NY Times headline reminds me of what we hear on so many cop shows. It also reminds me of how often TV cops don't say these words for the sake of drama.

 

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I was struck by the title of this article in The New York Times:

The article begins:

This time, when President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine arrives in the Oval Office, he will come with backup.

An array of European prime ministers and presidents are flying in for the meeting on Monday to make sure that a viable, defensible Ukraine survives whatever carving up of its territory is about to happen at the negotiating table.

But they are also there to make certain that the trans-Atlantic alliance emerges intact. President Trump’s instant reversal on the critical issue of obtaining a cease-fire before negotiating over land or security guarantees has left many of them shaken, and wondering whether Mr. Trump had once again been swayed by President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.

By most accounts, the European officials want to ensure that Mr. Trump has not pivoted too close to the Russian side, and does not try to strong-arm Mr. Zelensky into a deal that will ultimately sow the seeds of Ukraine’s dissolution. And they want to safeguard against the risk of the United States, the linchpin of European security since NATO’s creation in 1949, undermining that interest.

This reminded me of the TV cop show trope when a cop, sometimes alone and sometimes with a partner, is about to enter the house of a suspect they believe is dangerous.

When we watch the show we may say “call for backup you idiot or idiots. Sometimes one partner says it to another. 

For dramatic effect the cop, or pair of cops, never wait for backup. They always enter the house by themselves.

Officer Zelenskyy went into the criminals lair by himself the first time. We know what happened to him then.

Now he is being more than prudent. He is being damn smart. 

In fact, since he knows the nature of the threat and that the crime boss he’s about to confront has been laying in wait for him and has consulted with his international criminal counterpart, he is bringing his version of a SWAT team.

I say, good for him.

Addendum:

I was pleased that other media didn’t use the word “backup.” For example, the AP:

Excerpt:

KYIV (AP) — European and NATO leaders announced Sunday that they’ll be joining President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Washington for crucial talks with President Donald Trump, rallying around the Ukrainian leader after his exclusion from Trump’s summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The remarkable move — with one European leader after another announcing that they’ll be at Zelenskyy’s side when he travels to the White House on Monday — was an apparent effort to ensure that the meetinggoes better than the last one in February, when Trump berated the Ukrainian president in a heated Oval Office encounter.

This is how The Washington Post put it:

How’s that for a wishy-washy title?

The BBC focused on the day itself rather than the fact that Zelenskyy is being accompanied by other world leaders:

The worst title I saw was this from the UK edition of The Guardian.

It seems obvious to me that whoever wrote this insulting unserious title is patting themselves on the back thinking how fucken clever they are. In fact, it suggests that Zelenskyy is weak and not smart.

Afterthought:

If there’s any doubt that Trump has become an enemy, all Zelenskyy and the European leaders have to do is read this Trump Truth Social post:

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Cataclysmic betrayal of Ukraine in the offing. By Hal M. Brown

 

First, some history thanks to Sabrina Haake’s Substack today: 

What the US owes Ukraine and why

Trump is about to get played again by a notorious war criminal, on American soil, without understanding why the US helps Ukraine at all

Now to Trump biographer Michael Wolff’s opinion about what Trump is attempting to do in his meeting with Putin. Wolfe see it as an attempt to distract from the Epstein story. It is described in the RawStory article 'I need a big thing!' Trump said to be considering major betrayal as Epstein distraction.

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He saw the first part of what I call his “don’t look here, look here instead” plan as the takeover of Washington , DC. Part two is an even more hideous part. This is the betrayal of Ukraine. 

Here’s an excerpt from the RawStory article:

“That is what he got to,” Wolff said. “‘I’m going to have to do Ukraine.’”

Wolff claims the president will pull the U.S. out of any involvement in the Russia-Ukraine conflict, which Trump believes will appease the isolationist MAGA base, after he meets with Russian President Vladimir Putin this week in Alaska.

“He’s going to sacrifice Ukraine for Epstein,” Wolff said. “Essentially, this is, in his mind, a trade. It is the MAGA people who have pressed this Epstein issue constantly. I mean, they’re the threat.”

White House staffers were caught off guard by Trump resuming his direct involvement in reaching a settlement in the conflict, and they aren't sure what he will do, but Wolff said “nobody in the White House can see this turning out so well for Ukraine."

Could it be that there is something so potentially damaging in the Epstein saga that he fears it could actually become a Nixonian level gate? Wolfe apparently thinks it might. Consider:

But the author ultimately thinks this distraction will fail to silence questions about Epstein, who described himself in an interview with Wolff as Trump's "closest friend."

“The Epstein drumbeat is real,” Wolff said. “It is unceasing and it is threatening, most of all, to Donald Trump.”

How bad could a highly credible revelation be about Trump’s involvement in a sex with minors ring be to unnerve him? This is the serial sex abusuer who survived the Pee Tapes and the E. Jean Carroll case. 

If this goes beyond what Trump knew about to what Trump actually did would this merely be dismissed as “fake news” by MAGA? After all, this is a group which accepted Pizzagate as real.

