I disagree, my view on the Ukraine situation has been pretty consistent. They will never be able to win the war, so every single death is a completely wasted life. Better to negotiate and concede rather than kill millions for no reason. Everyone that has been encouraging them to ‘stand up’ to Russia just condemned hundreds of thousands of men to death for basically no reason. This entire thing is a complete catastrophe that should have been prevented by smarter negotiation, many years in the making. Trump is just admitting openly the reality that will play out anyway. Eventually western support will waiver for Ukraine because there simply isn’t a bottomless pit of money and resources. Putin does have that, effectively. He can’t be seen to lose this war, even at the expense of nuclear holocaust. He’s ****ing mental. And he has everything to lose in a way that the West does not. I wish it wasn’t the case but he is simply evil and played his cards well.
Ukraine has not lost hundreds of thousands of men. The aggressor, Russia, has lost nearly 1 million. When it suits you Putin is mental, yet a year ago you were saying he was an incredible politician. The issue here is that Trump has ceded everything to him before negotiations start and openly attacked Zelensky with Russian lies. That is a really horrendous way to act, but you can’t bring yourself to criticise the giant wotsit.
Meant to say I got this from FB , where a friend posted it . It’s actually from John Cleese . My American friends are asking me about President Trumps’s observation that the British ‘like him’ I regret this is quite unfounded The explanation for this canard is that Trump is pronoid Pronoid is the opposite of paranoid. A paranoid person thinks, without any basis in reality, that everybody is out to get them. A pronoid person is someone who thinks, without any basis in reality, that everybody likes them The fact is that the British loathe Donald Trump This is because he is the polar opposite of a ‘ Gentleman ‘, who has qualities the British admire. A fine example is Gareth Southgate To the British, a ‘ Gentleman ' is a man who is modest, well-mannered, self deprecating, quietly intelligent, considerate of other people’s feeling, and well-informed. He is not vulgar, inflated, vain, boastful, noisily ignorant, sleazy and common as muck I hope this clears up any confusion
He is a very clever person and a good politician. He is also an awful murdering evil psychopath. Hence “mental”. He is cold and calculating. The last part about ceding before we’ve even begin is a straight up lie from you. They haven’t even started yet. Here is the vice president debunking your lies in his own words: https://x.com/jdvance/status/1892957461423718598?s=48
Can you point out the part of that where he debunks my lies? I can only see him repeating the same crap. No UN for Ukraine. Ukraine in a weak position and cannot win. Ukraine’s ego a problem. He says nothing about Russia. Makes no promises about fighting to get Ukraine a fair deal. Repeats the people are wrong about what Russia wants - when Putin has repeatedly stated what he wants and that is to rebuild the Russian empire and that he does not recognise Ukraine as a sovereign state. In all honesty, Os, of all the awful attempts you have made to respond to a debate, this is in fact the absolute worst. All that tweet says is: we are not appeasing but actually Russia will get the best of any deals we broker.
Here's an interesting read on Trump's "negotiating skills" by Prof. David Honig of Indiana University “I’m going to get a little wonky and write about Donald Trump and negotiations. For those who don't know, I'm an adjunct professor at Indiana University - Robert H. McKinney School of Law and I teach negotiations. Okay, here goes. Trump, as most of us know, is the credited author of "The Art of the Deal," a book that was actually ghost written by a man named Tony Schwartz, who was given access to Trump and wrote based upon his observations. If you've read The Art of the Deal, or if you've followed Trump lately, you'll know, even if you didn't know the label, that he sees all deal making as what we call "distributive bargaining." Distributive bargaining always has a winner and a loser. It happens when there is a fixed quantity of something and two sides are fighting over how it gets distributed. Think of it as a pie and you're fighting over who gets how many pieces. In Trump's world, the bargaining was for a building, or for construction work, or subcontractors. He perceives a successful bargain as one in which there is a winner and a loser, so if he pays less than the seller wants, he wins. The more he saves the more he wins. The other type of bargaining is called integrative bargaining. In integrative bargaining the two sides don't have a complete conflict of interest, and it is possible to reach mutually beneficial agreements. Think of it, not a single pie to be divided by two hungry people, but as a baker and a caterer negotiating over how many pies will be baked at what prices, and the nature of their ongoing relationship after this one gig is over. The problem with Trump is that he sees only distributive bargaining in