The Emperor’s New Week
Suddenly, Donald Trump is getting tough with Vladimir Putin, after ten years of political grovelling at the man’s feet. Suddenly, Trump is demanding that the press and the rest of the whole wide world forget about all the fake news related to that “creep” Jeffrey Epstein, after helping to wind up his cult for years with vague insinuations about “the list” which would tear down the Deep State establishment. What to make of these drastic reversals in rhetoric?
With regard to the “Epstein files,” I think Justin Amash captured the obvious with perfect pith in a social media post a couple of days ago, in response to Trump’s own wild rant on the subject.
First, the entire content of Trump’s post. (Let me just say in advance, in reference to the whole thing: “[sic].”)
What’s going on with my “boys” and, in some cases, “gals?” They’re all going after Attorney General Pam Bondi, who is doing a FANTASTIC JOB! We’re on one Team, MAGA, and I don’t like what’s happening. We have a PERFECT administration, THE TALK OF THE WORLD, and “selfish people” are trying to hurt it, all over a guy who never dies, Jeffrey Epstein. For years, it’s Epstein, over and over again. Why are we giving publicity to Files written by Obama, Crooked Hillary, Comey, Brennan, and the Losers and Criminals of the Biden Administration, who conned the World with the Russia, Russia, Russia Hoax, 51 “Intelligence” Agents, “THE LAPTOP FROM HELL,” and more? They created the Epstein Files, just like they created the FAKE Hillary Clinton/Christopher Steele Dossier that they used on me, and now my so-called “friends” are playing right into their hands. Why didn’t these Radical Left Lunatics release the Epstein Files? If there was ANYTHING in there that could have hurt the MAGA Movement, why didn’t they use it? They haven’t given up on the John F. Kennedy or Martin Luther King, Jr. Files. No matter how much success we have had, securing the Border, deporting Criminals, fixing the Economy, Energy Dominance, a Safer World where Iran will not have Nuclear Weapons, it’s never enough for some people. We are about to achieve more in 6 months than any other Administration has achieved in over 100 years, and we have so much more to do. We are saving our Country and, MAKING AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, which will continue to be our complete PRIORITY. The Left is imploding! Kash Patel, and the FBI, must be focused on investigating Voter Fraud, Political Corruption, ActBlue, The Rigged and Stolen Election of 2020, and arresting Thugs and Criminals, instead of spending month after month looking at nothing but the same old, Radical Left inspired Documents on Jeffrey Epstein. LET PAM BONDI DO HER JOB — SHE’S GREAT! The 2020 Election was Rigged and Stolen, and they tried to do the same thing in 2024 — That’s what she is looking into as AG, and much more. One year ago our Country was DEAD, now it’s the “HOTTEST” Country anywhere in the World. Let’s keep it that way, and not waste Time and Energy on Jeffrey Epstein, somebody that nobody cares about. Thank you for your attention to this matter!
Amash’s X response:
Okay, so now I’m absolutely convinced there’s a cover-up.
Yes, exactly. With that extraordinary midnight ride on his golden throne, Trump may have established a new GREATEST EVER “World Record” in protesting too much. Has anyone, EVER, failed a lie detector test as hilariously as Trump does here? Not only is it obvious from this panicked and irrational rant that he is trying to hide Something, but the sheer breathless inanity of the screed — even by the screed standards of the Most Inane leader in HISTORY — indicates that whatever he is hiding must be BIG, probably the BIGGEST EVER!
As for Ukraine, I have a few suggestions. Just days after his own administration made a show of pausing previously-promised Patriot missile deliveries to Ukraine — a pause which Trump himself publicly defended on the grounds that the supply of these missiles was too limited to allow America to part with them so easily — he turns around and resumes the planned delivery, trying to distance himself from the previous week’s pause as though he was unaware of it. And yes, he has now promised some weapons to Zelensky, but these appear to be only defensive weapons, which are vital to be sure, but which continue the old Biden policy of foot-dragging half-support, implying that America’s goal is to prolong the pain until something like the old status quo can be reestablished, rather than to help Ukraine save itself and in the process do permanent and debilitating damage to the most serious threat to European security since World War II.
Furthermore, Trump has, for the past ten years, right up to about two weeks ago, shown himself to be, both in rhetoric and in policy, Vladimir Putin’s most constant and effective Western apologist and asset. So with regard to his sudden turn to public criticism of Putin and apparent shift toward favoring Ukraine — what a weird, though accurate, way to describe an American president’s position on a three-year-old Russian invasion of a West-friendly nation — what are we to think? There are, I suppose, two leading alternative answers.
