As TPM headline stated when this story first broke: “Tip of the Iceberg.” Trump has been acting like this with foreign leaders for a long time. This whistle blower had seen enough. Reportedly the whistle blower’s fear was Trump White House officials were going to sweep this Ukraine call under the rug. So the person filed the official complaint.
Another unrelated example is the California Emissions dispute. Trump is threatening to withhold $1 Billion in Fed Highway funds if California does not change it’s car emission standards.
All this while Trumps strategy is to send out the few idiots still willing to shill for him and act like this is nothing. They even keep trying to bring Biden up. It is typical low energy, no thought, crazy ass defense but that is what they are going with.
The president always talks a good game of how he’d like to hurt or kill.
I’d wager my retirement fund that we’re soon going to hear about a call with Saudi Arabia in which he said some variant of “Yeah, I wish we could do that with our journalists over here.”
Ukraine is a big goal, but I have thought this spans a lot more than just that. It is about ego, power, control and wealth. My pet theory has been for a long time that what we see in terms of nations is not functional with these people. We have to look at a lot of these players, with Putin at the top currently, as a stateless society making merry at our expense.
Russia has quietly been disrupting the status quo like a rampaging bull. It has put many countries on edge internally by carefully enhancing or creating divisions within. Meanwhile they are creating pathways into areas that they had little access to before. I have zero belief that Putin is a true patriot for his country. He is simply someone acting like a warlord taking all he can in the process.
I agree with you about Putin. That is what has been the scariest thing about all of this to me. They do operate like stateless warlords. Trump is the most hypocritical example of a nationalist ever - all his business is international. I can’t believe even his cult can swallow that one - I just can’t believe it.
They’re both civilians now so there shouldn’t be any chain of command considerations if they think that national security has been at risk. The way Coates and Gordon were dumped makes me hope that they both have something to say about this incident.
I think if he could concoct a reason for dropping a nuke he would just so he could say he did it while he was the war president. The first military act he did was drop the biggest bunker bomb in our arsenal in Afghanistan. I think he was just seeing what it felt like.
He is the most supreme example of the useful idiot. Trump has a long track record of trying to be part of the elite and being rejected as a buffoon. Someone like Putin walks in, takes him under wing and suddenly Trump feels like he is now part of the team. What he has not figured out is he is just Putin’s towel boy, collecting used towels and jock straps.
Putin’s mistake at this point is actually thinking Trump could get him over the finish line. Instead, Trump is so incompetent he is damn near impeaching himself. What worries me is Trump 2.0, whoever that might be.
I hope you’re right, but I suspect they may have been kept away from the worst of what went on in the WH, because Trump has mistrusted the Intelligence community from the start. OTOH, they might have read intercepts that are relevant, so they do need to testify.
It’s weird but then his entire pathology is weird. He doesn’t care about any other people but he really wants to be a hero and not a war president. He wants to be loved. That’s how they got him on this path and have kept him there - the sheer adulation of his cult. He thought the whole country was going to treat him that way, however.
Who knows what he’d be willing to ignore.