Might as well be 20 minutes. Ground hog day starts again in 30 seconds.
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Might as well be 20 minutes. Ground hog day starts again in 30 seconds.
So much for today’s “deadline” imposed by President Trump for additional sanctions against Russia
Taco isn't just fir Tuesdays.
Really excited about the Fat Baby-Slavic Dwarf meeting next week - only the best things in all of history will result! Everybody says so!!
<p>
what a chode.</span></p>Quote:
<span style="caret-color: rgb(54, 54, 54); color: rgb(54, 54, 54); font-family: nyt-imperial, georgia, "times new roman", times, serif; font-size: 18px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">In his interview on Fox News, Trump gave very few details of what was said in the diplomatic summit. Instead, the president talked about his personal relationship with Putin. “I think the meeting was a 10,” Trump said after Sean Hannity asked how he would rate his talks with the Russian president. “In the sense we got along great, and it’s good when two big powers get along, especially when they’re nuclear powers. We’re number one and they’re number two in the world.”
"This meeting could have been an email" - a reporter in the press tent. Put got what he wanted, tho. Putin again conned Trump into no sanctions
Plus a nice red carpet welcome for the photos
Fuck Trump. Fuck Putin. Good on the ppl of AK for coming out and showing their support which was all over the internet. Got a "thank you" from a friend in Ukraine who saw the the posts. Too bad the news didn't cover that.
That prob went about as well as Zelinsky could hope for. Putin get his PR win but no real movement on anything in Ukraine
....... that we're currently aware of.
Do you think Trump could keep his mouth shut about anything ?
Historically, more often than not territorial concessions increase, not decrease, aggression. See Sudetenland: “Mr. Trump told European leaders that he believed a rapid peace deal could be negotiated if Mr. Zelensky agreed to give up the rest of the Donbas region to Russia, even those areas not occupied by Russian troops.”
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2025/08...meeting-alaska
Yup.Quote:
Originally Posted by MultiVerse
And why does Vlad insist on no NATO for Ukraine? Because he doesn't intend to stop.
Heather Cox Richardson:
August 16, 2025 (Saturday)
Yesterday, military personnel from the United States of America literally rolled out a red carpet for a dictator who invaded a sovereign country and is wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes including the stealing of children. Apparently coached by his team, Trump stood to let Russia’s president Vladimir Putin walk toward him after Putin arrived at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage, Alaska, putting Trump in a dominant position, but he clapped as Putin walked toward him. The two men greeted each other warmly.
This summit between the president of the United States and the president of Russia came together fast, in the midst of the outcry in the U.S. over Trump’s inclusion in the Epstein files and the administration’s refusal to release those files.
U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff had been visiting Moscow for months to talk about a ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine when he heard through a back channel that Putin might be willing to talk to Trump in person to offer a deal. On August 6, after a meeting in Moscow, Witkoff announced that Russia was ready to retreat from some of the land it occupies in Ukraine. This apparent concession came just two days before the August 8 deadline Trump had set for severe sanctions against Russia unless it agreed to a ceasefire.
Quickly, though, it became clear that Witkoff’s description of Putin’s offer was wrong, either because Putin had misled him or because he had misunderstood: Witkoff does not speak Russian and, according to former U.S. ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul, does not use a notetaker from the U.S. embassy. Nonetheless, on Friday, August 8, Trump announced on social media that he would meet personally with Putin in Alaska, without Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky.
That the president of the United States offered a meeting to Putin on U.S. soil, ground that once belonged to Russia and that Russian nationalists fantasize about taking back, was itself a win for Putin.
As Jonathan Lemire noted yesterday in The Atlantic, in the week before the meeting, leaders in Ukraine and Europe worried that Trump would agree to Putin’s demand that Ukraine hand over Crimea and most of its four eastern oblasts, a demand that Russian operatives made initially in 2016 when they offered to help Trump win the White House—the so-called Mariupol Plan— and then pressure Ukraine to accept the deal.
In the end, that did not happen. The summit appears to have produced nothing but a favorable photo op for Putin.
