changegonnacome

100% correct….the great mistake liberals and democrats make is that they believe Trump supporters are somehow dumb and don’t know the nature of the man they elected…hence all the pointing out of his transgressions….they want to believe this idea….because the reality is more difficult to process….that a liberal led agenda has left lot of the electorate so disgusted with their institutions & the track the country is on that they elected Trump precisely because he wasn’t a choir boy.

Hypocrisy doesn't suit you @cubsfan. This whole paragraph could just as easily be about the office of President, Trump and his own conviction for mortgage fraud.

Yeah you might not have liked the deep federal state.....be it gave a baseline of consistency to federal policy that nobody appreciated..... till it was gone......Trump's expansion of the Presidency to an imperial one introduces policy volatility that will see things whipsaw between administrations if left as is.....what people thought was a bug was actually a feature of American democracy....slow molasses like incrementalism.....Trump has uncovered all the policy whipsaw cheats codes on the books....Trump is only making things better in the sense that he's a hacker attacking the countries operating system for vulnerabilities and surfacing them.....a new Congress needs to issue some update patches pronto....the question is if Trump will completely corrupt the O/S before they can get to it!

Yep - nobody can deny that standards in public office have been slipping for decades....if one could graph such things what you would see is that Trump has accelerated the decline like no other before him.....the 4th turning would suggest that such degradation leads to chaos and then a grand reset where trust is restored in institutions and politicians....Trump has hit warp speed on that process!

Yep - what Putin is interested in doing is getting Trump to stop threatening secondary sanctions, putting any ceasefire talk to bed and ideally isolating the Europeans and Ukrainians from further US support....Putin is going to settle this one militarily and put himself in a position where he is de facto dictating terms....one must admit that when one thinks of the strategic aims of both parties heading into the Alaska summit its pretty clear who was the winner...the first two Putin outcomes are done.....the final domino to fall is when Trump puts on an exasperated act with the Europeans & Ukrainians in a few weeks time throwing his arms in the air that 'they' (not Putin) wont do peace..... and washing his hands of the whole thing to create political distance.

Yeah one of the saving graces of the MAGA movement is that its called bullshit on lot of the interventionist neocon and liberal nation building dreams that's defined US foreign policy since end of WWII.......way too many extracurricular activities & projects that became boondoggles that fell outside of the true definition of national security.

We're living in crazy times.....what a waste of time for Europe's collective brain trust that spent the guts of a week spilling untold ink on security guarantees that simply won't fly.....Lavrov no doubt told Witcoff and Trump in Alaska how exactly Russia defines 'security guarantees'....that they both came to their European and Ukrainian partners afterward with this security guarantee 'win' and left the important part out is quite something....with 'friends' like these who needs enemies!

cubs i said this "in my world yep they both shouldn't be in office" High office, high standards also. The irony i pointed out is the self-righteous accuser (Trump) is also guilty of the exact same crime of mortgage fraud. So lets apply the same standard to Cook as Trump applied to himself.....she should face a civil case and penalties for her mortgage fraud (pay her price) but I guess the standard Trump has set is that high standards are now divorced from high office.

Doubt there's two years left in the Ukrainian front lines......POTUS knows there's some ugly scenes coming down the line fairly soon possibly well before the mid-terms.....he doesn't want his own proxy-Afghanistan moment on TV.....so distance will be his plan while still supplying the Europeans weapons to supply Ukraine. The truly bold move would be to pull American artillery/intelligence support completely to force Ukraine to accelerate their acceptance of the inevitable but you would also twin this with credible threats of secondary sanctions on Russia and resumption of enhanced Ukraine support if they didn't play fair in the negotiations. This move would be humane way to potentially end things but Trump (as any politician would) doesn't want any blame to land at his door his distance strategy while brutal, cause it prolongs the inevitable and has huge human costs, is what any normal US president would do.

Shouldn't POTUS be too? Quite ironic that what Cook is being pursued for now for her resignation...is what was proved quite extensively on Trump's part on a much larger credit fraud case.....Cook what a couple of mill, Donald a few hundred mil.....in my world yep they both shouldn't be in office....high standards for high offices....but your guy fails that test too....so people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.

How dare he say the obvious part out loud....prices for no reason other than dumb policy are going up again....suspect Trump has a team of people combing through J-Pow's history looking for any tiny transgressions they can hit him with (ala Cooke but they need to do better than wannabe but never was reno scandal fiasco)....in aggregate your really looking at an assault now on the monetary authority....like lots of things with Trump this is either 4D chess or more likely IMO Trump has managed to take a growing economy with entrenched dis-inflation (2023-2024) and managed to tilt it towards a potential stagflationary one all for a lousy $350-$400bn bucks that could have been gotten by other less damaging means. Not very bright politics and not very clever management of an economy.