If they accepted this as real there’s no reason that they wouldn’t believe that even with photographic evidence they’d believe Trump either didn’t do it, or if he did, there was nothing wrong with it. In addition, what with the ability to use AI to make deep fake images, they could just say that this is what these were.

In fact, if Putin does have actual pee tapes which he’s been using as blackmail, there’s a ready made way to debunk them.

In MAGA world, nothing is real unless Trump says it’s real. Conversely, if Trump says something is fake, it has to be fake.

Meanwhile let’s see how much blood Trump will have on his hands if, as expected, he sells out Ukraine.

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Caught on Kremlin camera: Putin reads his daily intelligence briefing. By Hal M. Brown

 

I don’t think I need to explain more why Vlad was cracking up for the umpteenth time since Trump was reelected beyond posting this CNN article from yesterday: More than 100 National Security Council staffers put on administrative leave.

Whether this in particular was a Putin plan or not is impossible to determine. If it was, pour another shot of his favorite vodka for him the celebration when Putin and his pals put this Google News search on a TV screen:

I don’t know if Putin watches MSNBC. If he does, this is what he’d have seen on The Weekend today:

While we can’t prove that it is true that Trump and Putin are conspiring together for mutual benefit, it isn’t a lunatic conspriacy theory to suggest that this is at least a somewhat plausible explanation for much of what Trump has done to undermine democracy here. It also would be one explanation as to why the war in Ukraine rages on.

Do you have a few extra rubles? You might consider betting on how long it will take for Trump to do something that really makes Putin laugh. Apparently the Russians are a betting people. Consider how many betting websites they have.

You can place your bet and play this. 

Addendum: These are some of the comments to the Rawstory article about this. One of them posted a link to the Russian national anthem as I did:

There are other comments suggesting Trump is in cahoots with Putin.

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“If it is not possible to end the war in Ukraine, we need to move on,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio. "The president is getting bored," David Ignatius on the war in Ukraine.

 

Our top diplomat, Marco Rubio, says U.S. will decided in days if the end to the war in Ukkrain is “doable.” On MSNBC David Ignatius said he thinks “the president is getting bored” with the war.

“If it is not possible to end the war in Ukraine, we need to move on,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said as he departed meetings in Paris. The following is from The New York Time’s article on this:

“It is not our war. We didn’t start it,” Mr. Rubio said. “The United States has been helping Ukraine for the past three years and we want it to end, but it’s not our war.”

He added: “If it’s not possible — if we’re so far apart that this is not going to happen — then I think the president’s probably at a point where he’s going to say, well, we’re done. We’ll do what we can on the margins." He described Mr. Trump as feeling “very strongly” about this.

This is the subtitle of The Washington Post article on the same subject: “Rubio’s remarks appear to reflect the president’s frustration with the difficulty of achieving peace in Ukraine after Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion.”

The president is frustrated. Poor baby! We dare not have a presdient who is frustrated.

I wish someone would remind Rubio, who I assume knows a bit of history, that we didn’t start World War I or World War II either. Rubio says he wants to see if winning the war is “doable.” Doable!?!? 

While two other presidents must have had dark days of uncertainty during wars we were fighting to save the democratic world, the country never heard Woodrow Wilson or FDR going public saying that they wondered whether winning either war was “doable” and say they would stop helping our allies because it wasn’t.

On MSNBC David Ignatius1 interpreted this as “the president is getting bored.”

The Washinton Post doesn’t have proof that Trump is frustrated. David Ignatius doen’t know for a fact that the president is getting bored, but I think both are making educated guesses based on an accurate assessment of Trump’s personality.

The war in Ukraine, while obviously not a world war, is the closest war to a world war we’ve been engaged in since World War II. It is a proxy war between the forces of democracy and the forces of totalitarianism. It is a war against the most powerful evil country in the world which invaded its neighbor. 

Russia invaded Ukraine to overthrow its pro-Western government and reassert control over Ukraine, which President Putin views as part of Russia's sphere of influence. The invasion aimed to "demilitarize and denazify" Ukraine, reflecting a distorted view of Ukrainian identity and history. (Reference) Putin’s goal was more modest than Hitler’s, but that shouldn;t make a difference. 

Even so, the president of the United States is getting bored with it the war and doesn’t want to be bothered thinking about it. 

Add to this, to the extent he cares about being called “Putin’s puppet” and having people suggest another strongman is pulling his strings, if the United States pulled out of the war he wouldn’t have to deal with this.

At least he wouldn't unless Russia defeated Ukraine and instituted a reign of terror and revenge there which Trump would be blamed for. Then again, Trump probably wouldn’t care because he’d be consulting with Putin at the White House about how to dump our traditional allies and become a partner with Russia.

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1

David Reynolds Ignatius (born May 26, 1950) is an American journalist and novelist. He is an associate editor and columnist for The Washington Post. He has written eleven novels, including Body of Lies, which director Ridley Scott adapted into a film. He is a former adjunct lecturer at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and was a Senior Fellow to the Future of Diplomacy Program from 2017 to 2022