That is no small thing, for Russia, which is weak and struggling, managed to break the political isolation it’s lived in since invading Ukraine again in 2022. Further, the choreography of the summit suggested that Russia is equal to the United States. But those important optics were less than Russia wanted.
It appeared that Russia was trying to set the scene for a major powers summit of the past, one in which the United States and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), also known as the Soviet Union, were the dominant players, with the USSR dominating the U.S. Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov showed up to Alaska in a sweatshirt with the Russian initials for USSR, a sign that Russia intends to absorb Ukraine as well as other former Soviet republics and recreate itself as a dominant world power.
As Lemire notes, Putin indicated he was interested in broadening the conversation to reach beyond Ukraine into economic relations between the two countries, including a discussion of the Arctic, and a nuclear arms agreement. The U.S. seemed to be following suit. It sent a high-ranking delegation that included Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, Special Envoy Witkoff, press secretary Karoline Leavitt, Central Intelligence Agency director John Ratcliffe, White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, deputy White House chief of staff Dan Scavino, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
Exactly what the White House expected from the summit was unclear. Trump warned that if Putin didn’t agree to a ceasefire there would be “very severe consequences,” but the White House also had seemed to be walking back any expectations of a deal at the summit, downgrading the meeting to a “listening exercise.”
After Trump and Putin met on the tarmac, Trump ushered the Russian president to the presidential limousine, known as The Beast, giving them time to speak privately despite the apparent efforts of the U.S. delegation to keep that from happening. When the summit began, Rubio and Witkoff joined Trump to make up the U.S. delegation, while Putin, his longtime foreign policy advisor Yuri Ushakov, and Lavrov made up the Russian delegation. The principals emerged after a three-hour meeting with little to say.
At the news conference after their meeting, Putin took the podium first—an odd development, since he was on U.S. soil—and spoke for about eight minutes. Then Trump spoke for three minutes, telling reporters the parties had not agreed to a ceasefire but that he and Putin had made “great progress” in their talks. Both men appeared subdued. They declined to take reporters’ questions.
A Fox News Channel reporter said: “The way it felt in the room was not good. It did not seem like things went well. It seemed like Putin came in and steamrolled, got right into what he wanted to say and got his photo next to the president, then left.” But while Putin got his photo op, he did not get the larger superpower dialogue he evidently wanted. Neither did he get the open support of the United States to end the war on his terms, something he needs as his war against Ukraine drags on.
The two and a half hour working lunch that was scheduled did not take place. Both men left Alaska within an hour.
Speaking with European leaders in a phone call from Air Force One on his way home from the summit, Trump said that Putin rejected the idea of a ceasefire and insisted that Ukraine cede territory to Russia. He also suggested that a coalition of the willing, including the U.S., would be required to provide security guarantees to Ukraine. But within hours, Trump had dropped his demand for a ceasefire and instead echoed Putin’s position that negotiations for a peace agreement should begin without one.
In an interview with Fox News Channel personality Sean Hannity after the meeting, Trump said he would not impose further sanctions on Russia because the meeting with Putin had gone “very well.” “Because of what happened today, I think I don’t have to think about that now,” Trump told Hannity. “I may have to think about it in two weeks or three weeks or something, but we don’t have to think about that right now.”
Trump also suggested he was backing away from trying to end the war and instead dumping the burden on Ukraine’s president. He told Hannity that “it’s really up to President Zelensky to get it done.”
Today Chiara Eisner of NPR reported that officials from the Trump administration left eight pages of information produced by the U.S. State Department in a public printer at the business center of an Alaskan hotel. The pages revealed potentially sensitive information about the August 15 meetings, including the names and phone numbers of three U.S. staff members and thirteen U.S. and Russian state leaders.
The pages also contained the information that Trump intended to give Putin an “American Bald Eagle Desk Statue,” and the menu for the cancelled lunch, which specified that the luncheon was “in honor of his excellency, Vladimir Putin, president of the Russian Federation.”
The victim blaming by the Trump administration just made me sick. Can you imagine if a principal of a school called a Billy and his target into his office and told the target it was their fault an DC if they wanted it to end they should stop being a target the rewarding the bully?
Insanity.