First, it is possible that after years of being repeatedly humiliated by Putin, defending him and his motives only to have the truth thrown in his face again and again, he has finally reached a breaking point, a level of shameful diminution that even he can no longer abide. This first option has a mildly satisfying implication, in that it raises the possibility that perhaps one day even Trump’s own apologists and cultish followers, who have been almost as loyal to him through years of insult and degradation as he has been to Putin, might one day experience a revelation of their own and turn against him, as he is (on this hypothesis) doing now to Putin.
If this first alternative is correct, however, then we have every reason to fear a return to pro-Putin form at some point, for if there is one thing we all know about Donald Trump, it is that his tough stances are invariably temporary and purely for show, whereas he consistently bends to flattery as swiftly as he turns against perceived insults. In other words, Zelensky would be wise — and I am sure he is indeed wise enough to know this — to keep up the fawning gratitude, but at the same time keep up his guard against a likely about-face by the same man who told him to his face just a few months ago that Putin was a good-faith negotiator and that he, Zelensky, had no cards to play.
The second realistic explanation of Trump’s new Putin criticism is slightly darker, but in my mind no less likely, namely that he is merely playing a game, perhaps trying to force Putin’s hand a little — emboldened no doubt by the world-controlling powers he feels he has been exerting with his tariff wars against allied and friendly nations — but in the end secure in the belief that he and Putin are more or less on the same page, even working together above the heads of the rest of the world, and that there is no fundamental breach in their relationship at all. We all know, and in fact have it from the horse’s mouth, that Trump believes that public puffery and momentary shows of bravado are merely the normal tactics of the great dealmaker, to be dispensed with as soon as the deal is signed and we can all pretend to be friends again. Perhaps Trump is simply playing this sort of dealmaking game, but doing so secure in the knowledge, based on recent phone conversations with Putin that Trump has bragged about, that this show of friction is a mutually agreed upon strategy to push the negotiation process along. After all, if Trump continues to look like the bad-faith mediator he has been hitherto, clearly favoring Russian interests and seeking nothing but personal advantage (such as a minerals deal) out of a dying Ukraine, then his pretenses of standing for peace will continue to appear for all the world as just what they are — efforts to help Russia subdue a broken and debased Ukraine before Russia herself runs out of weapons and young men, i.e., efforts to save face for Putin by artificially granting him a victory where defeat was entirely possible. If he is to gain the international reputation of a peacemaker — which is clearly Trump’s intended vanity prize here, his half of the implicit deal with Putin — then he has to give the appearance of really forcing Putin’s bloody hand, rather than merely kissing it again and again.
The proof of the pudding on this second alternative is this: Will Trump ever take a single step in assisting Ukraine in a manner that is more than merely “defensive,” but rather in a manner that would result in serious damage to Russia’s military, interests, or infrastructure? In other words, whatever Trump’s rhetoric, and whatever Biden-era promises he makes a big show of merely honoring, will Trump actually take actions in aiding Ukraine’s efforts to take the fight to Putin? Will he, Trump himself, be willing to take responsibility for supporting Ukraine in a way that would truly weaken or even debilitate Putin’s war machine? It would be very easy for him to do this, practically speaking. Will he do it?
Or will he continue to engage in the kind of weak-kneed, optics-only showmanship that he has adopted this week, such as issuing a “fifty-day” tariff warning against Russia — longer than the warning he has given for his tariff threats against America’s closest allies — while sitting back and saying “Well, I’ve warned Vladimir” as Putin continues to rain hundreds of missiles on cities and towns, killing so many innocent victims and destroying so much infrastructure in attacks intended to demoralize and frighten the civilian population into submission?
My guess is that Trump will continue to play this foot-dragging “pressure” game with Putin, until Putin has inflicted as much damage as he feels he can afford to inflict with the badly depleted resources and personnel he still has left, after having been so severely weakened by even a hamstrung and ill-equipped Ukraine. When Putin decides he has done enough to put Ukraine in a more conciliatory position for a “negotiated settlement,” then he will phone Trump to tell him it’s time, and throw a few public compliments to Trump’s desire for peace, as Ukraine will again find herself trying to resist an increasingly weary world’s insistence that she will have to make “substantial concessions” in the name of “bringing an end to this unnecessary conflict.”
But it’s only a guess. Ascribing firm motives to Trump is like trying to give a definitive description of the shape of a cloud on a stormy afternoon. This lack of certainty regarding the two ugly alternatives explained above is no consolation of course. A formless cloud manipulated endlessly by winds beyond its ability to contain or resist is hardly a satisfying entity upon which to rest the prospects for peace and well-being of the global population. Indeed, this final option, alternative number three if you will, may be the most disturbing of all. Perhaps this is the one my mind always reverts to with Trump, but which I am forever trying to evade by convincing myself of some very awful, but at least rationally comprehensible and somewhat predictable, alternatives regarding his motives, as exemplified above.
