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56952
From: ryan, [DNS_Address]
Subject: such an ignorant, lying dumbass...
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Rump attacks Zelenskyy as a ‘dictator without elections’ who duped US The president’s remarkable attack on the Ukrainian president is sure to deeply worry international allies and domestic supporters of an American-led global order. By Eli Stokols, Eric Bazail-Eimil and Paul McLeary 02/19/2025 11:14 AM EST Updated: 02/19/2025 01:28 PM EST President Donald Trump continued to attack Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Wednesday, asserting in a social media post that the U.S. was duped into spending billions to help Ukraine defend itself following Russia’s 2022 invasion — and himself seemingly threatening the country’s existence. “Think of it, a modestly successful comedian, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, talked the United States of America into spending $350 Billion Dollars, to go into a War that couldn’t be won, that never had to start, but a War that he, without the U.S. and ‘TRUMP,’ will never be able to settle,” the president wrote in a post on Truth Social. “A Dictator without Elections, Zelenskyy better move fast or he is not going to have a Country left.” Trump’s remarkable attack on the wartime president — which inflates the amount of money the U.S. provided in aid and asserts without evidence that half of it was “MISSING” — came after Zelenskyy said earlier on Wednesday that Trump was “surrounded by misinformation” in response to the president’s comments on Tuesday in which he blamed Ukraine for starting the war. It comes on the heels of Trump administration negotiators meeting with Russian officials earlier this week — without Ukraine at the table — to start negotiations to potentially end the war Russia started. In the week since Trump’s first phone call of this term with Russian President Vladimir Putin, it has become increasingly clear that the president’s pressure campaign in support of a diplomatic resolution to the nearly three-year war is aimed not at Moscow but, primarily, at Kyiv. While getting Russia to the negotiating table in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday was no small feat, Trump’s eagerness to normalize relations with Moscow, his rat-a-tat of Kremlin talking points and increasingly caustic comments toward Zelenskyy have left long-time international allies rattled that these machinations are something more sinister than the usual “art of the deal.” “What Trump is doing is preemptive surrender,” said Ivo Daalder, a former U.S. ambassador to NATO under former President Barack Obama. “These talks are non-conditional. They’re designed to hit the reset button and with an eagerness to lift sanctions. They want to get back to business as normal as if this is [Mikhail] Gorbachev 1987, not Putin 2025. It’s a complete misreading of what Putin is all about.” The Trump administration’s public comments about the situation are increasingly mirroring the Kremlin’s own goals: flatly ruling out Ukraine’s accession to NATO, citing Russia’s opposition; floating easing U.S. sanctions on Russia; calling for new elections in Ukraine (long pushed by Moscow in an effort to question Zelenskyy’s legitimacy) as part of any peace deal; and blaming NATO and Ukraine for a war that Russia launched unilaterally by invading its neighbor in February 2022. It also reveals a more visible contempt for Kyiv from top administration officials. Vice President JD Vance sharply criticized Zelenskyy for saying Trump was surrounded by “disinformation,” chiding the Ukrainian leader in an interview with the Daily Mail for “badmouthing” Trump and warning it’s an “atrocious way” to work with the United States. Former Trump administration officials and Democrats on Capitol Hill roundly condemned Trump’s post. John Bolton, who served as one of Trump’s national security advisers and has become a persona non grata in Trump’s orbit, wrote that “Trump’s characterization of Zelenskyy and Ukraine are some of the most shameful remarks ever made by a US president.” And several Republican lawmakers, including some close to Trump, clarified their belief that only Putin is to blame for launching the war. In openly discussing future economic cooperation between the U.S. and Russia before making any progress toward a peace deal, the administration is clarifying its priorities, said Jana Puglierin, who heads the European Council on Foreign Relations’ office in Berlin. “This is not primarily about Ukraine. Sure, he wants to end the war — with