I'm also thinking today about what certainly appears to be a complete failure of Witkoff/Kushner/Trump's attempted sell-out of Ukraine. Putin played his hand. He offered a $2T bribe to Trump if he'd just completely sell out Ukraine. I'm sure Trump would be happy to, but some unnamed intelligence agency spilled the whole thing and the Wall Street Journal printed it: A $2T bribe. The Europeans and Ukraine got busy. Witkoff and Kushner spent 5 hours - 5 hours! - trying to move Putin, but Putin knows if he caves even a little, he'll get overthrown because then it means 1.1 million casualties were for nothing, and bankrupting the Russian state to boot.
So Trump failed to move Putin in Alaska and now, in Florida and Moscow, too.
Trumpy, just support Ukraine instead. Rubio, can you talk to him?
2) It still is murky if Putin has anything on Trump. It certainly seems not just logical, but probable that they got some kompromat on him as early as 1987: https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/11/19/trump-first-moscow-trip-215842/
So assume that, and then some further trips, too. Here's a timeline: https://www.voanews.com/a/trump-involvement-russia/3695927.html
All those connections, and everyone knows Trump doesn't actually have any morals or patriotism. It's all just Mafia Don $$$.
So Putin is stuck now. Even a $2T bribe didn't go anywhere. Trump is stuck, too. I assume he's worried that if he just goes hung ho with Ukraine, some really embarrassing Moscow hotel hooker tape is going to show up - and lol, it'll be longer than 30 seconds, so he can't claim it's AI.
The Europeans are the only ones holding rational cards, but ...
The secret player is China. Xi - and his very professional intelligence advisors, well, what they want out of the whole thing is Taiwan. And their support of Putin hasn't really got them a goddamned step closer. Russia is just a cesspool of disaster. But if Xi cuts off Putin from oil revenue, dual use electronics, and whatever else they're supplying or facilitating, he can actually set up Putin's overthrow. So far he's preferred to keep Vlad as his (not so) secret little puppet.
But OK, game it out: Certainly I don't want, Europe doesn't want, and any rational professionals still left at the US DOD, Intelligence, or State don't want the Chinese Communist Party moving on Taiwan.
Here's an idea: The US can green light Taiwan giving China full access to the advanced AI chips that are actually being fabbed in Taiwan anyway. Come on, guys, they're eventually going to get them anyway.
And the pay off is China and Xi letting Putin and his whole alcoholic kleptocratic staff, to use a yiddish word, plotz.
And if Russia starts to fall apart, China can maybe get all that stuff in the Russian Far East they're working on getting anyway.
OK, enough for today.
