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April 2025
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George Rebane

Given the choices I remain a Trump supporter.  I have voted for him three times.  But as RR pages witness and its readers know, I am not an uncritical acolyte of his administration.  He has totally misread what may be termed the elements of negotiating with totalitarians, especially those of the communist stripe like Putin and Xi.  On the hopeful side, there are some indications that the president is beginning to realize that he has been played by the KGB thug.

Students of history know that negotiating progress with communist regimes only occurs when they have demonstrated a strategic gain in the field, or they are afraid of suffering a near-term defeat in the field.  When things are normative, the communist bides his time by rope-a-doping his counterpart.  Lenin put that in the playbook, and Stalin perfected and demonstrated its application.  His successors, until this day, have fastidiously and faithfully continued the practice.

An early illustration of this was Stalin’s response to critics of his ante-bellum ruthless domestic policies.  When informed that the Pope, strongly influencing world opinion, was very unhappy with the millions being killed in the USSR, Iosif Vissarionovich responded by asking ‘How many divisions does the Pope have?’  Existential force and the demonstrated willingness to employ it is the opposition’s ONLY attribute recognized by the totalitarian.  Everything else is simply bullshit and a display of weakness.  Trump’s favorable characterizations of Putin and Xi have strengthened their resolve to treat our president, despite his usual bravado, as a naif in international relations.

So there we have it today.  Putin has intensified his attacks on Ukrainian civilians while supposedly negotiating a cease fire, and Xi is overtly violating Taiwanese airspace and holding large-scale invasion rehearsals in waters that completely surround the island nation.  Both feeling quite certain that Trump will never put American boots on the ground, nor challenge China with our blue water Navy.  And every day that passes without a strong response only serves to strengthen the dictators’ resolve.

And don’t get me started on tariffs (again).

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14 responses to “Trump trumped?”

  1. channel manager Avatar

    great post , thank you for sharing.

