What I was trying to point out: his wealth is in real estate and one huge chunk of DJT. No blue chips, no managed funds; nothing that mainstream America and Barack Obama would choose. I contend he attacks the mainstream because of all that.
Europe is openly talking about its own cooperative nuclear umbrella. Trump is correct that he deserves 100% of credit/blame for that, taking the heat for Putin.
The right in ascendancy treats Yalta like a movement by the Roosevelt left to give Stalin concessions in a New World Order. That’s the phrase they want promoted. In particular, the UN and adjacent developments stem from a small number of great men. So, the right is happy about a new Yalta between Musk, Trump, and Putin.
Or is it Putin, Trump and Xi? That’s how I see it: Trump has hinted that the Panama Canal and Greenland are for sale. So the left way of looking at a New Yalta reflect multipolar colonial ambitions.
This is important -- as in, history books important. Two things: whomever won was going to inherit a balanced budget, and (in hindsight) be able to claim wartime priorities due to a pair of terrorist attacks. Those are highly influential for Gen-X and later generations, and not honestly impactful at all for Boomers and prior generations. Bush did not carry younger voters in either election.
In 2001, the Supreme Court ruled that Florida, counting too slowly yet not carefully-enough, could not fully count their ballots. Every other state had successfully counted, but the Court sat through Florida's legal arguments, even though the state was a poster child for inadequate election planning. So, the popular vote would not matter. Statistically, if you don't count Florida, Gore's districts accounted for 60% of American GDP, and Bush's only 40%. This statistic becomes only more lopsided: in 2024, Biden would lose and election even though Trump represents only 30% of American productivity.
Anyway, in 2004, today's median American was still a minor. Giuliani would give the convention address for Republicans in New York; he re-used then-Senate candidate Barack Obama's catchphrases. It was the highpoint of his career. He would only be noteworthy among the unusually-named group "white ethnics" of the Republican Party from then on.
Question about Sweden: the US influenced your decision to abandon nuclear proliferation about two generations ago. A major factor in wider strategic weapons today is whether Elon Musk would fund you or your adversaries’ satellite, targeting, etc. Is that what a “new Yalta” looks like?
Yeah but that doesn’t rule him out in the struggle for succession. Because the VP can’t be primaried in 2026, he’s at the disadvantage that he won’t know if Musk will fund him; he’ll have to fundraise as the conventional pick.
Long list of reasons he is a bad target. A negotiating genius would have known that, which is why even Trump supporters were caught by surprise.
- Only between inauguration and this meeting did Trump even have positive approval. I think it’s uncontentious that Zelenskyy will forever poll higher.
- Around Trump there’s a force field to encourage him that he’s right. The awkward moment Tuesday was when Trump admitted his own numbers on aid given to Ukraine are spongy and faith-based, compared to Macron’s which were turgid, useful, virile, actually bankable.
- Zelenskyy arrived to talk about his thing (being a fighter) and the world saw an ambush by an investment banker and a one-time TV show character. Proving Trump’s at a disadvantage when the other guy is a fighter.
This last one seems the most damaging. Republican politicians had to come out and proclaim Trump is still tough and the biggest problem is that Zelenskyy doesn’t performatively respect that.
It’s clever to pick the word “prosper” rather than grow, or stabilize, or build, or strengthen. It’s also clever to slip Vance into it, which assumes either he wins the ongoing succession, or loses it and moots your bet.
I know this is pedantic, but the system selected Bush in his first election. Vietnam veteran and Southern Senator Al Gore won the popular vote. Only in his second election, as a wartime President, did Bush win the popular vote.
And to get even more practical, “stability” is a comfort word rather than proof of a local optimum. We are not surprised when a dictatorship subdues an uprising because we are not surprised there was an uprising.
A lot of Americans missed that cue. I think that old-fashioned Americans avoid applying psychoanalysis to politics because they’re afraid to fit in with cynics.
https://www.foxnews.com/person/r/tanvi-ratna
It’s weird that Congress, the body constitutionally responsible for tariffs and their results, acts like they don’t know about it.