Wait… Nikki is coming out on the side of Ukraine after saying she is voting for Trump? That doesn’t sound like a position a future MAGA VP candidate should be taking.
I feel like Haley is making the same mistake that most of the GOP is making, in that she’s trying to walk this impossible tightrope between Trump and normalcy, and it’s not going to work.
But all of this just feeds that Trump tough guy persona. He would have stopped these wars before they started by staring the bad guys down! No way Putin would have dared mess with this guy.
Hamas would have known not to mess with Israel too if the Don had been in the White House.
Now, I have to think Trump’s utter unpredictability in how he’ll react to international crises has to affect people’s thinking in some way. But that’s not because they view him as some tough guy, it’s because they view him as a loose cannon. It’s the same reason the reaction to Russia was muted at first and why people tip-toe around things with North Korea. Oh hey, that just so happens to be the club of leaders Trump wants to be part of! The Global Pariah Pact.
Except in this case Trump really is irrational and volatile!
But this part of the summary sounds about right to me
One study found that madman theory is frequently counterproductive, but that it can be an asset under certain conditions.[4] Another study found that there are both bargaining advantages and disadvantages to perceived madness.[5]
My hypothesis is that the disadvantages strongly outweigh the advantages for a global superpower whose international strength is built on and maintained largely through the of fostering global stability via a web of alliances, international organizations, and guarantees.
Santos v2.0?
“Unexplained inconsistencies in Rep. Ogles’ reported finances and allegations of him misrepresenting his background raise fundamental questions for voters about the transparency of their elected representative.”
[…]The CLC complaint also cited NewsChannel 5’s revelations that Ogles misrepresented his educational and professional credentials, including his claims to be an economist, a trained law enforcement officer and an expert in "international sex crimes."
Our investigation discovered that he had used the stillborn death of a child to raise nearly $25,000 for a children’s burial garden that was never built. Ogles has refused to provide evidence of what he did with the money.
To be fair, it is entirely possible to become an expert in “international sex crimes” without being in law enforcement.
Maybe it’s obvious, but one big trouble with the GOP today is that it’s filled with politicians who entire job/existence is be a politician. If Haley opposes Trump, she’ll be unemployed pretty quick.
Amusingly, that is exactly what they all claim is the greatest evil in politics.
We need more heroes like the late Orrin Hatch, who ran against the evils of career politicians and then embarked on a 42-year Senate career.
Thereby successfully denying that seat to some career politician for a whole 42 years!
Indeed, integrity is actually one of the most deadly sins in today’s GOP.
Right on. Joe Biden has been in politics for XX number of years and that’s wrong!
She will quickly be working for some company that sees her working for them as a benefit. With her background some international company will hire her.
That’s a positive in my book. For all political parties. Professional politicians, experienced in the functions of government, are a good thing.
She is 110% full of shit with this gaslighting. The only reason there is still a Ukraine (and arguably NATO isn’t at DefCon 5/at war already) is the Biden Administration fixing all of Trump’s bullshit:
The Biden administration’s secret planning began in April 2021 when Russia massed about 100,000 troops on the Ukrainian border. The buildup turned out to be a feint, but Blinken and other officials discussed U.S. intelligence about Russia’s actions with leaders of Britain, France and Germany at a NATO meeting in Brussels that month. Their message was, “We need to get ourselves prepared,” a senior State Department official said.
CIA Director William J. Burns traveled to Moscow on Nov. 1 to warn President Vladimir Putin that the United States and its allies were prepared to arm Ukraine and impose crippling sanctions on Russia if he invaded. Putin apparently thought Biden wouldn’t be able to deliver.
Persuading Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to take the invasion danger seriously wasn’t easy, initially. Blinken spoke to him at the COP 21 climate summit in Glasgow in early November and provided a summary of intelligence about Russia’s plans. “I basically had the task of telling him that we thought it was likely that his country was going to be invaded,” Blinken recalled. Zelensky was skeptical, according to a State Department official.
U.S. intelligence provided Ukraine with a preview of Putin’s battle plan. Though Russia had surrounded Ukraine with 150,000 troops, Putin’s real strategy was a lightning, decapitating strike on Kyiv by a relatively small group of elite special forces. The Russians planned to seize Antonov Airport in Hostomel, west of the capital, and then use it to quickly pump troops into Kyiv…
…The Ukrainians knew the Russians were coming. Burns had secretly traveled to Kyiv in January to brief Zelensky on the Russian plan, according to two knowledgeable officials. The Ukrainians used the U.S. intelligence to devastate the attacking force at Hostomel, in what may turn out to be the decisive battle of the war. “The Russians had no Plan B,” explained Marek Menkiszak, a Polish intelligence analyst with the Centre for Eastern Studies in Warsaw.
And, of course, there is intel that Biden’s forceful actions in Ukraine **ALSO ** made China back off plans to invade Taiwan just a few months later:
The whistleblower continued: “Not only that: Xi Jinping was at least tentatively considering the capture of Taiwan in the autumn—he needs his own small victory in order to be re-elected for a third term—there is a colossal power struggle among the [party] elite. Now, after the events in Ukraine, this window of opportunity has shut, which gives the United States the opportunity to both blackmail Xi and negotiate with his [political] rivals on favorable terms.”
The author concludes that Moscow’s actions had inadvertently trapped Beijing, forcing the Chinese leadership to scuttle its own invasion plans.
That wouldn’t surprise me. Jan 6 is one event where I feel like things came very close to becoming very very bad and many people just don’t seem to realize how close we came. The Ukraine invasion and what China was seeing by watching our response was another. Imagine if Trump had been in the White House.
The other thing to remember is that the Biden Administration did all of this in spite of Trump january 6th bullshit, which **included ** not including the transition team in intelligence briefings for months after the election and seriously damaging the ability of the Biden Administration to be ready on day 1.
I truly believe that this was a major factor in why the Afghanistan pullout went so poorly, given the hard deadline Trump had left to the Biden Administration - they were already months behind in their ability to plan AND had to fix NATO, and lay the foundations to respond forcefully to a Russian Invasion.
Every Democratic administration this century has been left with an absolute shitshow to clean up. Just once I’d like to see a Democrat take office without the country being on fire.
Only way that happens is to stop electing GOP Administrations.