Putin's nukes, blackmail or bluff? Be thankful Trump's not president.

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I made these just for the Wonderful Wednesday news:

Trump's renamed social media platform

click images to enlarge

With at least six legal cases swirling around him, this image seems appropriate:

Main Story Below

To be effective the person being blackmailed has to believe that the blackmailer not only has the goods, but that they are willing to use them. A buff to be effective has to make the person being bluffed so nervous that they are willing to give in because they don't want to risk that the threat isn't a bluff. The fact that Putin, referring to using nukes, said "this is not a bluff" suggests the opposite. 

As you all know Putin has called up 300,000 reservists to supposedly use in his attempt to destroy Ukraine and made the very thinly veiled threat to use nuclear weapons. Here's an image of the from page of The Washington Post with the stories below.

Putin calls up reservists amid losses and backs annexation plans

• 8:28 a.m.
  Latvia won’t open its borders to Russians fleeing conscription, official says
• 8:21 a.m.
  Far-right Germany party abandons trip to Russia-controlled Ukraine

MORE COVERAGE

• Analysis: Russia pushes the panic button and raises risk of nuclear war

I feel relief that it is significant that Putin no longer can count on having lapdog Trump in the White House. I wonder who the audience is for this thundering saber rattling. It isn't President Biden and I very much doubt it is President Zelensky. I have the impression that it primarily for home consumption. 

I don't think he will have President Zelensky and Ukrainian citizens trembling in fear. 

Not only do I strongly doubt Putin would authorize a nuclear attack no matter how limited. It would be figurative and possibly literal suicide for him if this led to an escalation to a nuclear confrontation, or an equally or more destructive retaliation without nuclear weapons on targets in Russia with the West. My hunch is that the West would hold back a nuclear response unless Russia escalated since this could lead incrementally to nuclear Armageddon.

I also have serious doubts whether many of these 300,000 reservists will ever end up on Ukrainian soil.  This assumes Russia actually has well-trained reservists to send to the front, or even that he could avoid a revolt within the ranks with soldiers refusing to put their own lives at risk in a battle they are starting to discover they are losing.

I think Putin has taken his strategy from the Trump playbook and totally brainwashed himself into believing that the MAGA movement with the orange delusional messiah as its leader has been all cowboy and no hat because Trump is a weakling who, unlike him, wouldn't have the cojones to even ride a horse let alone do whatever it is he actually did when he was in the KGB.

I wonder who Putin's real enemies not in prison within Russia are. There have been rumblings in the news suggesting that he is losing support among high Russian officials and members of the ruling class. What remains opaque is the extent of dissension among top military leaders, and there is an impenetrable veil over what plots may be in the process of being hatched in the Federal Security Service (the FSB which replaced the KGB). 

There could be a coup in the offing. If it was initiated by the military I think Putin might be able to retire to one of his opulent dachas (like this one) but if the FSB decided he could become another Trump exerting power in exile they might decide that terminating his presidency with extreme prejudice was the safer solution.

Putin's self-styled narcissistic imaging was mocked in the British tabloid The Sun:

There is no doubt that Putin played Trump like a fiddle recognizing early on how susceptible to flattery he was:

I wrote the following story and put it on Daily Kos on March 11, 2022 and titled it 

Putin's President: The ultimate very used, pre and still ownedex-president sale

Remember the days when used car lots were simply called used car or second-hand car lots because the cars they sold were used? Then it caught on that a better marketing ploy was to de-emphasize the fact that the cars were “used”  or second-hand and call them pre-owned as if the people who drove them before didn’t actually use them. When I thought of the idea of a title for my diary today I wanted to find a free image to use of a used car lot sign for my illustration and found the perfect one considering that it had a rocket on it. This image was on the Wikipedia page for “used car” and is from a Library of Congress collection. It is a sign for a used car dealership in Utah in 1981.  I added the caricatures of Putin and Trump.

Assuming Trump runs for president again, what are low-information Americans who are not totally brainwashed members of the Trump cult voters going to believe?

Come the run-up to the 2024 election will they believe Trump and those supporting him when they accuse candidate Joe Biden of being owned by the Progressive Wing of the Democratic Party? After all they want you to believe they are dastardly socialists or communists in the mold of Che Guevara, that they are out to confiscate your guns, corrupt our youth with perverted ideas about gender, and teach children that slavery was bad. On the other hand, will they believe the Democrats who will hopefully convey a persuasive argument that Trump was a candidate used and very much owned by Vladimir Putin? 

Trump himself is mired in his own delusional malignant narcissism where he has continued to show incredibly poor judgment by praising Putin and refusing to condemn him in no uncertain terms. See: Trump praises Putin for his move into Ukraine, calling it 'genius (YaHoo News)' and Trump defends praise of Putin even as he calls Ukrainian President 'brave' (CNN Feb. 27).

Now with Putin showing himself to be a modern day Hitler it is not too early for the Democrats and anti-Trump Republicans and former Republicans, including of course those in The Lincoln Project, to start a campaign to remind the public of stories like this which include numerous photoshopped images:

www.dailymail.co.uk/...

… also in the Daily Mail:

How the world's press has mocked Trump for his fawning Putin summit and branded him 'treasonous', 'weak' and an 'autocrat'

• Media outlets are mocking Donald Trump over his summit with Russia's Vladimir Putin in Helsinki on Monday
• Headlines went as far as calling the US President 'treasonous', 'weak' and labeled him an 'autocrat' 
• Backlash follows Trump's extraordinary embrace of Putin - a longtime US enemy
• White House has struggled to explain why Trump aligned so closely with Putin 
• Lawmakers in both major parties appeared shocked with Trump's suggestion that he believes Putin's denial of interfering in the 2016 elections 

… and from The Guardian:

… and this from the Daily Mirror:

And then there are all the inimitable DonkeyHotey (pronounced Don Quixote) and his caricatures of Trump and Putin which can be used in stories. This one of Putin carrying Trump is the most well known. Below is a caricature used in Paying Russia Back for Election Interference Is an Exercise in Futility story which I hadn’t seen before.

My related diary with the DonkeyHotey Putin carrying Trump caricature: