He's Also Worse Than Marie Antoinette, Maximilian I & Mary Queen Of Scots
We’ll see if the American public follows Trump down the Putin daisy path as he spews Kremlin propaganda as if his life depended on it. MAGAts are already there. I suspect the rest of the GOP will get there sooner or later. Bill Kristol noted that “He’s now mocking Ukraine for not having fought valiantly to defend itself for three years, and he’s attacking its elected leader, Volodymyr Zelensky, as a dictator. His vice president and national security adviser are portraying Zelensky as the obstacle to peace. His administration is embracing Putin’s demand that Ukraine, contrary to what its constitution envisions in a time of martial law, hold elections before direct Russia-Ukrainian negotiations can begin— a transparent negotiating ploy that allows Russia to stall for time to see if Ukrainian demoralization might set in on the battlefield. All of this is a prelude to blaming Zelensky for the failure to attain a negotiated peace, and to abandoning Ukraine. Trump is also preparing to throw our European allies, many of whom want to stand with Ukraine, under the bus. Thus his administration has expressed a willingness to entertain the longstanding Russian demand that the United States remove troops from the frontline NATO countries most threatened by Russia. Such a move would effectively mark the end of NATO, which Trump, once again following Putin’s lead, would presumably welcome.”
Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD), defended the silence of his fellow Republican lambs: “Right now, you have got to give him some space.”
In other words: Don’t look to us to speak up. And, presumably, don’t look to us to support further aid to Ukraine in a new government funding bill in March. Of course, if a new funding bill passes without such aid, that would further weaken Ukraine on the battlefield, which would give Trump more space to effectuate Putin’s wishes.
You have to go abroad to find a conservative politician willing to tell the truth about what Trump is up to. Chris Patten, former chairman of the British Conservative Party, said the following to The Times’ Nick Kristoff:
“We have Trump and his oligarchy of ignorant shoe shiners vandalizing the network of organizations, agreements and values— largely put in place by America since the Second World War— which have given most of us, including America, on the whole an extraordinary degree of peace and prosperity… I love America and was once happy to regard its president as leader of the free world. Not any longer. Where are the American values that I used to admire?”
“Where are the American values that I used to admire?”
A fair question.
Just in time for Daniel Dale’s definitive list of <> Señor T’s 13 biggest lies<> of his first month in office:
The tale of the $50 million— no, make it $100 million— in condoms for Hamas.
Blaming Ukraine for starting the war on Ukraine.
The (non-)uniqueness of birthright citizenship: Trump offered what might have sounded like a reasonable rationale for his attempt to get rid of birthright citizenship. The United States, he said, is the only country that has birthright citizenship. Except that is not true…Dozens of countries, including Canada and Mexico, also grant automatic citizenship to people born on their soil.
More up-is-down reversing of the reality of January 6: For years now, Trump has presented a version of the Capitol riot of January 6, 2021, that bears little resemblance to what actually happened. When he was asked in early February why he granted pardons to people who assaulted first responders, he said the people he pardoned were actually “assaulted by our government” and that “they didn’t assault.” This “they didn’t assault” claim was a brazen denial of the obvious truth, clear in video after video and trial after trial. The Justice Department has said more than 140 officers were assaulted on January 6, and that more than 170 people pleaded guilty to such assaults.
A gusher of deceit about California water policy: Amid disaster, more dishonesty. First, Trump linked the Los Angeles wildfires to California’s decision to use some of its water to protect a fish species in the northern part of the state— even though the two things have nothing to do with each other, as befuddled experts explained to anyone who would listen. Then, after ordering the sudden release of billions of gallons of water from Central Valley reservoirs for no apparent good reason, Trump declared that some of this water was heading to Los Angeles— even though it wasn’t heading to Los Angeles and couldn’t go to Los Angeles.
The election lie he refused to let die: What can you even say about this one at this point? Trump’s win in the free and fair 2024 election did not convince him to abandon his endless lying about his defeat in the free and fair 2020 election. More than four years after his loss to Joe Biden, he repeated his “rigged” nonsense during at least three events on his 2025 inauguration day alone, then a bunch of times after that.