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/08/22/russia-ukraine-trump-summit-00519353 Didnt take long….Russia’s version of a security guarantee is one where they a party to it and have a veto and oh yeah China is involved too There is no way that Trump/Witcoff weren’t told this in Alaska but guess they needed something positive to come out of the summit that would allow them to drop all the ultimatums, cease fires and secondary sanctions talk. DC Summit was a load of hogwash and political theatre. Trump’s final performative act I suspect before he cuts and runs a million miles from this conflict. I suspect that’s a very smart move politically…only bad news stories are going to emanating out of Ukraine for the next few years as Russia grinds through what few fighting age men Ukraine has left. Anyway - there is no basis for a peace deal here IMO …Russia and Ukraine/EU….are operating in two entirely different universes…and the US is about to check out of the conflict once the trilat happens or indeed if it doesn’t happen…..cause there ain’t peace deal to be had here either way.

I think that process has already begun...with the whole US wont give Ukraine weapons anymore...but we'll sell weapons to the Europeans to give to them. Alaska, DC Summit & potential trilat (which will when all is said and done amount to a hill beans) will be his off ramp.....Ukraine is an impossible conundrum for the West....we care but not quite enough to meaningfully affect the final inevitable outcome on the battlefield. Boris Johnson & Joe Biden have a lot to answer for.....the Istanbul peace talks was the optimal off ramp for Ukraine...and the two idiots....one who'd lost his marbles (Biden) and the other with no marbles to begin with (Johnson) encouraged Zelensky to press forward instead to defeat Russia on the battlefield.

Yeah I don't think they happen or certainly not in a way that will matter....like if they do it will be so watered down the secondary sanctions will have no bite and as such will be a PR exercise. The reality here.....Trump/GOP heading into the mid-terms is not going to do anything to shave points of the US's GDP.....fullsome secondary sanctions would boomerang back to the US as economic pain IMO.

I hadn't seen that - but straight away thats bullshit. As straight away after Witcoff came out on Sunday morning television last week (not directly after Alaska summit where this would have been a huge concession) saying that Russia had agreed to allow security guarantees be provided to Ukraine by the West felt like something was off. That European leaders and Trump seem to be in the process of writing up something close to special Article 5 guarantees for Ukraine again strikes me as very odd for something Russia would agree too. This DC summit & the 'work' on-going on Ukrainian security guarantees provided for by the West I suspect is some bluesky fever dream destined to be shot down by Putin/the Kremlin as not being what was agreed too. Two thoughts on this.....sanctions havent quite brought Russia to its knees like we hoped....I'm not sure secondary sanctions will either....and you've got all types of retaltory issues there to....you think China or India is just going to take secondary sanctions laying down? That they dont have agency. So these sanctions, if implemented, have questionable efficacy and they wont be costless to the US which leads to the big foundational question re:Ukraine which is we say we care about the outcome there....but do American voters and by extension politicians care enough to have secondary sanctions boomerang back as some retaliatory measure against the US that hurts oil prices or goods prices or rare earths again. The answer in reality is No. I dont think they ever really happen. I think Trump after this Alaska and trilateral run at the problem is going to remove himself from any ownership of the situation.....he will smartly distance himself from the problem, because he'll realize its intractable. @Spekulatius is correct re: airpower....but again....everybody cares enough about Ukraine to send money & good vibes....but nobody quite cares enough to have their military assets engage directly in bilateral way with a nuclear power like Russia....nobody can quite seems to bring to themselves to that escalatory step because they know its crossing a rubicon of sorts....a proxy war is one thing....this would be quite another and I havent seen a credible comment from any coalition of the willing member that suggest their airforce pilots would drop bombs on Russian soldiers. So in practise....I think the West (incl. Trump) is out of viable military and non-military options....maybe we get some trilateral meetings or such....but I think Russia drives this war to its conclusion which will involve a defacto collapsing of Ukrainian frontlines and the final taking of territory that Russia deems to be viable to hold over the long pull (majority ethno-russian) and you get a kind of North Korea-South Korea situation. That's where we're headed. I'm not sure on the timelines I havent immersed myself in the latest casualty exchange ratios or how many fighting age men are even left in Ukraine that are uninjured....but what I would say is time isnt on their side.

