Donald Trump knew what he was talking about.
It’s hard to type those words. Truly.
But after Friday’s much-talked-about Oval Office shouting match with Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy and the responses to it, the simple truth is Donald Trump was right … back when he said he could shoot someone in the middle of 5th Avenue and not lose supporters.
If anything, Trump was selling it short. Not only would they still support him, 10 minutes after they witnessed it, they’d be out telling anyone who would listen that the guy had it coming for not thanking Trump for choosing him to shoot. And Tommy Tuberville would then tweet that we should be thanking God for Trump, because without him we’d never know the American dream of being able to shoot people in streets.
It really is the stupidest of times. And the appropriate bunch of imbeciles are in charge.
From Fox host-to-defense secretary Pete Hegseth, who claims he doesn’t know who the aggressor in Ukraine is unless you count all the times he said on TV that it was Russia, to Little Marco Rubio, who sank so far into the couch cushions out of embarrassment that he found a butterscotch from the Ford administration, to racist Care Bear JD Vance, who really, really just wanted Zelensky to say thank you to Trump in the same meaningful way JD looks deeply into Trump’s eyes says thank you, it’s a who’s-who of guys who are going to get us killed.
But not before they embarrass the hell out of us on an international stage.
See, this is what we get when you base your vote on transgender-bathroom, anti-woke, THEY’RE-EATING-THE-DOGS, eggs-will-be-cheaper-on-day-1sort of BS. A room filled with sycophants and can’t-believe-they’re-really-letting-me-do-this-job boobs who mostly couldn’t identify both Russia and Ukraine on a map and were largely surprised to learn that the conflict is actually older than three years.
You also get a conservative voting base that is shocked – SHOCKED, I say – to learn that the president of Ukraine, whose country is in year three of fighting off an unprovoked Russian invasion, was none too pleased to hear so many high ranking U.S. officials so cavalierly say they didn’t know who the aggressor in the conflict is and repeatedly insist that Ukraine has to make more concessions. All the while, they never, ever utter a bad word about the literal Russian gangster who’s actually at fault.
Well, actually, let me take that back, because Trump did utter some words about Vladimir Putin. He talked about their great relationship and how they’d been through so much together – back when Trump was colluding with Russian officials to rig a U.S. election and got caught but it didn’t rise to the level of criminal collusion because Trump and his team didn’t instigate the collusion but only accepted it and benefitted from it so he couldn’t be prosecuted and then we all just let him say from that point forward that the collusion wasn’t real and was a hoax and HILLARY CLINTON!!! (And yes, I know that is an awful, awful run-on sentence, but rules don’t matter anymore.)
Honestly, that Trump and his close-knit gang of goobers are doing things like this isn’t surprising, or even all that troubling, to me. Judging by the response of sane world leaders, it’s apparent that they all expect this level of lunacy from the felon you people elected and they’re taking appropriate action to counteract it. But what does concern me, again, is the fact that the sane Republicans in this country are refusing to take a stand, and allowing themselves to be made to look like absolute spineless, gutless, ball-less weasels.
Now, I’m not talking about the true believers here, like Tuberville, who’s just paying attention to this whole thing for the stock tips. I’m talking about the people who you can typically rely on to be logical and consistent. Like the ones from Alabama who, three years ago, passed a resolution condemning Russia for its invasion of Ukraine and pledging support for Ukraine.
(By the way, someone at some point should mention that we actually have a duty to protect Ukraine. We, along with the UK and Russia, made that agreement with Ukraine several years ago following a negotiation with the country’s leaders to give up their nuclear arsenal. If you doubt this, feel free to watch this video of some guy who’s now the Secretary of State talking about it.)
Every member of the Alabama House signed on as a co-sponsor of that 2022 resolution. Around the same time, Gov. Kay Ivey pulled all Russian liquor from the shelves of Alabama’s ABC stores. A whole bunch of people were flying Ukrainian flags and sending donations to Ukraine. There were guys from Alabama who went over to Ukraine to fight with them.
And now … crickets.
For all the nazi rhetoric and over-the-top hyperbole about dying democracies and authoritarian rule, there is actually one sure-fired way to kill a country: when good people refuse to take a stand against wrongs. Even worse: when they join in the propaganda push to convince everyone that the wrongs are rights.
You can try to sugarcoat it and explain it away, but that’s exactly what’s happening now. And it’s happening on an international scale. With our allies turning against us and our leadership openly courting a relationship with a dictator on the highest international stages.
In the meantime, y’all are still talking about that one time a transgender female wanted to be on the women’s swim team and saying nothing at all about us turning on our allies, supporting a dictator and bullying a helpless president from a war-torn country we all pretended to support three years ago.
And all the while, Trump is holding the smoking gun, laughing.
