Florida gets destroyed, and within a few years the Federation is founded and humanity enters a utopian era. Sounds about right.

A work requirement would be particularly perverse. It just further normalizes employers paying shit wages and providing little or no benefits, with programs like medicaid and snap making up the difference. It’s an indirect subsidy that only makes it easier to keep wages low.

Maybe we should do the opposite and tax businesses that pay low enough wages for their employees to qualify for assistance. Although, we’d probably get more results by instituting an income inequality tax that increases based on the difference in total compensation between the highest and lowest paid employees. Make it so that the only way executives can increase their own pay is by paying their employees well too.

I’m sure Russia will be getting all of our Intel instead.

In response, Trump rattled off a list of everything that “would have never happened” if he’d won the presidential election four years ago.

Trump’s nonanswer, which veered further and further off-topic, included the October 7 massacre, “Israel,” inflation, the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan, and China possessing the Bagram Air Base (the Taliban has denied that China controls the former U.S. base). Finally, he circled back to Ukraine—but only to complain, not to actually answer the question.

Obviously he was never going to withdraw troops from Afghanistan. Why would he? He’s only the one who negotiated the withdrawal.

“To the Great Farmers of the United States: Get ready to start making a lot of agricultural product to be sold INSIDE of the United States. Tariffs will go on external product on April 2nd,” Trump wrote.

“Have fun!” he added.

Doesn’t sound like an admission to me. Sounds like he’s just shifting the burden of responsibility to farmers and acted like this was doing them a favor.

Push polling works. That separate poll asked leading questions and misrepresent both sides. The survey question says Zelenskyy’s position is that there can be no compromise, negotiation or diplomacy. They make no mention of security guarantees, or of Russia’s past history of violating agreements. Trump and Vance want peace, and apparently Zelenskyy just wants the war to go on until he’s conquered his way to the pacific.

They also give false dichotomies between negotiating for an immediate ceasefire and fighting until victory. And another question asked if Ukraine should refuse to compromise or if both sides would need to make concessions, and they presented the both sides making concessions result as proof that Americans though Ukraine should give up territory.

It’s all bullshit. I’m sure the portion of the population that bought Trump and Vance’s feigned outrage is disturbingly high, but these assclowns are trying very hard to inflate those numbers.

That’s right Donny, everyone who makes you mad is weak. Everyone who provokes you into screaming ranting like a maniac on social media is a loser. They’re all pathetic and your compulsive need to lash out at critics is proof that you are tough and smart and better than all of them.

You’re right, the Ukrainians should just give up on all these uppity notions of national sovereignty and self determination. They are in Russia’s sphere of influence, their place is to do what Russia says. It’s their fault if they don’t listen and Putin has to give them a black eye, that’s just him correcting them and showing he cares.

They should welcome their Russian liberators, so they can finally see how wonderful life under Russian rule is. Just ask the people of Bucha and Mariupol, they’ll be happy to tell you (if you can find a Ouija board in Cyrillic).

Do think they know that you need two line breaks to make a paragraph? Or is it just hard to find the enter key on a Cyrillic keyboard?

Can someone explain how you are supposed to get Russia to leave? Sanctions didn’t work, lethal aid didn’t work, F-16s didn’t work, and striking Russia itself isn’t either.

These things haven’t won the war, but they most definitely are working. Russia’s economy is crippled, their military is running out of old equipment to cannibalize, and they lack the capability to produce the kinds of advanced military equipment they need. They’ve been throwing bodies into the meat grinder trying to overwhelm Ukraine, but despite the high cost they are making very little progress. This is not a great long term strategy, but it’s the one Russia has been stuck with.

You can argue for the war to continue I suppose, but Ukraine isn’t winning and I’m not seeing anything here that would change that fact.

But what’s the alternative? Right now Ukraine can only fight or surrender. While they fight, they can try to negotiate a peace deal, but so far the only deals Putin and Trump seem willing to consider are nearly indistinguishable from surrender. Give Russia everything they want, give up on everything you want, stop the fighting for now but put nothing in place to ensure that Russia won’t just rearm and invade again later.

Trump supports Putin and sees him as something resembling an equal. He doesn’t have that same respect for Zelenskyy. He sees Ukraine as the little guy, and being a bully, he tries to push them around to get what he wants from them. And anything Zelenskyy does to resist that bullying becomes an attack on Trump’s ego, which is a bigger deal to him than any war or geopolitical issue.