    Like

  2. Resurrected Hillbilly Avatar
    Resurrected Hillbilly

    Trump’s staffing choices of media influencer wannabees are keeping Americans laughing at their incompetence and cluelessness.
    “The White House’s weird influencer briefings keep getting worse. After the first one featured a MAGA personality who believed the moon had disappeared, I tuned in Tuesday to see a second influencer briefing starring Brenden Dilley.
    Dilley is a QAnon conspiracy theorist who once refused to wear a mask during the pandemic on the grounds that he also hates to wear condoms—and quipped that he has three children by three different women to prove it.
    Then on Wednesday, the influencer briefing included Dom Lucre, a popular conspiracy theorist who was briefly banned from X in 2023 after posting child sexual abuse imagery. He asked whether the Trump administration would launch new investigations of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. What great additions to the White House press corps!
    Assistant attorney general can’t stop tweeting
    The Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division is in turmoil. Amid a pivot away from cases about police and voting-rights and toward culture-war issues like anti-Christian discrimination and transgender sports issues, more than half of the division’s lawyers are expected to quit.
    So how is Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon handling this pivotal moment for the division she directs? Well, she is certainly tweeting a lot.
    Like Pete Hegseth at the Pentagon, Dhillon represents an experiment in whether right-wing media personalities can transfer their attention-seeking skills into running the federal government.
    A California lawyer who became prominent in MAGA media for championing conservative legal cases, especially opposition to COVID mandates, Dhillon has more than 1 million followers on X. And, like FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino, she’s kept her fans updated while she’s in government with a steady stream of posts, many of which come in the middle of the workday and have nothing to do with civil rights or the Justice Department.
    Since being sworn in on April 8, Dhillon, from her personal account, has tweeted 263 times, or 11.9 times a day, not counting things she’s retweeted. As I wrote this newsletter, Dhillon tweeted once again, this time about when she bathed in a “sacred pool” in India. Ten minutes after that, and still very much during the workday, Dhillon tweeted about a political meme she wanted to post—“But,” she cautioned herself at 3:01 p.m. on a Wednesday, “that wouldn’t be prudent.
    As an assistant attorney general, Dhillon polls her followers on what color Tesla she should lease, describes the flowers in front of her house, and advises people to pour water up their noses to clear up congestion.
    “I have found that nasal lavage aka NetiPot in the shower and at night to rinse the sinuses, provides temporary relief,” Dhillon tweeted on Monday.
    The Justice Department didn’t respond to a request for comment about Dhillon’s rigorous posting regimen.
    Dhillon’s many posts haven’t been missed by the MAGA faithful, who, as with Bongino, are getting restless about the lack of deep-state crooks shipped off to Guantánamo Bay under the new administration and aren’t afraid to point it out to her.
    As a result, Dhillon spends much of her time on X sparring with her critics, telling them that they’re muted for crimes like general rudeness or “dimwittery” (in that case, the person in question hadn’t replied to one of her tweets, but to one from Dinesh D’Souza). On April 21, for example, Dhillon asked her followers which podcasts and TV shows she should prioritize in terms of her media appearances.
    “Do something,” replied one frustrated follower. “Is the entire DOJ obsessed with TV hits??”
    “Muted for being a jerk,” Dhillon replied.
    On another occasion, after a Trump supporter complained that Attorney General Pam Bondi was prioritizing Fox News appearances over arrests of supposedly corrupt Democrats, Dhillon told the man he was being “muted for ignorance.”
    While America has yet to fully see Dhillon’s approach to law enforcement, her handling of rude tweets has been both visible and strict. Since being sworn in, she’s announced that she’s muted 30 people, and blocked 1, for an average of 1.35 blocks or mutes a day.
    Meanwhile, Dhillon’s division continues to bleed talent. In an appearance on Glenn Beck’s podcast, she claimed roughly one hundred lawyers had already quit the division and more are expected to follow. All told, roughly 70 percent of the civil rights division, she said, could be gone.
    RFK: Chemtrails are real, and the Trump administration is doing them!
    Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has been chemtrail-curious in the past, saying there was some validity to the idea that the government is nefariously spraying chemicals from airplanes.
    Now that he has been tasked with overseeing the nation’s massive healthcare bureaucracy, he appears determined to act on these suspicions.
    The secretary of health and human services said recently that he might even hire a sort of chemtrails czar, whose sole job would be stopping the practice.
    “I’m going to do everything in my power to stop it, or bring on somebody who’s going to think only about that, find out who’s doing it, and holding them accountable,” Kennedy said in an appearance Tuesday on Dr. Phil.
    Depending on whose version of the conspiracy you believe, chemtrails are a government plot meant to either control the climate or brainwash the population—or both! On his pre-government-life podcast, Kennedy hosted a prominent chemtrail conspiracist and left, in his words, “persuaded” by his pitch.
    But Kennedy’s comments on Dr. Phil appear to be the first confirmation that he intends to actually act on chemtrails as HHS secretary. Should he follow through, it would constitute a remarkable amount of government resources dedicated to pure quackery.
    The chemtrails discussion on Dr. Phil started when a woman in the audience asked what Kennedy was going to do about chemical “injections” from the sky.
    “My biggest concern is the stratospheric aerosol injections that are continuously peppered on us everyday,” she said. “Bromium, aluminum, strontium—it’s sprayed in our skies all day long.”
    The woman’s question was met with some uneasy laughter from the audience. But Kennedy took it seriously. He explained that HHS wasn’t involved in injecting the chemicals into the air but not as a means of dismissing the idea that any of this was real. Instead, he pointed the finger at another part of the government, the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).
    “It’s done, we think, by DARPA, and a lot of it now is coming out of the jet fuel,” he said.
    HHS didn’t respond to my request for comment. DARPA also didn’t respond about Kennedy’s accusation that it’s spraying the country with chemicals.
    Neither Kennedy nor his questioner used the word “chemtrails.” But his remarks have been championed by people afraid of chemtrails as proof that they’re real.
    “Let that sink in,” wrote a blogger for the Gateway Pundit. “The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) might be behind what’s being sprayed in our skies.”
    On social media, Newsmax host Carl Higbie fumed over the chemicals.
    “RFK admitting that they put these chemicals in Jet Fuel,” he wrote on X. “WHAT GIVES THEM THE RIGHT TO SPRAY THIS SHIT OVER MY PROPERTY.”
    Chemtrail enthusiasm emerged after a 1996 Air Force paper speculated that the military could use weather modification as a weapon. But in reality, much of what conspiracy-theory believers argue is a nefarious government plot is really just jet fuel exhaust mixed with air at high altitudes.
    Nevertheless, the conspiracy has gained traction in recent years, with lawmakers now moving to ban nonexistent chemtrails in several states.
    There is no word yet on whom Kennedy might hire as the HHS chemtrails czar. But might I recommend Half Baked star Jim Breuer? In March, Breuer, now a conservative comedian, complained that Republicans had failed to stop chemtrails from being sprayed over Florida.
    Comments –
    Regarding Chemtrails; I live within five miles of a US Airbase, Luke AFB in the, ‘West Valley’ outside of Phoenix, AZ. Do you think RFK could launch an investigation into the correlation between “Extreme Chemtrail Saturation” and the voters in my Congressional district re-electing Rep Paul Gosar by a two-to-one margin in 2024? It seems it me to be a much more reasonable explanation than, ‘People are really f’n stupid’! Please advise and, thanks in advance
    ROTFLMAO

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  3. George Rebane Avatar

    RHillbilly 830am – Your long harangue is worthy of its own post on RR as a contributed byline. Next time please send me your lengthy offering, and I will post it. Thanks.

    Like

  4. fish Avatar
    fish

    Posted by: George Rebane | 02 May 2025 at 09:17 AM
    Sounds like the Greek Fishermans cap is too tight again!
    If our resident pseudointellectual Hillbilly doesn’t care for this state of affairs he should probably find a way to inform the highers up in Democrat Party circles that running a candidate who was only on the ticket in the first place because she was of vaguely mocha hue and whose sole political skill was…ahem…the dispensing of oral favors to a legendary democrat party mob boss luminary that National elections will likely continue to elude them!

