WATCH: Trump argues with Zelenskyy in Oval Office

[zazen]

Trump’s brand of chaos is different from the establishments brand of war.  He's more anti-losing than anti-war. The Western establishment can't admit defeat and are delusional, so they let wars drag on. Trump wants an end, but only if he can take credit for it. 

Trump saying ''you have no cards left'' is really a admission of the West not having many cards left. He just can't say that part out loud because of the mythos of exceptionalism his base gets a hard on for - including himself. This is why they want to deal with Russia - because they can gain access to cheaper raw materials and energy needed to out-innovate and compete against China, to maintain their primacy. Energy + raw materials + automation = re-industrialization.  Europe lacks these ingredients, US has more of them but at a higher noncompetitive cost compared to Russia/China. Which is what they want to remedy via Russia - Russia is a like a treasure chest the US locked Itself out of but now needs. This is why discussions of projects being worked on, and the lifting of sanctions.

As for Trump being uniquely bad for world peace, compared to what? Under Biden, no communication occurred with Putin, only escalation. Biden green lighted Ukraine to strike missiles within Russia. They torpedoed a potential peace deal earlier in the war via Boris Johnson, who assured Zelensky of Western support. On another front and flash point for WW3 in the Middle East - Israel was armed and protected to do as it pleased even after crossing the supposed red lines of Rafah. Sure, Trump may not give any red lines for Bibi - but his red line is a diminished ego. That can work if his self image is one of being a ''deal maker'' and ''peace maker'', even if those deals are extractive in the process. Things at least come to a end, but in a shitty way. Trumps like a narc asshole landlord that jacks up the rents for a shitty apartment complex he just bought, and blames the conditions of the the building on the previous landlord to preserve his own image.

Trump and his team think they can play 5D chess by befriending Russia to drive a wedge between them and China, in order to counter China. If that fails (most likely) they may in their arrogance ratchet things up and Ukrainize Taiwan against China. There's no way Taiwan sees this spectacle of ''friend treatment'' and thinks, “yeah, if the US wants us to war with China, we’ will.” They know they will be left to dry like a bao bun with no teriyaki sauce. 

Edited Saturday at 01:01 PM by zazen

[Scholar]

13 hours ago, Raze said:

I don’t support Trump extorting Ukraine for minerals.

But seriously, what does Zelensky even want? He has been given hundreds of billions of aid for years now and all that has happened is he’s in a war of attrition where he is losing men and land. 

Trump already said he would keep sending weapons but he needlessly started an argument with Vance instead of just smiling and nodding.

No Ukraine supporter has given a coherent realistic plan that doesn’t involve just pushing the rest of Ukraine into the meat grinder. 

Trump is extorting Ukraines position right now to extract a robber-baron mineral theft deal from him, basically blackmailing Ukraine that if he will not sign his deal, he can "fight alone", which will mean Russia just takes over Ukraine.

 

The US has contributed less than the EU, and especially for the size of their economic their contribution is one of the lowest overall proportionally speaking. The US has never supported Ukraine in a full way, and if it had, the situation on the ground might look different right now.

Right now the goal is literal survival of the Ukrainian state and it's sovereignty. The plan is to stop holding back on the aid and actually supporting them so they can position them selves better for potential future peace offer, or wait for the Russian state to collapse in it's current form, which is inevitable given the amount of pressure on the economy. They don't have infinite reserves.

[Leo Gura]

13 minutes ago, zazen said:

is really a admission of the West not having many cards left.

West has endless cards. The West can support Ukraine indefinitely.

It is like saying against Hitler, we have no cards left, before even entering the war.

Even $100B per year is only 1/8th of the US military annual budget. And that's not even counting EU.

Ukraine is a tiny expense for the US in the big picture.

Edited Saturday at 09:54 AM by Leo Gura

[Scholar]

This is what is most dangerous about the current political environment in the US:

The presidency is no longer an expression of the will of the electors, but rather, the President has become the one who has full control over the will of the electors. This is what is so dangerous.

MAGA-supporters don't have any real stance, principles, values other than following Trump. At this point it's true to an absurd, carricature level. Trump could literally do anything, and not only will his followers accept it, they will fully support it and fit what Trump is doing into the value system, that in fact they are in radical support of what he is doing.

This is a cult of personality.

