{"id":238233,"date":"2025-03-03T08:03:00","date_gmt":"2025-03-03T13:03:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thegallantpelham.net\/?p=238233"},"modified":"2025-03-02T21:44:38","modified_gmt":"2025-03-03T02:44:38","slug":"trumps-sacred-idol","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thegallantpelham.net\/blog\/trumps-sacred-idol\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump\u2019s Sacred Idol"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Like a lot of people, this humble spirit suspected that all the excitement about Ukraine\u2019s rare earth minerals was an obvious ploy that would allow Trump to save face while making a peace \u201cdeal\u201d in Ukraine. (For Trump, the author of The Art of the Deal<\/em>, everything has to be a \u201cdeal\u201d or he isn\u2019t happy.<\/a>) But alas, it was not to be.\u00a0 I\u2019m with those who think Ukraine\u2019s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, was ambushed, plain and simple.\u00a0 A sh*t show such as occurred in the Oval Office last week, along with throwing a foreign leader out of the White House for the first time in U.S. history, constituted another embarrassing new low for Donald Trump.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Just as Elon Musk\u2019s pointless DOGE firings will hardly dent the Federal deficit, ambushing Zelensky feels like another example of the Trump Administration\u2019s performance art approach to government; Vice President Vance\u2019s remarks seemed like a setup, and President Trump even said the spectacle would make great television.  Trump knows his MAGA base likes to see their hero beat someone up (preferably an immigrant, a minority, or a foreigner) like a World Wrestling match.  There\u2019s seemingly no limit to those people\u2019s anger and appetite for violence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ukraine is a small democracy that was invaded by Vladimir Putin\u2019s autocracy, also known as Russia.  Maybe Russia is a gas station with nuclear weapons, as the late John McCain called it, but a disproportionate amount of its GDP is devoted to its military budget and Putin\u2019s militaristic ambitions in the name of restoring the \u201cSoviet empire.\u201d  Putin has shown he doesn\u2019t care how many of his young men are killed in the process, as long as he stays in power. (Estimates vary, but at least 700,000 have been killed or wounded in the present conflict, and that\u2019s excluding Ukrainian soldiers and the country\u2019s awful civilian losses.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n

The Way Trump Treated Zelensky, You\u2019d Swear He was the Medicaid Budget!<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n

Somehow it always comes back to the mysterious bromance between Trump and Putin.  Trump flipflops on just about everything, except Putin, who he treats like a sacred idol above reproach.  He calls Zelensky a dictator, but not Putin, the real dictator.  He makes sure the U.S. takes Russia\u2019s side at the United Nations.  The list goes on.  He claims that both he and Putin were victims of the \u201cRussia Hoax\u201d (it wouldn\u2019t be called a \u201choax\u201d if Trump\u2019s attorney general, Bill Barr, hadn\u2019t stopped the prosecution!), as though his enemy was the Democratic Party rather than Russia\u2019s murderous authoritarian dictator. (Not unlike the \u201cenemy within\u201d that V.P. Vance spoke of in Munich). Trump even accused Zelensky of risking World War III, as if Putin\u2019s desire to recreate the Soviet empire was the default position requiring the world\u2019s acceptance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What\u2019s Trump\u2019s fascination with Putin all about?  We used to suspect he was Putin\u2019s puppet based on some unknown blackmail scenario, but given everything we know about Trump already, what harmful information could possibly still be out there?  Maybe it\u2019s simply that Putin is the autocrat Trump longs to be, ruling all-powerful over the oligarchy Trump longs for.  It seems more than a coincidence that Putin might be the only man in the world richer than Trump\u2019s DOGE henchman, Elon Musk. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n

Speaking of the Democrats, hark, are they still around?\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n

A few of the Democrats should be commended for speaking out on behalf of American democracy, but as a group they\u2019ve been awfully quiet lately.\u00a0 I, for one, disagree with James Carville\u2019s advice to lay low and let Trump and the Republicans implode of their own volition.\u00a0 Too much damage will be done to the American experiment before November 2026 rolls around, let alone 2028.\u00a0 Surely the Democrats have something to contribute to the national discourse besides merely protesting Elon Musk and DOGE.\u00a0 In this humble spirit\u2019s humble opinion they should aggressively offer positive new ideas and programs to benefit the American people, <\/strong>not just espouse worn-out talking points about \u201cworking families\u201d that nobody even hears anymore.\u00a0 In particular, I had high hopes for Hakeem Jeffries and commended Nancy Pelosi for stepping down (as Chuck Schumer and Dick Durbin should have done a long time ago<\/a>), but I increasingly fear he\u2019s a waste of space.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Like a lot of people, this humble spirit suspected that all the excitement about Ukraine\u2019s rare earth minerals was an obvious ploy that would allow Trump to save face while making a peace \u201cdeal\u201d in Ukraine. (For Trump, the author of The Art of the Deal, everything has to be a \u201cdeal\u201d or he isn\u2019t […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":238238,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","pgc_sgb_lightbox_settings":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-238233","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog-posts"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thegallantpelham.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238233","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thegallantpelham.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thegallantpelham.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegallantpelham.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegallantpelham.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=238233"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/thegallantpelham.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238233\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":238241,"href":"https:\/\/thegallantpelham.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238233\/revisions\/238241"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegallantpelham.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/238238"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thegallantpelham.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=238233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegallantpelham.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=238233"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegallantpelham.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=238233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}