Nightmares are being realized everywhere.
Donald Trump, Elon Musk, the Federalist Society, the Nerd Reich, and all the worst people in this country keep watching their wettest dreams come true. It’s impossible to process the meaning from story after story of the most financially comfortable people on earth unnecessarily afflicting people like Brian Gibbs. The young father lost his dream job as a National Park education technician at Effigy Mounds National Monument last week after recently receiving an “exceptional” performance evaluation.
And that’s one of the lesser crimes of the Elonald regime by far, especially compared to, say, the horrors unleashed by defunding USAID now being realized in hundreds of babies getting HIV.
Trump extorts Ukraine, again
But no nightmare is more predictable than what’s going on with Trump as he and Vladimir Putin do their best to spitroast Ukraine. The UK’s Telegraph reports:
Donald Trump’s demand for a $500bn (£400bn) “payback” from Ukraine goes far beyond US control over the country’s critical minerals. It covers everything from ports and infrastructure to oil and gas, and the larger resource base of the country.
The terms of the contract that landed at Volodymyr Zelensky’s office a week ago amount to the US economic colonisation of Ukraine, in legal perpetuity. It implies a burden of reparations that cannot possibly be achieved. The document has caused consternation and panic in Kyiv.
These demands have nothing to do with a peace process that Ukraine or Volodymyr Zelenskyy could ever accept. They are a surrender demand likely masquerading as a pretense for abandoning the country to Putin’s meat grinder.
And who does this benefit?
Who in the world will be better off because Putin is rewarded for raping his way into Europe? Not Ukraine. Not Europe. Not the United States. Not Russia, which will lose just about any hope of casting off Putin in their lifetime. Just Putin and his American stooges like Trump, Elon Musk, Tulsi Gabbard, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Donald Trump has engaged the national security policy of the United States for the exclusive benefit of the worst dictator of the century and the one of the worst thieves and oppressors of his own people ever.
Meanwhile, Republicans are about to confirm Kash Patel as FBI Director. Patel's MAGA career was made by shaping the lie that hollowed out the Trump/Russia investigation and helped birth Trump’s Grievance Myth, which drove the MAGA resurgence and brought the world to the brink of these disasters. You know this if you’ve been following Marcy Wheeler’s emptywheel or the recently concluded Ball of Thread series I helped her produce.
A Kash payout to Putin
Kash Patel is a singularly lawless individual bent on manufacturing propaganda on Trump’s behalf and seeking vengeance in service of an amygdala that seems to take up most of his head. He’s more Don Jr. than man and will soon be in the position to root out anyone in our federal law enforcement who believes the law applies to Trump or MAGA. And he’ll put our national security in peril both in those efforts and his commitment to both defending and welcoming Putin’s interference in our democracy. And he’s well practiced in his dark arts as his recent experience includes celebrating the cop beaters of January 6th and being paid to produce Russian propaganda.
This makes Kash and his confirmation the perfect coda of Ball of Thread.
Marcy and I conversed in the episode above, and I hope you’ll take the time to watch it or, at least, this one minute:
The shame of the century
The point is pretty obvious: Trump/Russia is the story of the 21st century. The first episode explained how Putin’s interference in our 2016 election was more pronounced and targeted than history remembers. And it was designed to get Trump and the Republican Party by the nuts.
The nightmare was that Trump welcomed the embrace and chose Putin’s help over rule of law:
The series then traces how Kash Patel caried out Paul Manafort’s strategy of turning the Russia investigation into being entirely about the flaws in the Steele Dossier, which was created while Christopher Steele was also being employed by Oleg Deripaska, one of Trump’s closest oligarchs.
The episode on The Mueller Referral shows that despite these efforts, a half dozen of Trump’s associates were successfully prosecuted for lies involving Russia. Marcy also lays out the evidence of MULTIPLE quid pro quos that Trump team were involved with that seemed to help cement Putin’s support. Mueller, foolishly, expected Congress to continue investigating these traitorous endeavors.
Manafort—-Trump’s former campaign chair who was one of the associates charged and was in prison until Trump pardon——was forced to uncover the framework of those quid pro quos, which involved carving up Ukraine. He said at the time even he thought this was a “backdoor” to Russian control of the country that went too far.
But we know that the Russians always follow up.
Never forget these fiends
All of this is to say that anyone who ever mocked Russiagate or Trump/Russia or bought into Trump’s lie that Russia, Russia, Russia was all a “hoax” should be ashamed of themselves. You probably couldn’t have prevented the horrors that are unfolding, but you didn’t have to abet them. You’ve betrayed your country and the very idea of self-rule.
And when the people overcome this dark curse of our time—and we will either soon or eventually—your shame should only be concealed by your grave.
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