 

Trump could have literally pissed into Zelenskies tea and told him during the interview, told him that he will now fully support Russia because Zelensky is a bitch, arrested Zelensky live on TV and drawn a penis on his forehead, and then send him back to Ukraine, or in fact even Russia, via boat.

He could have done all of this and suddenly all his MAGA supporters would be pro-russia.

He could say that he wants to make friendship with China and invite them to restructure their entire government, so that peace and prosperity can be achieved such as the CCP has achieved it, and he could easily get away with it and all his MAGA would support and love him for how amazing of a leader he is. The guy is basically one step away from becoming a US version of Xi.

[Amilaer---]

5 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

Lex has become so corrupted by his personal friendships with Musk, Trump, and Rogan.

Sad.

Praying for peace doesn't work when you cannot see that your closest friends are devils.

Lex deleted his tweet 🙃. Maybe he thought that through. I still have faith in his open-mindedness 🙏.

[PurpleTree]

6 hours ago, Joshe said:

 

Sounds like a Russian stooge.

I mean if he can’t see that Zelensky was bullied into this. Yet he didn’t really disrespect those oval office freaks.

[Kuba Powiertowski]

@Leo Gura You speak the truth. Thank You.

[PurpleTree]

 

[zazen]

1 hour ago, Leo Gura said:

West has endless cards. The West can support Ukraine indefinitely.

It is like saying against Hitler, we have no cards left, before even entering the war.

Even $100B per year is only 1/8th of the US military annual budget. And that's not even counting EU.

Ukraine is a tiny expense for the US in the big picture.

It’s not just a money issue though bro. We can’t buy an industrial base or print one. There’s not enough production capacity to turn that money into tangible weapons at scale, in a short enough timeframe, to win the current war - whatever winning even means.

Re-industrialization won’t happen fast enough to change the outcome of this war - it’s only about future proofing the West for the next war, with whoever and wherever it is.

Hitler was defeated by an industrial juggernaut. The US isn’t that today. It’s a financialized empire, designed not for attritional warfare but for power projection and short term shock and awe campaigns using expensive, high tech weapons against weaker nations. Even then, it still can’t neutralize the Houthis in the Red Sea.

Attrition is about quantity - mass production of expendable weapons for trench warfare. The West isn’t built for that. The military-industrial complex prioritizes high tech, high profit qualitative weapon sales, not mass production of cheap, effective war materials. To change that means the state controlling capital, rather than the other way around - in other words, not being a corporatocracy. That means flipping the political dynamic the West currently exists in.

The real issue is profit maximization vs. state directed production. Corporations will resist any shift that takes power away from the market and redirects it toward less profitable but more strategic war production.

A financialized neoliberal economy will struggle to make this pivot because it would mean sacrificing their god: capital. The West will need a political revolution before it can even have an industrial one - the kind needed to win.

The question isn’t just whether the West can rebuild its industrial base fast enough, but whether it can even structurally pivot to an existence where it’s possible in the first place. And even then, would there be the political and public will to sustain it.

Even the Wests high tech weapons are being neutralized. Russias air defenses counter NATO missiles and stealth aircraft. Their hypersonics - the West has no defence against, as Iran demonstrated in Israel. The Houthis are proving that asymmetric warfare can disrupt trillion-dollar military investments.

Russia is outproducing the entire West in artillery, shells, and tanks. Ukraines manpower is collapsing. The West has no public buy in to shift to a full scale war economy. Americans want out. They want America First, cheaper goods, and a better life, not another endless war. Europes multi-ethnic population isn’t going to mobilize for their former colonial masters. Theres no mass movement of people willing to fight and die for Ukraine.

TDLR

The West doesn’t just lack an industrial base but lacks the system to create one.

Its military industrial complex isn’t designed for attrition but for profit.

It would need a political revolution before it could have an industrial one.

Even if it could rebuild, there’s no public will to sustain it.

 

12 hours ago, zazen said:

This is the US realising the Wests position in this and doing its best to repackage the situation as a win. Trying to maintain an image of strength on the world stage as it loses its status. The US will be a superpower, but it can no longer be a supreme one reigning supreme upon the globe.

The reality is:

- Russia produces 3 million shells annually, x3 more than US/Europe combined.

- They are on par in number of tanks with NATO (including US) except that half of NATO’s tanks are in the US and the rest are scattered far away from Ukraine in other EU countries. Russia is also refurbishing and churning out 1’500 tanks annually now.

