How Is Trump Playing Tickle Monster With Dictators This Week?
A horrifying little roundup!
There’s been a lot of news this week, so it’s easy to forget that it was just this past weekend that Donald Trump and Hungarian fascist dictator Viktor Orbán had their playdate at Mar-a-Lago, where they braided each other’s ass hair and talked about which other world dictator they’d love to get stuck in an elevator with. (Putin. For both of them.)
Here are a few things that have happened since then:
Orbán’s Afterglow
After Orbán did the walk of shame out of Mar-a-Lago, he bragged that Trump had told him that "He will not give a penny in the Ukraine-Russia war” and “That is why the war will end.” Of course not, because Trump and Orbán both are on the side of America’s enemies.
Trump has always used Ukraine as leverage in his relationship with Putin, and even tried to extort Ukraine to force it to help him steal the 2020 election by announcing fake investigations into the Bidens, for which he was impeached. Meanwhile, Russia was doing its part on the other side of that plot, supplying the fake intelligence and the spies who were seeding people like Rudy Giuliani with made-up stories about the Bidens.
It’s an ongoing relationship.
"It is obvious that Ukraine cannot stand on its own feet," Mr Orban told Hungary's M1 TV channel late on Sunday.
"If the Americans don't give money and weapons, along with the Europeans, then the war is over. And if the Americans don't give money, the Europeans alone are unable to finance this war. And then the war is over."
House Speaker Mike Johnson has been an eager foot soldier for Putin on that front, holding up Ukraine aid in the House, first because “border,” which we now know Republicans don’t actually care about, and now for no discernible reason. Heather Cox Richardson suggested this week that the entire border song-and-dance was literally a Republican “smokescreen” to give Putin time to take Ukraine — our ally — and at this point, it’s hard to disagree. Remember when the deal got hammered out, and then Donald Trump got on the phone and told them all to kill it because it would hurt his re-election campaign?
“It appears as though Trump is deliberately undermining the national security of the United States,” wrote Richardson. We’re not exaggerating when we call these people traitors.
Orbán could not stop talking about his weekend playdate with Trump. He said Trump had “pretty detailed” plans for ending the war, so we guess Trump really laid out for him his plans to give Putin everything he ever wanted with chocolate syrup and a sloppy blowjob.
Obviously Orbán didn’t meet with Joe Biden, the real president of the United States, during his little weekend in America.
Trump’s Afterglow Literally Every Time A Dictator Talks To Him
On Monday, CNN published reporting from Jim Sciutto’s new book The Return Of Great Powers (Wonkette commission link), which continues to paint the picture of why Trump is in such mad love with all these dictators. Surprise, it has to do with his own intense insecurity about his own power and masculinity.
Retired Gen. John Kelly, who’s always telling us the truth about the contempt Trump has for American troops and veterans, shared these thoughts with Sciutto:
“He thought Putin was an OK guy and Kim was an OK guy — that we had pushed North Korea into a corner,” retired Gen. John Kelly, who served as Trump’s chief of staff, told me. “To him, it was like we were goading these guys. ‘If we didn’t have NATO, then Putin wouldn’t be doing these things.’”
Uh huh, everything is America’s fault. Heard that one.
These quotes, from Kelly and from John Bolton, get into the psychology of Trump:
“He views himself as a big guy,” John Bolton, who served as national security adviser under Trump, told me. “He likes dealing with other big guys, and big guys like Erdogan in Turkey get to put people in jail and you don’t have to ask anybody’s permission. He kind of likes that.”
“He’s not a tough guy by any means, but in fact quite the opposite,” Kelly said. “But that’s how he envisions himself.”
Those two quotes: “He views himself as a big guy.” “He’s not a tough guy by any means, but in fact quite the opposite. But that’s how he envisions himself.”
If you ever need an elevator speech about the men of MAGA, there it is.
Sciutto’s reporting also has these words from Kelly on Trump’s reported adoration for Adolf Hitler, whose speeches he used to keep by his bed:
“He said, ‘Well, but Hitler did some good things.’ I said, ‘Well, what?’ And he said, ‘Well, [Hitler] rebuilt the economy.’ But what did he do with that rebuilt economy? He turned it against his own people and against the world. And I said, ‘Sir, you can never say anything good about the guy. Nothing,’” Kelly recounted. “I mean, Mussolini was a great guy in comparison.”
“It’s pretty hard to believe he missed the Holocaust, though, and pretty hard to understand how he missed the 400,000 American GIs that were killed in the European theater,” Kelly told me. “But I think it’s more, again, the tough guy thing.”
And of course there’s the thing about how Trump — an idiot — admires how “loyal” Hitler’s generals were, and had zero idea some of them had tried to assassinate him.
This isn’t all new, of course. We’ve heard a lot about it, including from Kelly, and these stories often end up in people’s books.
And of course, all we have to do is watch Trump speak to know that he’s a fan of talking like literally Hitler.
At what point is it just a verified pattern and we can drop the “allegedly” and just say this motherfucker loves Hitler and wants to be just like him?
Read the whole Sciutto, because obviously there’s stuff about Trump tongue-bathing Putin that we left out.