That fable about Olympic boxers, again: to promote his push to try to get transgender athletes banned from the Olympics, he told his familiar story about how two gold medalists in women’s boxing at the Games in Paris last year were men who “transitioned.” Wrong. As the International Olympic Committee repeatedly noted during the Olympics, when Trump and others made such claims, neither champion had transitioned; both were born as female and have always competed in women’s events.
The president’s fictionalized northern neighbor: Before taking office, Trump casually asserted that the Canadian people “like” his idea of Canada becoming the 51st US state. That was the opposite of the truth; the idea is hugely unpopular with the Canadian public. Then, after his inauguration, Trump continued to make stuff up about Canada— at one point posting on social media and then saying out loud that Canada prohibits US banks from doing business there. He added, “Can you believe that?” No doubt some Americans believe it, but it’s false.
Blasting Biden for a program launched under Trump: After the deadly January collision between a military helicopter and a passenger jet, Trump blamed Biden administration diversity initiatives at the Federal Aviation Administration without providing any evidence any FAA diversity policy had anything to do with the crash.
Relentless deception about who pays tariffs: When Trump talked about the tariffs he imposed on Chinese imports in his first presidency, he spoke of how much money “from China” these tariffs generated for the US Treasury… At no point did he acknowledge that US importers, not foreign countries, are the ones who pay the actual tariff changes— or that study after study, including one from the federal government’s bipartisan trade commission, found that Americans ended up bearing almost the entire cost of his first-term tariffs on Chinese products.
A wild exaggeration of the increase in autism rates: Trump keeps flirting with, though not explicitly endorsing, the thoroughly debunked conspiracy theory that childhood vaccines cause autism— and in a social media post in early February, he inflated the extent of the increase in the known prevalence of autism over the last two decades. “20 years ago, Autism in children was 1 in 10,000. NOW IT’S 1 in 34,” Trump wrote. “WOW! Something’s really wrong.” Aside from the fact that experts say the increase in autism diagnoses (to 1 in 36 children by age 8 in 2020) likely has to do with greater awareness of the symptoms and improved screening practices, public statistics from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that the known prevalence in 2004 was 1 in 125 children, not “1 in 10,000.” That’s a pretty big difference.
China’s (non-)operation of the Panama Canal: Much of Trump’s lying is ad-libbed. Some of it, however, is planned in advance. Some of it, however, is written into his prepared speeches. He said in his inaugural address in January: “Above all, China is operating the Panama Canal. And we didn’t give it to China, we gave it to Panama, and we’re taking it back.” This would have been a good line if China was actually operating the Panama Canal. It isn’t; Panama is.
Trump’s invented dominance with “the youth vote”: Trump said some accurate things while touting his victory in the 2024 election, such as the fact that he swept all seven swing states… an assertion that he won the youth vote “by 36 points.” In fact, exit polls show he lost the youth vote to then-Vice President Kamala Harris. Even if these polls were off, there’s no basis for the claim that he won the youth vote by 36.
I bet we could write a dozen posts in a row— a score if need be— entitled “America's Worst President In History” ... because history remembers the weak, the vain, and the incompetent who led their nations to ruin. Louis XVI dithered while revolution brewed. Nicholas II let corruption rot his empire. Charles I lost his head rather than accept limits on his power. But none of them, not one, actively conspired with a foreign adversary to betray their own country. None sought to dismantle the very institutions that gave them power. Trump is worse because he is something new in American history: a would-be autocrat who has turned millions against the very idea of democracy while serving as a useful idiot for a hostile power. He's an American Quisling, a Kremlin-backed saboteur masquerading as a nationalist. His lies, his cowardice, and his corruption are not just the failings of an egomaniac— they are the tools of America’s most dangerous enemy... And the Republican Party stands by, complicit, silent, waiting for its orders.
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