This whole mess started when Ukraine was convinced to give up their nukes and now they want to seal the deal by making them promise to never join NATO so they are further exposed. Fucking shameless.
Europe and Ukraine need to accept that under Trump they will never be supported and act accordingly. Why the fuck does Trump get any say in this? Fuck Trump. Fuck Putin.
Saw some good commentary about framing this as stopping the Russian war Machine. Trump is playing to the MAGA stop the endless wars, so reinforcing Russia is the war machine keeping endless wars going is one of the few effective levers that keeps Trump from totally throwing Ukraine under the bus
Also, where are the Epstein files
LOL @ stopping Russia. That's cute.
The point isn’t stopping Russia. The point is repeating a message that plays to trumps base. That’s all he cares about. Currently , they still see Ukraine as causing endless wars. Trump posting the phrase Russia War Machine the other day for the first time was no small thing that no one really paid the attn to it that it warranted. Trump cares about ratings and optics with his base.
Fkna, my as swell give him a nut shot on the way by the media scrum too
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DNgWb...12OTJuYXcwNg==
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Zelensky’s meeting today with Trump was starkly different from his closed door session with Putin just days earlier. This time, there were no military flyovers, no special signage, and no kiss-ass red carpet entrance. Unlike the strangely secretive meeting with Putin, which was kept entirely private for reasons that left many speculating, Zelensky’s meeting with Trump was streamed live and joined by Europe’s most powerful leaders. In attendance were Germany’s Chancellor Olaf Scholz, France’s President Emmanuel Macron, Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. The transparent setting only highlighted questions about why Putin had demanded such secrecy before.
In the midst of serious discussion, Brian Glenn, a conservative media personality who is also known as the boyfriend of Marjorie Taylor Greene told Zelensky he looked good in his suit. With a quick, sharp wit, Zelensky replied that Brian was wearing the same suit as last time, which landed like a subtle jab, adding a momentary break in the tension of high stakes diplomacy.
While the talks produced genuine progress, paving the way for new “tri-lateral” negotiations between Ukraine, the US, and the broader European bloc, Trump repeatedly injected the moment with his usual rambling distraction. Most notably, he floated the idea that America might not have elections if the country were at war, a suggestion that shocked those present and raised fresh doubts about his willingness to sidestep democratic principles. He also repeated his easily disproven claim about having stopped six wars already and veered into off-topic boasts, including gripes about his own media coverage, attacks on Joe Biden as “a very corrupt politician,” conspiracy theories about mail-in ballots and voting machines, and unrelated claims about the southern border and Democrats “loving crime” and “wanting transgender for everybody.” Despite this idiocy, the grown-ups in the room stuck to the issues at hand, keeping the focus on building a united front against Russian aggression and advancing concrete steps toward peace.
Whoa; now there's something I didn't have on my bingo card - Trump goes to war in Ukraine, declares national emergency/martial law and cancels elections. The base wouldn't even bat an eye.
From HCR:
By the late afternoon, the president was unable to recognize President Stubb, who was sitting directly across the table from him. “President Stubb of Finland,” Trump said. Looking around, Trump continued: “And he’s uh, he’s somebody that, where are we here? Huh? Where? Where?” Stubb said, “I’m right here.” Trump focused on him and answered: “Oh. You look better than I’ve ever seen you look.”
This evening, CNN senior White House correspondent Kristen Holmes reported that Trump paused his negotiation with European leaders to call Vladimir Putin. Her source said that European leaders were not present for the conversation. Ivan Nechepurenko of the New York Times reported that the call was forty minutes long.
Truck Fump
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What would the TGR collective suggest to end the war in Ukraine?
Start by punishing Russia with the stringent sanctions promised by President Trump if Russia did not agree to a ceasefire. Ukraine agreed to Trump's ceasefire proposal. The Kremlin did not. So instead of putting Putin in the driver’s seat, compress Russia’s timeline through economic pressure from new sanctions as well as stronger enforcement of current sanctions. The grim reality is Trump's weakness means, despite all the recent jaw-jaw, the war is now more likely to drag on
Sanctions on what? Energy? What else? Is Germany and Yurp's dependence on Russian energy part of the discussion? Or is it only an American responsibility?