Summary
Trump just presided over one of the greatest diplomatic disasters in modern history, with flared tempers, raised voices, and shredded protocol.
Never before has a U.S. president bullied and berated an adversary, never mind an ally, in such a public way.
During a tense Oval Office meeting, Trump and JD Vance attacked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, demanding he accept a peace deal with Russia or lose U.S. support.
The conversation devolved into shouting, with Trump accusing Zelenskyy of being ungrateful and “gambling with World War III.”
The meeting ended in chaos, with no agreement reached.
I hope that the rest of the world is taking notes and realizing that they cannot rely on the current US government to uphold its side of any prior agreements (or even the basic tenets of etiquette in civil discourse).
I hope that every country that does most of its trade with the US is quietly looking for new markets.
I hope that Republican isolationism actually comes to pass so that the entire population of the US can feel exactly how painful it will be to cut themselves off from the rest of the world. And then in two years, I hope enough people will get off their asses and vote against the people who let it happen.
The rest of the world certainly is watching.
There’s been pretty much universal condemnation and acknowledgement that the US is no longer the leader of the free world.
Do you really think Dumpf and his puppeteers are going to allow free and fair elections? I don’t even believe this last election was such.
Insofar as any gerrymandered election has been “free and fair” in my lifetime, yes, I do.
(Sidebar: I’m pretty concerned about some of the proposed legislation requiring birth certificate matching for names because of the potential to disenfranchise both trans people and married women, but I hope there’s enough pushback that it doesn’t go anywhere.)
President Grandpa’s puppeteers are only successful because they’ve manipulated a washed-up reality TV star with name recognition who is more concerned with ratings than with government. Without his inexplicable cachet with the electorate, they could never get their agenda pushed through, and they know it.
The man is not all-powerful. He’s also old and out of shape. A lot of things could happen before the next election cycle that may end his party’s political reign. There’s no clear successor whom the masses of Trumpist cult members will follow. Vance? Don Jr.? I don’t think either has the charisma or reputation to take the reins.
Living in a red state I believe the election was fair… but the cult is all too real. So is gerrymeandering.