an international world that requires integrative bargaining. He can raise tariffs, but so can other countries. He can't demand they not respond. There is no defined end to the negotiation and there is no simple winner and loser. There are always more pies to be baked. Further, negotiations aren't binary. China's choices aren't (a) buy soybeans from US farmers, or (b) don't buy soybeans. They can also (c) buy soybeans from Russia, or Argentina, or Brazil, or Canada, etc. That completely strips the distributive bargainer of his power to win or lose, to control the negotiation. One of the risks of distributive bargaining is bad will. In a one-time distributive bargain, e.g. negotiating with the cabinet maker in your casino about whether you're going to pay his whole bill or demand a discount, you don't have to worry about your ongoing credibility or the next deal. If you do that to the cabinet maker, you can bet he won't agree to do the cabinets in your next casino, and you're going to have to find another cabinet maker. There isn't another Canada. So when you approach international negotiation, in a world as complex as ours, with integrated economies and multiple buyers and sellers, you simply must approach them through integrative bargaining. If you attempt distributive bargaining, success is impossible. And we see that already. Trump has raised tariffs on China. China responded, in addition to raising tariffs on US goods, by dropping all its soybean orders from the US and buying them from Russia. The effect is not only to cause tremendous harm to US farmers, but also to increase Russian revenue, making Russia less susceptible to sanctions and boycotts, increasing its economic and political power in the world, and reducing ours. Trump saw steel and aluminum and thought it would be an easy win, BECAUSE HE SAW ONLY STEEL AND ALUMINUM - HE SEES EVERY NEGOTIATION AS DISTRIBUTIVE. China saw it as integrative, and integrated Russia and its soybean purchase orders into a far more complex negotiation ecosystem. Trump has the same weakness politically. For every winner there must be a loser. And that's just not how politics works, not over the long run. For people who study negotiations, this is incredibly basic stuff, negotiations 101, definitions you learn before you even start talking about styles and tactics. And here's another huge problem for us. Trump is utterly convinced that his experience in a closely held real estate company has prepared him to run a nation, and therefore he rejects the advice of people who spent entire careers studying the nuances of international negotiations and diplomacy. But the leaders on the other side of the table have not eschewed expertise, they have embraced it. And that means they look at Trump and, given his very limited tool chest and his blindly distributive understanding of negotiation, they know exactly what he is going to do and exactly how to respond to it. From a professional negotiation point of view, Trump isn't even bringing checkers to a chess match. He's bringing a quarter that he insists of flipping for heads or tails, while everybody else is studying the chess board to decide whether its better to open with Najdorf or Grünfeld.” — David Honig
Steve Bannon, another of Trump’s friends, giving what appears to be a Nazi salute. Make your own minds up, but I’m sure that Farage and Truss, who gave speeches there, will be disgusted by it and will call him out.
I gave Musk a pass on this. His one could possibly have been over exuberance. This one… he raises his arm in the salute and you can see him processing his actions in his eyes. Either way, the optics are abysmal.
We will see. Almost all of this is your opinion. Actually Putin was willing to negotiate to end the war long ago, with the main condition being that Ukraine don’t join NATO. There was a path to peace even back then. Yet the EU, Boris and Biden wanted to perpetuate the war so their friends in the military industrial complex could keep making money. As for not recognising Ukraine as a sovereign nation - the speeches i have watched he did not say that at all. He said that he was cleansing Nazis out of Ukraine. (Which I don’t believe for obvious reasons). So his motive may well be to stop NATO’s expansion, and this could be enough to stop further fighting. There have been two years of death in trenches for no meaningful changes in the borders. Hundreds of billions of dollars have been spent, with much it going to feed corruption. The fundamental moral question is this: How many more years of death in trenches and billions of dollars of corruption do you want? The moral answer is zero. VP Vance is right.
I am as serious as the others. Anyone can clip or freeze images to make someone look like they’re doing a Nazi salute. The whole thing is preposterous
Seeing Liz Truss at the rally I support of Trump makes you realise why it was necessary for her to be hoiked out after a month as PM and with less dignity that Brian Clough getting booted from Leeds. Nice to see association with Trump being considered as political suicide in the UK this week. Truss is finished....just there for the oonneristic tendencies of Osvaldorama's ilk.
