island, send its 56,000 inhabitants to El Salvador, make it the 51st state named Trumpland, and create a national victory holiday. On his birthday, of course.
May 9 2025 | Posted in
Education |
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