Former president Donald Trump gestures as he participates in a Fox News town hall with Laura Ingraham in Greenville, S.C., February 20, 2024. (Sam Wolfe/Reuters)
By JIM GERAGHTY
March 12, 2024 8:40 AM
On the menu today: Travel keeps today’s Morning Jolt abbreviated, but the morning’s news is big and consequential. To hear Hungary’s prime minister Viktor Orbán tell it, Donald Trump’s secret plan to end the war in Ukraine is to simply cut off all support to the Ukrainians and let Russia win. All the sacrifices that have been made in the name of Ukrainian independence and resisting Russian imperialism will have been in vain, it appears, because Trump — a candidate who’s got probably about a 50–50 chance of winning in November — believes the best response to territorial aggression is to just let it happen.
Throwing Ukraine to the Wolves
For nearly two years now, former president Donald Trump has insisted he has a secret plan that would end the war in Ukraine in 24 hours. It appears that Hungary’s prime minister Viktor Orbán has let the cat out of the bag, and revealed that Trump’s vision of “ending the war” is to just let Russia win it:
“He (Trump) has a very clear vision,” Orbán said in an interview to Hungarian broadcaster M1 broadcast on Sunday. “He says the following: first, he will not give a single penny for the Russo-Ukrainian war. That’s why the war will end, because it’s obvious that Ukraine cannot stand on its own two feet.”
Orbán’s comments came after Trump hosted the Hungarian strongman at Mar-a-Lago on Friday. The former president and a small group of close advisers met with Orbán at the Florida resort for roughly an hour Friday night, sources familiar with the matter told CNN, with one of the sources describing it as a “social meeting” with no agenda. A separate source called it “friendly. . . .”
“If the Americans don’t give money and weapons, along with the Europeans, the war will end. And if the Americans don’t give money, then the Europeans won’t be able to fund this war alone. And then the war will end,” Orbán said.
Believable, isn’t it? Orbán has no discernible reason to lie, and he’s always been one of Trump’s biggest cheerleaders. Trump’s claim to have a secret plan always sounded like nonsense, or it was at least dubious that his plan would have any good result for Ukraine.
It is hard to imagine a clearer green light to every other autocrat, hostile regime, and rogue state. The lesson would be clear: Aggression works. In Trump’s vision, NATO and the Western alliance are indeed weak, although not because of any inherent lack of resources or resolve, but because he chooses to make them weak.
I sense a sneer in the declaration that Ukraine “cannot stand on its own two feet.” As if Hungary, or any other country in Europe, could resist an invading Russian army without any help from allies.
You’ll recall yesterday’s discussion of how pro-TikTok Trump sounded distinctly uninterested at best in defending Taiwan from a Chinese invasion, and you’ll recall Trump’s insistence that he has no interest in defending NATO members who spend less than 2 percent of their GDP on defense. Oh, and while lot of Trump defenders insist he’s the best friend Israel ever had, at Israel’s direst hour, he was obsessed with rehashing past disagreements with Bibi Netanyahu.
Add it all up, and it isn’t hard to envision the world’s most hostile and aggressive regimes interpreting a Trump inauguration as a green light to invade and conquer anyplace they want.
Yesterday, Trump was at least kind enough to call in to CNBC and offer a detailed plan for how he would handle entitlements:
CNBC’S JOE KERNEN: Have you changed your, your outlook on how to handle entitlements Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Mr. President? Seems like something has to be done, or else we’re going to be stuck at 120 percent of debt to GDP forever.
