Dem
47
GOP
53
Was Donald Trump's offer to Volodymyr Zelenskyy—military aid in exchange for an overly generous amount of rare earth metals—serious? We don't know, but we'd kind of like to see Zelenskyy call Trump's bluff. Option one would be to say that Ukraine would be happy to make such a trade, and then to negotiate in the court of public opinion, putting Trump's unreasonableness and greed on full display. Option two would be to reach a deal, allow the Trump administration to spend a few years building the necessary infrastructure to extract and purify the rare earths, and then to say, "Sorry, U.S., we changed our mind. Get out." Trump has been backsliding on his agreements for decades, and is backsliding on several agreements with Ukraine right now, so this would amount to giving him a taste of his own medicine.
Regardless of how willing Trump was to make a deal with Ukraine (and, truth be told, we don't think that was ever a real consideration), he's moved on now, and is all-in on Russia/Vlad Putin. Here is a tweet from last week that lays things out, and that was apparently important enough that Trump fired up his old eX-Twitter account to rebroadcast it:
Think of it, a modestly successful comedian, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, talked the United States of America into spending $350 Billion Dollars, to go into a War that couldn't be won, that never had to start, but a War that he, without the U.S. and "TRUMP," will never be able to settle. The United States has spent $200 Billion Dollars more than Europe, and Europe's money is guaranteed, while the United States will get nothing back. Why didn't Sleepy Joe Biden demand Equalization, in that this War is far more important to Europe than it is to us—We have a big, beautiful Ocean as separation. On top of this, Zelenskyy admits that half of the money we sent him is "MISSING." He refuses to have Elections, is very low in Ukrainian Polls, and the only thing he was good at was playing Biden "like a fiddle." A Dictator without Elections, Zelenskyy better move fast or he is not going to have a Country left. In the meantime, we are successfully negotiating an end to the War with Russia, something all admit only "TRUMP," and the Trump Administration, can do. Biden never tried, Europe has failed to bring Peace, and Zelenskyy probably wants to keep the "gravy train" going. I love Ukraine, but Zelenskyy has done a terrible job, his Country is shattered, and MILLIONS have unnecessarily died—And so it continues...
The falsehoods pile up so fast, it's astonishing. Among them: (1) the U.S. has sent a bit less than $66 billion to Ukraine since the war against Russia started, not $300 billion; (2) Ukraine, of course, did not start the war; (3) Zelenskyy has not said that the money from the U.S. is "missing"; (4) Zelenskyy is not a dictator; while it's true that elections have been suspended, that's actually required by the Ukrainian constitution when the nation is under martial law; (5) Zelenskyy is not polling poorly; although Trump claimed in a different tweet that the Ukrainian's approval is at 4%, it's actually at 57%; (6) while there is wide disagreement about casualty figures, the highest estimate is 1 million casualties (killed, wounded, captured) and not MILLIONS dead; and (7) Zelenskyy was actually a very successful comedian. Trump may have forgotten that he was a television personality before becoming president as well.
Meanwhile, readers have undoubtedly heard of a vote-a-rama in the Senate (or the House). Well, yesterday was a resolution-a-rama at the United Nations. There were actually three different resolutions that were considered, and the U.S. position was made clear all three times. The first was a Ukraine-backed resolution that lambasted Russia as the aggressor in the Russo-Ukrainian War, and that was put before the U.N. General Assembly, where votes are non-binding. The Assembly backed Ukraine 93-18 with 65 abstentions. Among the 18 votes against Ukraine (and thus, for the Russian position) was the United States.
The United States also had a resolution of its own, which called for a swift end to the war, and tacitly blamed Ukraine for... well, everything. When that resolution went before the General Assembly, France and the U.K. managed to amend it to declare Russia to be the aggressor. The U.S. then abstained from voting on its own resolution. Thereafter, the un-amended version of the U.S. resolution was placed before the 15-member U.N. Security Council where votes ARE binding. It passed 10-0, with Britain, France, Denmark, Greece and Slovenia all abstaining. None of this means much, in practical terms, since both the non-binding and binding resolutions are pretty much just finger-pointing and posturing. However, it could not be clearer that the United States' position, and that of most European powers, have diverged considerably.
And since it's the rare earths that seem to be at the center of maneuvering right now, both factions are playing the roles that Trump has effectively forced upon them. Yesterday, the European Union offered a proposal for extracting the resources that is ostensibly fair to all parties. At almost the same time, the Russian government announced that if, perchance, it was to end up in control of the rare earths, it would be delighted to partner with the U.S. on extracting them.
We spent some time thinking yesterday about why Trump has apparently sold his soul to Vladimir Putin, and came up with a current list of theories (admittedly, most of them pretty obvious):
We wonder if we'll ever really know the truth. Whatever is going on—and it could easily be more than one thing on the list above, or things we haven't thought of—it's not going to be as easy as Trump thinks to achieve his Putin-fondling goals. He clearly has not accounted for the domestic political response, nor what the nations of Europe will do if and when push comes to shove. (Z)