Trump undercuts Zelenskyy — but Americans are not abandoning Ukraine
We know Putin is a KGB-trained thug who disappears his critics, and that Trump admires him for it; we also know that Trump keeps declaring national emergencies to give his criminally unqualified Secretary of Defense on-the-job training. Secretary Pete Hegseth, a former Fox News host with white supremacy ink all over his body, needs to learn early which military commanders will go along with Trump's second violent coup, and which ones he needs to terminate (or worse).
We also know Russia invaded Ukraine, not the other way around; hundreds of millions of people around the world have seen the videos and won't be gaslit, despite Trump's shameless lies. Please, whatever you think of Americans, do not think we are all as stupid as Trump assumes we are.
As Trump tries to demean Ukraine with Putin's false claim that President Zelenskky's approval rating is at 4%, keep in mind that Trump barely won. He won 49% of the vote compared to Harris' 48%, a difference of 1%. America's biggest challenge isn't MAGA, but the plurality of 90 million qualified voters who didn't bother to vote at all in November's election despite the stakes. American apathy has many root causes, that's another thing on our to do list, but love of an unhinged strongman isn't one of them.
We also have a media problem, thanks largely to Trump/Musk/Putin's relentless efforts to flood the zone with disinformation. The right wing controlled media (Fox, OAN, Newsmax, X, and nearly 2000 right-wing radio stations) runs pure Trump propaganda. That's because, under our current legal system, corporate-owned media is not required to tell the truth. It's not like in the UK where the law requires fairness and impartiality in reporting the news; Fox and X are more like Putin's State TV, where corporate owners dummy down their viewers and prop up politicians for their own corporate interests. Restoring truth in the news is another thing on our to do list.
Like white on rice, Trump is all over President Zelenskyy. It's not a new obsession. Perhaps, like France's Macron, he locked eyes with Melania and kissed her, I wonder? Trump really is that small, but in his defense, any playground bully would be aggrieved. Too many people love Zelenskyy and admire the Ukrainian people's struggle.
Zelenskyy's youth and good looks surely don't help in Trump's grievance department. Zelenskyy's 2019 refusal to manufacture 'evidence' to hurt Joe Biden no doubt still chafes. Trump got caught trying to blackmail him with funds Congress had already approved, and he's still blaming the victim, as any abuser would. His efforts this week to demand half of Ukraine's rare earth minerals, like they owe something to the mob boss because presidents before him had principles, was next-level embarrassing. All I can say is I'm sorry.
Not only is he mentally unwell, he is laughably but dangerously petty. He nurses old grudges like a dementia patient and lives to hurt anyone who shows him up, and right now, tag, Ukraine is it.
The problem in America is that extremely wealthy men have orchestrated a coup to further enrich themselves and their greedy families. Back when America really was a great superpower on the rise, the wealthiest industrialists paid their fair share of taxes. The Rockefellers and Vanderbilts built the nation and shared their wealth, and the nation benefitted for decades. At the apex of our rise, wealthy Americans paid effective income tax rates as high as 94%. But Republicans changed all that starting in the 1980s and insisted that deep tax cuts for the rich would trickle down. They never did.
Today, men like Elon Musk pay an effective tax rate of 3%, and his companies, like Tesla, pay almost nothing in taxes. That is why they spend so much to get Trump and other Republicans elected: to keep their unjust tax cuts and write their own regulations.
Republicans' tax cuts to the rich morphed into selling election outcomes. In 2010, Citizens United held that the uber rich could select our national leaders by donating undisclosed millions to candidates who would do their bidding. After Musk paid $48 billion to ruin Twitter and another $300 million to get Trump elected, Republican Congressmen today are frightened, afraid to do their jobs. Musk has credibly threatened to primary any Congressman who criticizes Trump's power grab, and when the world's richest man aims his money at your head with the trigger cocked, you freeze.
When he ran for re-election, Trump promised $1 billion fossil fuel donors that they could ruin the environment without regulations, and here we are. We have entered the final stage of Citizens United's oligarchic takeover, with its infectious spawns Musk, Vance and Trump at the helm.
As the world's wealthiest men team up to impose maximum harm on the world by embracing Nazism and partnering with Putin, one of the world's most lethal dictators, please take heart. It's obvious violence is coming to the US, but America will sort itself out. We always do the right thing, as Churchill reportedly said, after other possibilities have been exhausted.