PRESIDENT TRUMP: So first of all, there is a lot you can do in terms of entitlements in terms of cutting and in terms of also the theft and the bad management of entitlements, tremendous bad management of entitlements. There’s tremendous amounts of things and numbers of things you can do. So I don’t necessarily agree with the statement. I know that they’re going to end up weakening social security because the country is weak. And let’s take a look at outside of the stock market, are, we’re going through hell. People are going through hell. If they have and I believe the number is 50 percent. They say 32 and 33 percent. I believe we have a cumulative inflation of over 50 percent, that means people are, you know, they have to make more than 50 percent more over a fairly short period of time to stay up. They’ve gotten routed. The middle class in our country has been routed and the middle class largely built our country and they have been treated very, very badly with policy. When I was president, I was doing a job, we’re going to start to pay off debt. We were drill baby drill. We were producing oil, but we were going at a much higher level oil and gas. We were doing, you know, we were third when I started and when they ended, we were one by a long-shot and we were very close, we’re energy independence, we’re very close to becoming energy dominant Joe, we’re gonna be dominant so dominant, like double what Saudi Arabia and Russia were doing. And we were on that path. We were gonna be paying down debt. We were doing, we were doing a lot of things and then we got hit with Covid. We did a fantastic job with Covid. But nobody, nobody wins with Covid. I guess China found that out because they also really got hit very hard also, but nobody wins with Covid. And so we had to get to we had to do other things. We had to help. You know, if I didn’t do the expenditures that we didn’t do the kinds of things we did for the economy, we would add in 1929-type depression. And I had to stay out in front of it, and we did we did a great job on that and we did with all of the things we’re coming up with Regeneron doing so much else, getting all because you know we had empty when I came in, we had empty, I call them empty cupboards. We had empty shelves, we didn’t have equipment, we didn’t have the gowns, we didn’t have the ventilators. We didn’t have anything. This country wasn’t prepared for a thing like that. And I’m not even blaming anybody in that. Because, you know, when when it came, nobody thought the pandemic would ever happen again. It sounds like an ancient’s problem, not a problem that you’d have you know at that time, you know, in modern, very modern age. It was like an ancient thing. We you know, who, who would ever show I’m not blaming anybody, but we had empty cupboards, and I got them stocked and I got them stocked fast. And we did a great job with it. Never got credit. I got credit for the greatest economy. I got credit for foreign policy. I got credit for knocking out ISIS and not going into wars. But we beat ISIS, but I never got the credit for having done a great job with that.
That’s the Republican nominee. Great call, everybody.
NR:
A US conservative site that tells the truth about Trump and putler! Quite rare at the moment.
More nuclear bullshit from putler here :
https://www.nationalreview.com/news/putin-again-warns-russia-is-ready-for-nuclear-war-but-predicts-u-s-will-avoid-intervening-directly-in-ukraine/
Sir Scradgel please don’t confuse “conservatives” with the real culprits in this mess…specifically the MAGA morons. I’ve mentioned that I’m a proud Reagan republican who is a conservative and despise the MAGA crowd. I dare say, without any hard facts, that I believe there are many “independents” who are Reagan Republicans refusing to be included with Trump and his vitriol directed to those who don’t agree with him. I personally dislike the hyperbole of Trump being a danger to our democracy as I have faith in the US Constitution and the citizens of the US to prevent any such crap. I could be wrong but that’s my feeling. All that said I’m still concerned, I’ll shut up and leave you with a quote from the greatest president in my lifetime, President Reagan…
“Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.”
It’s sad we are even contemplating the last sentence.
As you can see in my comments, I am always careful to distinguish between conservatives and magputler shitheads, who are neither conservative or Republican.
Very few big names in the GOP now are Reaganite : Roger Wicker, Liz Cheney, Mitt Romney certainly are. Marco Rubio, Lindsay Graham and McConnell were, but have gone all trumpy-wumpy.
Conservative sites in the US mainly shill for Trumpkov, but not NR, I’m glad to say.
“ISW warns of danger of sudden breakthrough by Russian troops”
https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2024/03/14/7446382/
We are entering this absolute danger zone for Ukraine with aid blocked by legislative terrorists in Congress and the front weakened by lack of means to defend itself. Losses of territory and strategic equipment will multiply from the end of March according to analysts if substantial and massive aid is not allocated to Ukraine by the United States.