no interest in details — but what he really wants is a relationship with Russia,” she said. But the tonal shift comes as tech mogul Elon Musk and more populist Republicans, including on Capitol Hill, have stepped up their criticisms of Ukraine in recent days. Rep. Eli Crane (R-Ariz.) posted on X shortly after the Trump post that “Letting @DOGE loose on all of the ‘aid’ that has gone to Ukraine would open a lot of eyes,” referring to Musk’s controversial team that is reviewing government agencies’ activities in the name of promoting efficiency. Trump’s comments come as European leaders are struggling to come up with their own Ukraine policy that operates independently from the United States, something leaders publicly wrestled with at the Munich Security Conference last week, and in an emergency meeting in Paris on Monday that yielded no way forward. Another meeting was taking place in Paris on Wednesday. European leaders, even those on the right, quickly rejected Trump’s comments about Zelenskyy, though some acknowledged Europe “needs to pull its weight.” British Opposition Leader Kemi Badenoch, the leader of the Conservative Party, wrote on X that “President Zelenskyy is not a dictator” and added “we need to get serious. The PM will have my support to increase defense spending.” “Everything is on the table” in any peace talks to end the fighting in Ukraine, NATO leader Mark Rutte told POLITICO at Munich. “We have to end this in a way ... that Putin will not capture one square mile or one square kilometer of Ukraine, " Rutte said, adding: “I don’t think it will be a bad deal.” Trump’s Wednesday post about U.S. aid to Ukraine also vastly overstated the degree to which the U.S. has propped up Ukraine’s military. By even the most expansive and inclusive accounting of U.S. spending, it would not remotely reach the $350 billion Trump alleged. Europe’s spending levels are also significantly closer to the United States’ than what Trump alleged in his Truth Social post. As of Sept. 30 2024, total U.S. spending hovered around $183 billion, with most of the money obligated but not yet disbursed by the federal government, according to figures published by the U.S. government’s office of the Special Inspector General for Operation Atlantic Resolve, which monitors spending on the Ukraine war. Even factoring in additional U.S. aid packages to Kyiv in the final days of the Biden administration, total U.S. support would be far less than what Trump stated. Multiple U.S. inspector general reports since the start of the American aid flows to Kyiv have also found little to no evidence of missing weapons or aid. Trump’s statements about Zelenskyy’s approval numbers were also false. Fifty-seven percent of Ukrainians voiced support for their country’s leader in a recent poll. While that figure is lower than it was at the outset of the war, that number still exceeds what Trump alleged — and even Trump’s current approval ratings domestically. In addition, the proposal for continued economic cooperation that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent presented in Kyiv last week was deeply disconcerting to Zelenskyy, who’d expressed a willingness to give the U.S. a share of its critical minerals in exchange for future defense guarantees. The terms Trump laid out, however, aimed to give the U.S. control of half the country’s mineral deposits and the infrastructure required to export it — while providing no security guarantees. As Trump has made clear in comments since the proposal was offered to Ukraine, he views the rare earth deposits as something the country owes the U.S. as payment for the aid that it has already received. Bill Browder, the U.S. investor and Kremlin foe, likened the proposal to “war reparations from Ukraine, who’s the victim” during an appearance on Fox News Channel Wednesday morning. “Russia should be handing over their natural resources for all the money that we’ve spent, not Ukraine.” Amanda Friedman contributed to this report. |
Responses:
[56956] [56953] [56955] [56957] [56960] [56961] [56962]
56956
From: Redhart, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: such an ignorant, lying dumbass...
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this is an issue that is genuinely splitting GOP congresspeople, many who have been in support of Ukraine. if you have a republican rep, write, call, email or visit. Pressure from their constituents may help them refind a their backbones on this issue. |
Responses:
None
56953
From: ryan, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: such an ignorant, lying dumbass...