- They’ve taken 20% of Ukraine, most of the ethnically Russian speaking regions which they can now sit tight on and have much easier holding power vs going further into Ukraine where they’d continuously face insurgencies and native Ukraine resistance (rightly so).

- They’ve achieved enough territorial depth to secure the Russian heartland and core (Moscow). 

- They don’t need to do anything except wait it out in a war of attrition from here on out. The West simply doesn’t have the industrial capacity or cheap energy to play the long game. Even EU hikes in defence spending aren’t going to change the result of this war. Re-industrialisation takes years, if at all possible. Any such thinking that their should be no negotiating with Putin and we should fight fight fight, is delusion.

- In a war of attrition, you need things to attrit. The lack of things to attrit is the result of neoliberal policies that prioritized financial gains over industrial strength, hollowing out the middle class while enriching the elites. Financialization transformed economies into casinos, where betting on asset bubbles and speculation became more profitable than producing real goods, building factories, or maintaining self-sufficiency.

- The defence spending hikes will only be for future proofing the continent. And it won’t do so conventionally ie cheap labour and fossil fuels. It can’t outproduce Russia / China, it needs to out-innovate.

- Breakthroughs in green tech / nuclear to get cheap energy + breakthroughs in automation / AI robotics to replace high labor costs for industrialisation + raw material access from Latin America / Africa where China / Russia already secured supplies from or just have breakthrough in material sciences.

The issue as you can see is that the West is getting behind, if not already is behind in some critical areas. Even in ships China has a x200 greater building capacity than the US. AI, drones, hypersonics - ditto. China isn’t even competing with the US, just itself at this point.

 

 

Edited Saturday at 11:28 AM by zazen

[Jannes]

@PurpleTree Is it unusual for fox news to not kiss trumps ass? Although there werent completly neutral fox news didnt really try hard to defend Trump here. But baybe Zelensky just handled the interview well.

[Nemra]

It was funny seeing Zelensky's facial reaction when Trump said that Putin respects him.

[Leo Gura]

5 minutes ago, zazen said:

Attrition is about quantity - mass production of expendable weapons for trench warfare.

The Taliban is cackling at you.

[PurpleTree]

17 minutes ago, Jannes said:

@PurpleTree Is it unusual for fox news to not kiss trumps ass? Although there werent completly neutral fox news didnt really try hard to defend Trump here. But baybe Zelensky just handled the interview well.

He handled it well and it was smart to do it at fox news since it’s mostly republican. Also good that this journalist has apparently visited Zelensky in Ukraine before.

[integral]

If Russia conquers Ukraine, will he then choose a conqueror another country?

or is this a one time thing?

Edited Saturday at 12:00 PM by integral

[Twentyfirst]

Whether it's Biden or Trump dealing with this conflict

Americans NEVER change and NEVER learn

It's not in their DNA

How can the Americans stop wars when they LOVE them? lol

[PurpleTree]

16 minutes ago, integral said:

If Russia conquers Ukraine, will he then choose a conqueror another country?

or is this a one time thing?

It’s not a one time thing.

 

[Basman]

22 minutes ago, integral said:

If Russia conquers Ukraine, will he then choose a conqueror another country?

or is this a one time thing?

Russia will test NATO after the Ukraine war I bet. See how far he can push it.

The end goal seems to be to reconquer the old territories of the Soviet Union at least.

[PurpleTree]

3 minutes ago, Basman said:

Russia will test NATO after the Ukraine war I bet. See how far he can push it.

The end goal seems to be to reconquer the old territories of the Soviet Union at least.

I think the end goal is just to destroy or overthrow the collective wests dominance.

And then be happily ever after with China.

Although they‘ll probably also go at eachothers throats at some point.

And also within BRICS there are tensions.

Edited Saturday at 12:27 PM by PurpleTree

[gettoefl]

[_Archangel_]

God, that Lex Freedman post is so shameless.

I'm noticing that every pro Trump/Putin/anti-nato are discrediting Zelensky for not paying "respect",
while He did pay respect and showed gratitude and all He dered to say is:
- that Putin won't be easely talked out of the conflict.
- and USA won't reamain uneffected by whatever new developement comes about.
2 absolutely reasonable point to make.