Intelligence Briefings? For The Guy Who Literally Stole America’s Secrets And Is On Trial For It Right Now? The Guy Who’s In Love With America’s Enemies? Really?
Well, Trump has officially secured the Republican nomination as of this week, and you know what that means! It’s TRADITION, after all. (It is not the law.)
The intelligence community is already freaked out.
A former senior U.S. intelligence official, granted anonymity to avoid backlash from the Trump camp, noted that Trump still retains close ties with foreign leaders, including Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu, and could use the information to support them or advance his own interests. Trump once spilled details of a highly classified Israel intelligence operation to senior Russian officials in the Oval Office. In another case, he tweeted a picture taken by a classified spy satellite.
“I’d be afraid about giving him stuff,” the former official said. “I mean, who knows what kind of riff he would do.”
John Bolton told Politico that, considering the whole court case about stealing state secrets, it would probably be fine to eschew TRADITION in this case. “We haven’t faced this situation before. But I think the logic could well dictate to Biden he’s not going to give Trump an intelligence briefing,” he said.
Gonna have to agree with Baron von Mustache Ride here.
Of course, other officials Politico talked to said there are other considerations at play here, and besides, the briefings they give presidential candidates aren’t all that detailed. Plus, the briefings don’t really happen until after the conventions. Who knows what Trump’s legal and financial and political situations will be like by then?
There’s also the fact that Trump is fucking braindead. Did you hear him babbling to Newsmax this week that Bill Clinton smuggled classified information out of the White House in his socks? He thinks Hillary Clinton bleached her emails with real acid.
It’s likely whatever he tried to tell Putin after his briefing would be of zero value.
DO NOT CONGRATULATE
Oh yeah, Vladimir Putin is being “re-elected” this week. (No spoilers!)
Remember when Putin was “re-elected” in 2018 and the one thing Trump was not supposed to do on his call with Putin was congratulate him? “DO NOT CONGRATULATE,” it said in all caps.
Wonder what Trump will tell him this week.
Well, that was a good and horrifying roundup of Donald Trump and his favorite dictators. He’s officially the Republican nominee! Totally cool, nothing to worry about!
BRB, doing our breathing exercises.
SO MANY PREVIOUSLIES, A DOCTORAL THESIS IN THIS GUY AND DICTATORS PREVIOUSLIES.
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>> Did you hear him babbling to Newsmax this week that Bill Clinton smuggled classified information out of the White House in his socks? <<
So fucking ridiculous and unfair.
It was cocaine and poppers, not classified info. I mean, what kind of cat smuggles classified info past the US Secret Service in its rectum?
𝑱𝒐𝒉𝒏 𝑩𝒐𝒍𝒕𝒐𝒏 𝒕𝒐𝒍𝒅 𝑷𝒐𝒍𝒊𝒕𝒊𝒄𝒐 𝒕𝒉𝒂𝒕, 𝒄𝒐𝒏𝒔𝒊𝒅𝒆𝒓𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒘𝒉𝒐𝒍𝒆 𝒄𝒐𝒖𝒓𝒕 𝒄𝒂𝒔𝒆 𝒂𝒃𝒐𝒖𝒕 𝒔𝒕𝒆𝒂𝒍𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒔𝒕𝒂𝒕𝒆 𝒔𝒆𝒄𝒓𝒆𝒕𝒔, 𝒊𝒕 𝒘𝒐𝒖𝒍𝒅 𝒑𝒓𝒐𝒃𝒂𝒃𝒍𝒚 𝒃𝒆 𝒇𝒊𝒏𝒆 𝒕𝒐 𝒆𝒔𝒄𝒉𝒆𝒘 𝑻𝑹𝑨𝑫𝑰𝑻𝑰𝑶𝑵 𝒊𝒏 𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒔 𝒄𝒂𝒔𝒆. “𝑾𝒆 𝒉𝒂𝒗𝒆𝒏’𝒕 𝒇𝒂𝒄𝒆𝒅 𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒔 𝒔𝒊𝒕𝒖𝒂𝒕𝒊𝒐𝒏 𝒃𝒆𝒇𝒐𝒓𝒆. 𝑩𝒖𝒕 𝑰 𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒏𝒌 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒍𝒐𝒈𝒊𝒄 𝒄𝒐𝒖𝒍𝒅 𝒘𝒆𝒍𝒍 𝒅𝒊𝒄𝒕𝒂𝒕𝒆 𝒕𝒐 𝑩𝒊𝒅𝒆𝒏 𝒉𝒆’𝒔 𝒏𝒐𝒕 𝒈𝒐𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒕𝒐 𝒈𝒊𝒗𝒆 𝑻𝒓𝒖𝒎𝒑 𝒂𝒏 𝒊𝒏𝒕𝒆𝒍𝒍𝒊𝒈𝒆𝒏𝒄𝒆 𝒃𝒓𝒊𝒆𝒇𝒊𝒏𝒈,” 𝒉𝒆 𝒔𝒂𝒊𝒅.
How about giving him a briefing full of juicy, fake information and see which foreign adversaries start talking about it the next week?