It’s a shame, Ukraine is ready to accept the principle of the loan, but Johnson and his gang of thugs continue to wallow in criminal inaction. I never would have believed that one day, in the West, some would stoop to embracing the worst ideology there is. They are crazy! They have so much Ukrainian blood on their hands.
We implore Congress to release this aid to Ukraine so that it can survive and defend itself!
“Johnson signals shift on Ukraine to GOP senators” (Thehill)
Seems like this deserves a new post.
I don’t know if elected officials continue to speak into the void or if something really has changed. I hope sincerly.
We implore Congress to vote on any solution that would help Ukraine defend itself and survive. Every hour lost weakens the front and Ukraine’s position in this war.
“Johnson signals shift on Ukraine to GOP senators”
Link: https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/4530355-johnson-signals-shift-on-ukraine-to-gop-senators/
First paragraph:
“Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) told Republican senators Wednesday to expect the House to send them legislation to help Ukraine, but cautioned that what comes out of the House will look substantially different than the $95 billion foreign aid package the Senate passed last month.”
So, he’s not going to take up what already passed the Senate. The question then becomes, will this be something serious, or will it have “poison pill” attachments that are unacceptable, making it just another delaying tactic?
Plus, if they’re going to wait until the appropriations stuff is done, that’s another week’s delay.
You are right. We no longer really know what to think of this Congress and its real intentions. However, some seem to have pressed the panic button because the lack of resources of the Ukrainian army will soon be fatal to Ukraine, despite the relief packages sent recently. McConnell reiterated this today, saying that there was no time left to change the bill and that the Senate bill had to be put to a vote. We are really at the limit.
But actually, nothing is moving! The 2 petitions do not seem to achieve anything, except put a little pressure on Johnson. The new new legislative proposals (frozen assets, loan…) are not even on paper. In a few days, Congress will be on vacation again for 17 days!
I’m really starting to get scared. This criminal passivity is completely senseless.
Let’s get back to Orban’s comment. He is quoting Trump “he will not give a single penny…” Being putin’s man in europe, Orban then obediently inserts the kremlin spin: Europe will follow Trump’s lead and the war will end. First, I believe this “penny” quote is true and accurate, but that’s not why the war will end; that was entirely Orban’s spin. If Trump wins in November, the war will end for the same reason putin didn’t invade under the previous Trump admnistration: Trump threatened Putin with bombing the kremlin if he invaded ukraine. This is language Putin understands. Listen to what Trump is saying about this war recently. Just last week, at a rally in Georgia, Trump said he will immediately take action to end the war after winning in November, and the war will be over even before he occupies the oval office. What does that sound like? No pennies spent, and Putin pooping his pants at the idea that Trump will win.
“What does that sound like?”
Sounds like he’ll let Putin take what he want.
Trump doesn’t own Ukraine. Seems to me your comment ignores the Ukrainian right to self determination. Trump is utterly powerless to let Putin take what he wants. The Ukrainians have proven that inaction on the part of US does not end the war. Contrary to Orban’s wish (and Kremlin prop), Europe is not going to abandon Ukraine. There is only one way to end the war: end putin. The narrative that Trump is going to cut off funding to ukraine and Putin will take what he wants doesn’t hold water in 2024. Just ask Putin – he’s hoping for a Biden victory; he said this several times recently.
I wrote that he would allow it; that doesn’t mean it would come to pass.
“Putin – he’s hoping for a Biden victory; he said this several times recently.”
Here’s a quote from Sir RSM that explains this perfectly:
“And you don’t fundamentally understand what affect that has on the USA voters do you? If Bin Laden came out to support John Kerry do you think that would get John Kerry more votes in the US? You must, if you think a Vladolf endorsement would help”
Obviously, putler saying he wants Biden to win is intended to have the opposite effect.
We know that the Russians have been working behind the scenes to help trumpkov and hurt President Biden – including the recent revelation that Alexander Smirnov fabricated a claim that Joe and Hunter Biden had each received $5 million in bribes. Smirnov had held several high level meetings with Russian intelligence officers in 2023 and was being used as a conduit for disinformation to disrupt the 2024 election.