I mean, for fuck sake, Trump was yelling at Zelenskyy for supposedly risking millions of lives and world war 3 by not shutting up about security guarantees and just taking whatever deal they give him. But even with those stakes, he’s ready to end the entire process and cancel the deal over being “disrespected” and not getting thanked enough. Even if we take Trump’s statements at face value and assume he is being honest and operating in good faith, he’s still giant piece of shit that cares less about the lives of millions and the fate of the world than his own ego.

There may be a way to steer Trump into pushing back against Putin and supporting Ukraine a little bit. Maybe if someone could get actually get through to him and make him understand how everyone is laughing at him for being Putin’s bitch. Unfortunately, that would have to get past a nearly impenetrable wall of idiocy and self-delusion that keeps him safe from reality.

Also funny how they (politicians) don’t consider holding political office to be honest work.

Compare the way he talks about Putin with the way he talks about Zelenskyy.

With Putin, we have to see what he wants, we have to try to work with him and understand his position, we can’t do anything that might make him uncomfortable so he doesn’t decide he doesn’t want to talk to us, and his broken agreements are in the past while we need to be moving forward.

On the other hand, he repeatedly states that they’ve “explained this” to Ukraine, that we can’t discuss what they want or what their concerns are, we need to focus on getting peace first, and Zelenskyy is at fault because was disrespectful which apparently we can’t ignore for the sake of peace the way we can ignore a history of Putin violating peace deals.

If they actually meant what they are saying and this was all about diplomacy and achieving peace, they wouldn’t be picking a fight with Ukraine, they wouldn’t be publicly undermining them and trying to coerce them, and they wouldn’t be refusing to acknowledge any of their concerns. These motherfuckers think that it’s a good look for them to be throwing a tantrum about the way Zelenskyy dresses and getting pissy about him not being thankful enough for the way they are so generously pursuing a peace that carves up Ukraine and comes without security of any kind. That’s the way they want to spin this. Because apparently they think acting like thrid grade bullies who try to pick on the smaller kids is admirable, that people will see it and think they look smart and tough.

The only thing I even find remotely believable in this interview is Rubio’s mantra of “I don’t understand.” Just in general I think it’s pretty clear that there’s a hell of a lot he doesn’t understand. Things like human decency, geopolitics, basic negotiation tactics, and parables about riding tigers and giving rides to scorpions. But I think he probably does understand that his position is pure bullshit and that his only job here is to try and tow the line while defending the indefensible. That’s why he got so panicked when a tweet from a fellow republican came up, because his strategy was to avoid details and try to frame the backlash as partisan politics, so he can’t really respond to Republican criticism.

“If you’re running in fear of your own voters, there is nothing America can do for you. Nor, for that matter, is there anything you can do for the American people…"

• Some fascist couch fucker

This shouldn’t be a surprise, but it’s still outrageous and probably a lot more damaging than simply stopping future aid. Russia’s economy is crippled and they are struggling to supply their military to keep up the war effort. Dropping the sanctions would not only give them a huge economic boost, it would also potentially allow them to buy things they can’t manufacture on their own.

A plurality of voters chose to elect a puppet who has effectively turned the US into a Russian vassal state. But at least eggs are cheap and plentiful and we have peace in the middle east, right?

Honestly, it’s for the best that they made such a spectacle of this. They could have been far more subtle and insidious with their betrayal of Ukraine and Europe. They could have drawn things out and let other leaders continue to court US support. They could have feigned being interested in compromise in order to divide allies between those who see through the bullshit and those who don’t.

Instead, they alienated everyone at once and seem to be galvanizing our allies to unite without us. They were always going to stab Ukraine in the back and side with Russia, but at least they chose to do it in a stupid and ineffectual way.

A destabilized country living under permanent Russian influence is not a recipe for peace and security.

“If I’d been president they wouldn’t have dared to attack us!”

Honestly I suspect he wants others to get upset and be “disrespectful” just so he can use it as further proof that those who disagree with him are all horrible people, and that he is therefore better than them.

I particularly love the part where he says Obama sent them sheets and Trump sent them Javelins* then pauses to look at the camera and tell the media that that’s their headline. He may be losing his marbles, but that attention whore instinct goes straight to the core

* *Not sure if that’s the military aid he tried to block in order to coerce them into investigating the son of a political rival, or if he’s just taking credit for the aid sent under Biden that he actively opposed. Either way, it’s fucking rich for him to take credit for military aid when he is personally responsible for delaying and reducing the aid Ukraine got.