I close here in shared weariness in knowing there really are evil men in the world who will do anything for power and wealth. Also, in sympathy and apology, heartbroken for both our countries, but not defeated. I just want Ukrainians fighting for their freedom and their lives, and democratic forces around the world to know: Most Americans see Trump. And we see you.
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San Francisco Chronicle
17 minutes ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
This conversation is being recorded: Trump's hot mic moment is the latest in a long global list
LONDON (AP) — Behold the power of the humble hot mic. The magnifier of sound, a descendant of 150-year-old technology, on Monday added to its long history of cutting through the most scripted political spectacles when it captured more than two minutes of U.S. President Donald Trump and eight European leaders chit-chatting around a White House news conference on their talks to end Russia's war in Ukraine. The standout quote came from Trump himself to French President Emmanuel Macron even before anyone sat down. The American president, reflecting his comments after meeting in Alaska with Russian President Vladimir Putin: 'I think he wants to make a deal for me, you understand, as crazy as it sounds.' How politics and diplomacy sound when the principals think no one is listening can reveal much about the character, humor and humanity of our leaders — for better and sometimes for worse. As public figures, they've long known what the rest of us are increasingly learning in the age of CCTV, Coldplay kiss cams and social media: In public, no one can realistically expect privacy. 'Whenever I hear about a hot mic moment, my first reaction is that this is what they really think, that it's not gone through the external communications filter,' said Bill McGowan, founder and CEO of Clarity Media Group in New York. 'That's why people love it so much: There is nothing more authentic than what people say on a hot mic.' Always assume the microphone — or camera — is turned on Hot mics, often leavened with video, have bedeviled aspiring and actual leaders long before social media. During a sound check for his weekly radio address in 1984, U.S. President Ronald Reagan famously joked about attacking the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War. 'My fellow Americans," Reagan quipped, not realizing the practice run was being recorded. "I'm pleased to tell you today that I've signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes.' The Soviet Union didn't find it funny and condemned it given the consequential subject at hand. Putin, too, has fallen prey to the perils of a live mic. In 2006, he was quoted in Russian media joking about Israel's president, who had been charged with and later was convicted of rape. The Kremlin said Putin was not joking about rape and his meaning had been lost in translation. Sometimes a hot mic moment involves no words at all. Presidential candidate Al Gore was widely parodied for issuing exasperated and very audible sighs during his debate with George W. Bush in 2000. In others, the words uttered for all to hear are profane. Bush was caught telling running mate Dick Cheney that a reporter for The New York Times was a 'major-league a--hole.' 'This is a big f———- deal,' then-U.S. Vice President Joe Biden famously said, loudly enough to be picked up on a microphone, as President Barack Obama prepared to sign his signature Affordable Care Act in 2010. Obama was caught on camera in South Korea telling Dmitri Medvedev, then the Russian president, that he'll have 'more flexibility' to resolve sensitive issues — 'particularly with missile defense' — after the 2012 presidential election, his last. Republican Mitt Romney, Obama's rival that year, called the exchange 'bowing to the Kremlin.' 'Sometimes it's the unguarded moments that are the most revealing of all,' Romney said in a statement, dubbing the incident 'hot mic diplomacy.' Live mics have picked up name-calling and gossip aplenty even in the most mannerly circles. In 2022, Jacinda Ardern, then New Zealand's prime minister, known for her skill at debating and calm, measured responses, was caught on a hot mic tossing an aside in which she referred to a rival politician as 'such an arrogant pr—-' during Parliament Question Time. In 2005, Jacques Chirac, then president of France, was recorded airing his distaste for British food during a visit to Russia. Speaking to Putin and Gerhard Schroder, he was heard saying that worse food could only be found in Finland, according to widely reported accounts. Britain's King Charles III chose to deal with his hot mic moment with humor. In 2022, shortly after his coronation, Charles lost his patience with a leaky pen while signing a document on a live feed. He can be heard grousing: "Oh, God, I hate this!' and muttering, 'I can't bear this bloody thing … every stinking time.' It wasn't the first pen that had troubled him. The British ability to poke fun at oneself, he said in a speech the next year, is well known: 'Just as well, you may say, given some of the vicissitudes I have faced with frustratingly failing fountain pens this past year.' Trump owns perhaps the ultimate