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Trump's Second Term

Vice President JD Vance warned on Thursday that the United States could send troops to Ukraine and hit Russia with further sanctions if Vladimir Putin doesn’t negotiate a peace deal in good faith.

Speaking to the Wall Street Journal on Thursday, Vance said the option of sending US troops to Ukraine was “on the table,” as well as economic punishment if a peace deal doesn’t guarantee Kyiv’s long-term independence.

“There are economic tools of leverage, there are of course military tools of leverage” Vance told the newspaper.
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This is 180 degrees from Trump's fawning over Putin .

Meanwhile Hegseth is claiming Ukraine should abandon hopes of winning all its territory back from Russia in any future peace deal.
apnews.com

US defense chief suggests Ukraine should abandon hope of winning all territory back from Russia

U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth says NATO membership for Ukraine is unrealistic. Speaking Wednesday to NATO allies, Hegseth also suggested Kyiv should abandon hopes of winning all its territory back from Russia and instead prepare for a negotiated peace settlement to be backed up by internationa
apnews.com apnews.com
 
Ziggurat said:
Again, if they can't, why not? If they don't have the production capacity for Ukraine to fight Russia, then they don't have the production capacity to defend themselves against Russia. And that's a big ◊◊◊◊◊◊◊ problem that they need to solve.
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That is correct. The U.S. is abandoning its own world order, and it is clear that Europe will need to stand on its own. NATO was set up to defend its market in Europe, and both Europe and the U.S. benefited from it. Now Trump wants to make the benefit one-sided through trade wars, and Europe will have to rely less on American goods. This will of course include armaments. Thus, over time, the market in Europe will be less important, and it is only to be expected that the U.S. in the not too distant future will withdraw from NATO, i.e. disband it.

Ziggurat said:
I'm quite confident about that, for multiple reasons. One, it's already happened, so it's not an escalation for it to keep happening. Two, the US doesn't have to pay for it. And three, we might even make money off it as countries which donate US planes to Ukraine may buy planes from the US to replace the ones in Ukraine.
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What makes you think that this is likely, in view of the tariffs that Trump is imposing? In the short term, I think the U.S. will gain, but in the long term, Europe has understood that America is an unreliable partner, and Europe needs to ramp up its own armaments industry.

The idea that Trump is in Putin's pocket has always been nonsense. His hesitancy to support the war isn't due to any actual sympathy to Putin, but simply a desire to not spend American resources on that war. I don't think I've ever heard him discouraging other countries from supporting Ukraine. In fact, he seems to be trying to push Europe to do exactly that.
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He could still have pushed for Europe to spend more by itself, without handing Ukraine to Russia on a plate, but that is what he is doing. Even before the negotiations have started, he has made it clear that Putin will get what he wants, so that Putin can regroup and attack later (there is no security guarantee: Europe has to provide that, if she can).

I can’t explain why, but Trump does indeed seem to do whatever Putin wants him to do. Is it mainly because of the support that Trump got for his election? Trump certainly expects more support, or he would not abandon all attempts to curb foreign influence.
 
steenkh said:
I can’t explain why, but Trump does indeed seem to do whatever Putin wants him to do. Is it mainly because of the support that Trump got for his election? Trump certainly expects more support, or he would not abandon all attempts to curb foreign influence.
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Trump is a desperate thirsty baby. Talking to Putin makes him feel like a big important person and I'm sure Putin knows this and manages Trump accordingly, flattering him and helping to fluff up his ego.
 
steenkh said:
I can’t explain why, but Trump does indeed seem to do whatever Putin wants him to do. Is it mainly because of the support that Trump got for his election? Trump certainly expects more support, or he would not abandon all attempts to curb foreign influence.
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<speculation>
Trump has been reputedly involved with the Russian mafia for decades, including the casino years. They have financed him, probably through the Middle East, and own his markers. Those now reside in Pootie's bottom desk drawer. So when Trump has private talks with Pootie, it's to seek assurance he is still under protection, and to get his marching orders.
</speculation>
 
Norman Alexander said:
<speculation>
Trump has been reputedly involved with the Russian mafia for decades, including the casino years. They have financed him, probably through the Middle East, and own his markers. Those now reside in Pootie's bottom desk drawer. So when Trump has private talks with Pootie, it's to seek assurance he is still under protection, and to get his marching orders.
</speculation>
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What's not speculation is that Trump has a clear history of casually giving potential blackmail material on himself to Putin and that his own National Security chief ended up believing that Putin has blackmail on Trump. That's not necessarily why Trump did things like casually passing on what had been top secret information to Russia and paving the way for them to make war, but it is worthy of serious concern no matter what.

Speaking of history, though, Zig's tried to dismiss concerns about Trump's relationship with Russia as nonsense a number of times throughout, generally with extremely unreasonable arguments. That trend looks unlikely to change.
 
Hercules Rockefeller said:
It was never in the US' interest to have a super powerful independent Europe. It has been very lucrative for your country both in terms trade deals, arms sales and soft power to be the big guy.
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That's the thing, the US has gotten far more out of NATO than it has paid into it. It ensured that Europe was militarily dependent on the US, that the EU would largely follow the US's lead diplomatically and given the US military access to facilities, training facilities, intelligence and expertise that massively extended its power projection capabilities.
 
RFK Jr refers to Trump as "sent by God" and describes him as a "man on a white horse", a surprising bit of slightly obscured honesty or have they just never read their Bibles?
 
NBC reported, "Musk has said that DOGE needs access to federal data in order to search for waste, fraud and abuse. He has also said that his office doesn’t have any personal data of Americans — an assertion that has been met by skepticism among government workers and Democrats in Congress. The Washington Post reported last week that DOGE had fed sensitive data from the Education Department into artificial intelligence software to examine the agency’s programs and spending, and citing two people familiar with the project, Wired magazine reported that DOGE was developing an AI chatbot about spending across the government. NBC News has not confirmed that reporting." Is data mining Musk's long game?
 
I think people refuse to realize that Musk can literally, singlehandedly, cause the US to default on its obligations as payments to treasury bond holders are processed by the system he is messing with.
 
The Great Zaganza said:
I think people refuse to realize that Musk can literally, singlehandedly, cause the US to default on its obligations as payments to treasury bond holders are processed by the system he is messing with.
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I used to think during Dump's First Reich that he acted like a colonial governour who had set out to plunder as much of the colony's riches as he could. That feeling is even stronger this time. Except this time the governour appears to have been usurped by a younger, perhaps even worse counterpart.
 
Stacyhs said:
The Trump quotes above that Andy Ross is providing are yet more evidence that Trump is a mentally unfit for the office. He's either seriously mentally declining or just an idiot...or both.
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Remember, he's already decided the American people betrayed him in 2020. The fuhrerbunker mentality is not out of the question.
 
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