Nobodys words mean anything anymore...and they never really did anyway....nations have interests and those interests and intents change over time....as the realists always say the international system is anarchic......we have some thin fig leave of an international system that sits above states but its something of an illusion (ICC, WTO, UN)....it gives the impression of some system that sits above state level interactions but in reality as we've seen with Liberation Day riding roughshod over WTO rules...or the impotentance of the ICC re: Netanyahu (whether you agree with the charges or not)......the reality stands in the international system as a nation when you call 911 nobody answers the phone. My base case re:Putin and the security guarantees is that they will turn out to be a red herring. He is going to rug pull whatever Trump thinks he agreed to in Alaska. Whatever the Europeans and American's are concocting re: security guarantees and what's clear is that they are coming up with something that is so Article 5-adjacent that Ukraine might as well be in NATO......and so I think Putin will shut it down or demand it be watered down so completely to be meaningless that talks will collapse and the fighting continue. Maybe I'm wrong - but this part of the Alaska summit (permission for security guarantees) struck me as the most outlandish.....and forgive me for not believing things that Witcoff or Trump say we're agreed too.....I said it a few days ago and I'll say it now....I think the security guarantee greenlight from Russia reported by Witcoff and Trump will turn out to be bullshit.

I think that it wants is Ukraine not under the West's thumb more than it might want it under its thumb......it's a delicate nuanced balance for Ukraine.....sometimes the correct posture (depending on who's in the Kremlin, or who's the US /EU president) might be to be closer to Russia for a time, sometimes it might be better to lean into the West a bit more......your job though is not to get country caught in the crossfire of great power politics.......sometimes in life that requires that you accept your reality and the constraints it place on you and you skillfully play the poor hand your dealt.....Ukraine has what they call in IR the classic buffer state dilema.....Belarus had it to.....the leadership in Belarus has played both the West and Russia quite skillfully for a couple of decades now...only recently really leaning into their partnership with Russia......the reality....if your a 25 year old male what country would you prefer to live in - current day Belarus or current day Ukraine?.....Lukashenko is no angel......but relative to Zelensky and his pro-West predecessors he got the memo....and between the two who has optimized the health, happiness and prosperity and indeed survival of their nation over the last decade better....the proof is in the pudding as they say......too many people in the realm of international conflict and security get lost in narratives of good and evil.......or caught down rabbit holes of believing every dictator/autocrate is Hitler reincarnated...in the historical record I think people don't quite understand how unusual Hitler was....he was fundamentally a congenital aggressor......appeasement didn't work with him because he was such an unusual character and had his country under a spell.......the lazy heuristic for Putin is this one.....which is quite funny when you just look at the facts around the invasion of Ukraine....as I've pointed out many times on this thread.....Russia entered Ukraine with a military force so small, so tiny that conquering & occupying even the city of Kyiv was beyond its capability............Russia's standing army at home in March 2022 was relatively tiny, its military industrial base limited....this was not Germany & Hitler building a coiled imperial war machine leading up to 1939.....its laughable to hear European leaders speak about the Russian army as some version of the Wehrmacht in 1939 ready to rollver Ukraine on its way to Warsaw and Berlin.......Russia is stuck in the mud in Eastern Ukraine precisely because it really had no expansive territorial aspirations leading up to 2022 because if it did it would have had a large standing army (instead of conscripting prisoners in Moscow jails while borrowing drones from Iran)......its pretty clear now that what Putin/Russia we're looking for was a shock and awe coup-de-dat in Kyiv that would collapse pro-West Zelensky forces and nudge Ukraine's political system away from tilting so aggressively to the west (NATO etc.). I know that isnt the Western narrative but the facts are the facts. Russia's lack of military buildup prior to Feb 2022. The pitifully small ground army invasion that entered Ukraine in Feb 2022. https://www.universiteitleiden.nl/en/news/2022/06/belarus-is-the-only-russian-ally-left-in-europe-what-is-in-it-for-them#:~:text=Play both sides,'

Well what I would say is that EU isn't a country....it doesn't think like a country....its still for all the talk 27 countries in an economic union.....but YES....I agree.....if Lee Kuan Yew was President of Ukraine he'd say his job is to have excellent cordial relations with both Russia AND the EU simultaneously....as a mouse you don't pick sides in an Elephant fight....your likely to get crushed.