Let’s be really clear here. You are regurgitating Right Wing / Russian talking points. 1. You say this is my opinion, yet I am quoting Donald Trump and repeating what all responsible UK politicians from all parties have been saying. You posted a tweet you said disproved all of it, but it just confirmed exactly what ai was saying. You posted that tweet yet you yourself can find no evidence in it to suggest another point of view. 2. Nobody wanted this war to continue for the benefit of the military industrial complex. Definitely nobody in the UK. This has pretty much bankrupted our armed services. Wanting to fight an aggressor cannot be twisted into being the CAUSE of a million deaths. The CAUSE is Russia. 3. Hundreds of Billions have been spent across the world on this war. However, i am sorry but you have been lied to about US military spending. The US has spent about 75 billion and the remainder of the money is for weapons sent to Ukraine. The money was then spent in the US to replace stock. Kellogg stated this very clearly last week. If you want to call Trump’s man a liar, be my guest. 4. Putin has been explicit in wanting to restore Russia to USSR scale: https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blo...ian-empire-includes-both-ukraine-and-belarus/ https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blo...e-reveals-his-dreams-of-a-new-russian-empire/ https://time.com/6150046/ukraine-statehood-russia-history-putin/ For the love of God, read some wider sources.
These are freeze frames. I have seen all the videos of these and none are salutes. This is called manipulation. If you watch the videos of the MAGA fascists, they are saluting. That is such a key fact: all these videos are available and not one shows a nazi SALUTE except the maga ones.
There has been a lot of speculation regarding what is behind Putin's hold on Trump. This seems to fit the bill nicely and shows that if you look on the internet you will eventually find the "facts" to fit any speculation: A former Soviet intelligence officer has claimed Donald Trump was recruited by the KGB in 1987 and given the codename “Krasnov”. The bombshell allegation was made by Alnur Mussayev, a former Kazakh intelligence chief, in a Facebook post. The 71-year-old, who previously headed Kazakhstan’s National Security Committee, said he had served in the 6th Directorate of the KGB in Moscow, which was responsible for counter-intelligence support within the economy. One of the directorate’s primary objectives, he claimed, was “recruiting businessmen from capitalist countries.” According to Mussayev, Trump, then a 40-year-old New York real estate developer, was one of those recruits. "In 1987, our directorate recruited Donald Trump under the pseudonym Krasnov,” he wrote. Mussayev’s post did not include evidence to support his claim, but in a further comment he made another shocking allegation. “Today, the personal file of resident ‘Krasnov’ has been removed from the FSB. It is being privately managed by one of Putin’s close associates,” he alleged. His allegations come amid years of speculation over Trump’s ties to Russia, dating back to his first visit to Moscow in 1987. At the time, Trump, then a rising star in the New York property market, travelled to the Soviet Union to explore the possibility of building a hotel in the capital. Soviet officials reportedly facilitated the trip, raising questions among intelligence analysts about whether it was a routine business opportunity or something more scandalous. Several years ago a report highlighted how, in 1985, the KGB had updated a secret personality questionnaire distributed among its officers, detailing how to identify and recruit Western figures. The document, according to intelligence sources, instructed agents to target “prominent figures in the West” with the aim of “drawing them into some form of collaboration with us… as an agent, or confidential or special or unofficial contact.” Mussayev’s claim appears to suggest that Trump may have been one such target. Despite years of scrutiny, Trump has vehemently denied having any improper ties to Russia or colluding with President Vladimir Putin. However, some US officials have repeatedly raised concerns about his close relationship with the Kremlin leader, particularly during his first term in office. Anthony Scaramucci, who briefly served as Trump’s White House communications director in 2017, added to the intrigue during a recent episode of The Rest Is Politics: US podcast. He suggested that Trump’s deference to Putin has puzzled many of his former senior officials. “I think there is a mysterious ‘hold’ on the president,” he said. Scaramucci did not elaborate on what that ‘hold’ might be but suggested that several former Trump administration officials, including H.R. McMaster, James Mattis, and John Kelly— had also struggled to understand Trump’s affinity for Putin. “I don’t know why it’s like this,” he said. “McMaster couldn’t figure it out, Mattis couldn’t figure it out, Kelly couldn’t figure it out.”