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rump uses russian talking points...he is a traitor and should be hung... What is Zelensky’s actual approval rating in Ukraine? by Filip Timotija - 02/19/25 2:06 PM ET Efrem Lukatsky, Associated Press Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky speaks in Kyiv, Ukraine, on Feb. 10, 2025. President Rump this week ramped up attacks on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, accusing him of somehow causing Russia’s invasion nearly three years ago, calling him a dictator and saying he has done a “terrible job” as the country’s leader. During a news conference in Florida on Tuesday, Trump made unsupported claims about the Ukrainian leader’s approval rating, asserting it plummeted into the single digits. “I mean, I hate to say it, but he’s down at a 4 percent approval rating,” the president said from his Florida Mar-a-Lago resort during the signing of several executive orders. Recent polling of Zelensky’s approval rating does not match up with Trump’s claims; The Hill has reached out to the White House to comment on the discrepancy. About 57 percent of Ukrainians trust the country’s president, according to a Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS) survey that was released Wednesday, while 37 percent don’t. That marked a 5-point uptick in support for Zelensky, after the December iteration of the poll found that 52 percent trusted him while 39 percent did not. Zelensky’s support, which has hovered in the 50s and 60s during last year, has declined in comparison to the initial months of the Russian invasion in February 2022. Sign up for the Morning Report The latest in politics and policy. Direct to your inbox. By signing up, I agree to the Terms of Use, have reviewed the Privacy Policy, and to receive personalized offers and communications via email, on-site notifications, and targeted advertising using my email address from The Hill, Nexstar Media Inc., and its affiliates His approval rating was 90 percent in the May 2022 version of the same survey. Prior to Russia’s invasion, Zelensky’s approval rating was at 37 percent. More than half of the respondents, 52 percent, in the February 2022 iteration of the KIIS poll said they did not trust him. Some 11 percent said it was hard to say. Zelensky shot back at Trump on Wednesday, saying the U.S. president is living in a Russian “disinformation space.” “Unfortunately, President Trump, I have great respect for him as a leader of a nation that we have great respect for, the American people who always support us, unfortunately lives in this disinformation space,” Ukraine’s president told reporters Wednesday. Zelensky specifically addressed the 4 percent claim as well. “We saw this disinformation. We understand it comes from Russia. We understand, and we have evidence that those figures have been discussed between the U.S. and Russia,” he said. Trump ramped up his rhetoric against Zelensky on Wednesday, accusing him of taking advantage of the U.S. “Think of it, a modestly successful comedian, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, talked the United States of America into spending $350 Billion Dollars, to go into a War that couldn’t be won, that never had to start, but a War that he, without the U.S. and ‘TRUMP,’ will never be able to settle,” Trump wrote Wednesday on Truth Social. Trump also questioned why Ukraine did not hold nationwide elections. Ukraine postponed a presidential election because martial law has been in place since Russia’s invasion in 2022. The verbal tit for tat comes after Secretary of State Marco Rubio, national security adviser Mike Waltz and Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff met with their Russian counterparts to start talks about ending the war in Eastern Europe and repairing the relationship between the two nuclear-armed countries. Zelensky said Ukraine could not accept the result of negotiations it’s not part of, to which Trump said Tuesday, “You should’ve ended it in three years. You should have never started it. You could have made a deal.” The newest KIIS poll was conducted Feb. 4-9 among 1,000 respondents. The margin of error was 4.1 percent for indicators close to 50 percent. |
56955
From: akira, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: such an ignorant, lying dumbass...
| it's a universal sentiment |
56957
From: mitra, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: such an ignorant, lying dumbass...
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If we could only get the Lyin' King out of *our* country! |
56960
From: Redhart, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: such an ignorant, lying dumbass...
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Frankly, I think trump would be happier in Russia. I vote we send him. He and Putin could be bunk mates. We'll throw in Elon and BigBalls to sweeten the deal for Putin. |
56961
From: ryan, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: such an ignorant, lying dumbass...
| i vote for that! twice even... |
Responses:
[56962]
56962
From: mitra, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: such an ignorant, lying dumbass...
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It would be convenient. Aren't they due for another revolution? |
Responses:
None
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