There's enough blame to go around for the meatgrinder in Ukraine.....before the above European AND US cheerleading (under Biden)..... the United States most notably in the 2014 period (heping to overthrow President Viktor Yanukovych) had a fun time playing out their liberal nation building dreams on Russia's doorstep. The history of small countries in the shadow of large ones that start play footsie with that large countries geopolitical rivals and then bring untold and unnecessary misery on their people is long.....Ukraine is the most recent one and shame on the United States (both democratic and republican administrations) to lead them down that primrose path....Hamas in Gaza is another...to which you can add from the past Cuba, Georgia, Yemen, Hungary (1956), Korea (1950–1953), Vietnam (1955–1975; 1979), Laos (1964–1973), Cambodia (1969–1973), Cyprus (1974). Simple lesson.....if you live under a tall tree......dont do anything that might bring that tall tree down on top of you...you dont need to be a puppet state.....but you are deluded if you think that you have infinite sovereignty to do whatever you want and partner deeply with whomever you choose.......it means that you live in a world of pragmatism not idealism.....

What the polls say 1) “His popularity is growing rapidly” Gallup (July 7–21): Trump job approval 37%—the lowest of his second term to date. That’s down from 45% in mid‑February. (Gallup samples all adults.) Gallup.com+1 Pew Research Center (report released Aug 14): approval 38%, down from 41% in June. (All adults.) Pew Research Center Reuters/Ipsos (Aug 12–18): approval 40%, matching the term low in their tracker. (All adults.) Reuters Decision Desk HQ polling average across many pollsters (mix of adults, registered and likely voters): 46.5% approve / 50.5% disapprove (net −4). That average includes some LV polls that are friendlier to him (e.g., an InsiderAdvantage reading of 54–44) and others that are not (e.g., Economist/YouGov adults 40–56). Netting it all out, the average is not rising rapidly. polls.decisiondeskhq.com Bottom line: Across high‑quality national samples of all adults (Gallup, Pew, Reuters/Ipsos), approval is in the high‑30s to 40% and lower than early 2025. Mixed-sample averages sit in the mid‑40s but are still negative on net. That isn’t “growing rapidly.”

I think your clearly avoiding Trump uttering completely naive things to the President of France on a hot mic about how deep and far his relationship goes with Putin….its quite amazing to hear a grown man full-stop speak this way about another adult male….that it’s the President of the United States speaking about a geopolitical rival like Putin/Russia is something else….Im sure Putin is having a great laugh today in the Kremlin at that comment….I’m sure he genuinely can’t believe how deluded and naive the US president he sits across from is and how well his flattery has done a number on him. European leaders and Zelensky have a serious problem on their hands with Trump sitting in the middle of all this acting as a go-between...indeed in the middle of yesterday's summit Trump had time to run off and have a 40 minute call with Putin....loose lips sink ships and Trump has the loosest of lips......its clear Trump has gone off the deep end in terms of the faith he places in the closeness of his relationship with Putin (“he wants to make a deal for ME, as crazy as that sounds”) Makes me wonder what game Putin is playing here….I suspect it’s one for time to allow for further wins on the battlefield without any escalatory costs (secondary sanctions etc.) also you can imagine how demoralizing the terms of peace being rumored are for the Ukrainian soldiers on the frontlines - serious thrift is being given to the idea that Russia could claim territory it currently doesn’t hold! That’s right Ukrainian soldiers are defending territory right now that will potentially be given away later. I ask how committed would you be to defending said territory knowing it’s potentially being given away later? It’s a pretty great strategy by Putin & Co to demoralize the Ukrainian front lines to their advantage. I suspect we are headed towards (an embarrassing for Trump ) Putin rug pull here…where Putin & team via carrier pigeon Witcoff start to backchannel contradictions to what Trump & Co believe was conceded in Alaska (security guarantees etc) and which precipitated this DC summit ….where Trump got to embarrass himself and could girlishly tell other world leaders how much Putin is 'into him' and how that’s gonna get a deal done. A more optimal time for negotiations is out in the future for Putin (Russia is on the ascendency on the battlefield).....so it would be strategically dumb for him to do a deal now, unless of course complete capitulation peace terms are available now.

are we talking about the same thing here...the hot mic that picked up the below exchange between Macron and Trump today. Trump is right about it sounding crazy....in his old age he really seems to think he's in a monogamous bromance relationship with Putin where Putin wants to do stuff to help Trump....and this deal that doesn't even exist yet...is going to happen soley because of their special bond....your hero is off the deep end here @cubsfan......applaud the efforts at peace but Putin has really done a number on Donald if he's speaking in private like this (and he is, cause we've got the tape).

Thats not what Trump said....he said Putin wants to make a deal for HIM....him personally...not the United States, for Donald.

what a bonkers thing to say to other world leaders......delusional & deluded, narcissistic and child-like....he sounds like a teenage girl with a crush

Yep nobody knows Including Trump.......you ought to read various accounts of Trump 45 from those in his administration .......really credible people.....Trump doesnt do strategy....he does press conferences.