hot mic moment The American president is famously uncontrolled in public with a penchant for 'saying it like it is,' sometimes with profanity. That makes him popular among some supporters. But even he had trouble putting a lid on comments he made before he was a candidate to "Access Hollywood' in tapes that jeopardized his campaign in the final stretch of the 2016 presidential race. Trump did not appear to know the microphone was recording. Trump bragged about kissing, groping and trying to have sex with women who were not his wife on recordings obtained by The Washington Post and NBC News and aired just two days before his debate with Hillary Clinton. The celebrity businessman boasted 'when you're a star, they let you do it,' in a conversation with Billy Bush, then a host of the television show. On Monday, though, the chatter on both ends of the East Room press conference gave observers a glimpse of the diplomatic game. Dismissed unceremoniously from the White House in March, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy now sat at the table with Trump and seven of his European peers: Macron, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, Finland's President Alexander Stubb, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer. Trump complimented Macron's tan. He said Stubb is a good golfer. He asked if anyone wanted to ask the press questions when the White House pool was admitted to the room — before it galloped inside. The European leaders smiled at the shouting and shuffling. Stubb asked Trump if he's 'been through this every day?' 'He loves it. He loves it, eh?" she said.
USA Today
17 minutes ago
- USA Today
Trump's push for peace
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New York Post
17 minutes ago
- New York Post
China restricts AI across the country to prevent kids cheating, America could learn from it
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Courtest of Murphy Kenefick Advertisement 'It's a fight every assignment,' Murphy Kenefick, a Nashville high school literature teacher, told The Post. 'I've caught it about 40 times, and who knows how many other times they've gotten away with it.' AI optimists often argue that, if we pump the breaks on AI, China will just surpass us. But Harris argues that whatever country learns to better regulate the new tech will be the real victor — because they'll have smarter citizens. 'What's guiding this is the race between the US and China — if we don't build it, we're just gonna lose to the country that will,' he explained. 'But this is a mistake, because [the winner is] actually who's better at governing the technology.' He added, 'We beat China to social media. Did that make us stronger or did that make us weaker?' 6 People who use AI for assignments have less brain activity while completing work, according to a recent MIT study. Alina – Harris is right. The US might have been cutting edge on rolling out platforms like Instagram and YouTube, but we were also cutting edge in hooking our kids and turning them into doom-scrolling zombies. China ultimately came out with the heroin of social media: TikTok. But, unlike us, they've always taken great care to protect their populace from harm. The CCP exported TikTok — with its twerking trends and dangerous challenges, while giving their own citizens a modified, less addictive, and more pro-social version. Advertisement 6 The CCP has heavily regulated youth access to technology under Xi Jinping. REUTERS Douyin, the Chinese iteration, has voice reminders and interruptions for users who scroll for too long. Teens under 14 are limited to only 40 minutes a day and are shown inspirational content, like science experiments, patriotic videos, and educational content, according to Harris. Douyin also censors information deemed counter to national interests, including content from economists who were critical of the Chinese economy, according to the New York Times. TikTok declined to comment on this matter. Advertisement Unlike the American government, the CCP wields authoritarian control over their populace and their tech companies. America shouldn't copy them wholesale. 6 Chinese citizens only have access to the Douyin app instead of TikTok. Mojahid Mottakin – But China is cunning, clever, and forward-looking. If they've decided that endless scrolling on TikTok and homework help from AI is bad for their kids, it's probably bad for ours too. 'China is correct to take the risks of AI seriously, not just for education but for society as a whole,' Anthony Aguirre, co-Founder and Executive Director of the Future of Life Institute, told The Post. Advertisement 'The United States will have very different ways of addressing this, but the answer can't be to do nothing. Lawmakers must step up now with clear safeguards to protect children and society from repeating the same mistakes we did with social media.' As we unleash AI — which has the potential to be the most transformative modern technology ever invented — onto the world, we must take great care to do so cautiously, especially when it comes to our youth. If we fail to, the next generation in China may leave their tech-addled counterparts in America in the dust. Perhaps the real arms race is the long game.