    Like

  5. Gregory Avatar
    Gregory

    George, Hillbully (aka Jeff Peeline) just lifted, without attribution, from The Bulwark.
    https://www.thebulwark.com/p/twitter-addict-running-our-government-civil-rights-arm-rfk-chemtrails
    For shame, Jeff.

    Like

  6. Paul Emery Avatar
    Paul Emery

    George
    Here is my previous post in your recommenced location:
    What is you’re opinion of Trump cutting off all business relations with any country who purchases oil from Iran?
    Direct quote from Trump:
    “ALERT: All purchases of Iranian Oil, or Petrochemical products, must stop, NOW! Any Country or person who buys ANY AMOUNT of OIL or PETROCHEMICALS from Iran will be subject to, immediately, Secondary Sanctions. They will not be allowed to do business with the United States of America in any way, shape, or form,” Trump wrote. “Thank you for your attention to this matter, PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP.”
    https://x.com/krassenstein/status/1918013247363662289

    Like

  7. Resurrected Hillbilly Avatar
    Resurrected Hillbilly

    Gregorio, glad to see you read Bulwark, there may be hope for you after all😁
    I hope you will not tell Bulwark admin I failed to attribute…

    Like

  8. Gregory Avatar
    Gregory

    I’m not surprised Hillbully reads The Bulwark. I follow links to The Bulwark on occasion but it is a compass that always points Left, not dissimilar from Punchy’s fave.
    I found where you stole the words from by searching on a fragment of the piece that was large enough to get a result from my engine of choice.

    Like

  9. Gregory Avatar
    Gregory

    No, I’d not soil myself by snitching on you to The Bulwark, but might to Northwestern, where you got your J degree.

    Like

  10. George Rebane Avatar

    PaulE 1049am – It’s worth a try to dry up Iran’s ragheads.

    Like

  11. Don Bessee Avatar
    Don Bessee

    Emperor xi has big problems, shuttered factories and riots in the street then there is the reality of the situation settling in –
    First-quarter results were just released, showing that the economy retreated marginally because companies, anticipating Trump’s tariffs, loaded up on imported goods, and also because government spending declined by 0.3 percent. As Heritage economist E.J. Antoni noted on X, consumer spending outpaced government purchases by the largest amount since the second quarter of 2022. He rightly called it “fantastic news.”
    The most important read on the U.S. economy was this summary from the Bureau of Economic Analysis: “Real final sales to private domestic purchasers, the sum of consumer spending and gross private fixed investment, increased 3.0 percent in the first quarter, compared with an increase of 2.9 percent in the fourth quarter.” In addition, the Commerce Department reported that consumer spending jumped 0.7 percent last month, on top of an upwardly revised 0.5 percent increase in February, surpassing expectations.
    In other words, despite the negative press, the economy not only continued to advance at a reasonable clip in the first quarter but saw a slight acceleration in consumer spending and investment. The huge surge in imports (goods up 51 percent!) delivered a 4.8 percent headwind to stated growth, accounting for the entire dip in GDP and then some.
    On inflation, the news was also positive, with the Personal Consumption Expenditures price index coming in unchanged in March after advancing 0.4 percent in February. For the last 12 months, personal consumption increased only 2.3 percent compared to 2.7 percent for the 12 months ending February. The core PCE in March also showed no rise, after a 0.5 percent jump the month prior.
    If the showdown between Xi and Trump comes down to whose economy is performing better, the U.S. unquestionably has the stronger hand. Even Nouriel Roubini, called “Dr. Doom” for his persistent negativity — and certainly no fan of Trump’s tariffs — says he expects the tech and AI boom to continue to power the U.S. forward. In a recent op-ed, Roubini stated that “the U.S. economy’s potential growth will approach 4 percent by 2030, far above the International Monetary Fund’s recent estimate of 1.8 percent.” His reason for thinking this was that the U.S. leads the world in ten of the 12 industries he says will define the future. China leads only in one of the 12 — “electric vehicles and other green tech.”
    Meanwhile, China’s Xi refuses to stand down, certain that U.S. consumers will balk at tariff-induced higher prices or scarcities. GOP pollster Frank Luntz recently interviewed a number of Trump voters, expecting them to rail about the tariffs, only to find they stood with the president, ready to pay a little more for U.S.-made goods and to give him time to see his agenda bear fruit.
    At the same time, manufacturers are moving out of China, at an accelerating pace.
    Xi might find, to his surprise, that Americans can do without Barbie for a time, and that U.S. companies are more capable of leaving China than he expects.
    https://currently.att.yahoo.com/news/opinion-china-underestimates-trump-trade-120000926.html
    😉

    Like

  12. Don Bessee Avatar
    Don Bessee

    Well lookie there the chi coms need an off ramp –
    A top Chinese government official is asking what the Trump administration wants the communist nation to do about chemicals used to make fentanyl amid an ongoing trade war between the world’s two largest economies.
    Wang Xiaohong, China’s minister of public security, has been making inquiries about what Trump wants China to do about the fentanyl issue over the last few days, The Wall Street Journal reported Friday.
    Chinese companies produce precursors, large quantities of chemicals that eventually flow to Mexican drug cartels, which then make fentanyl and smuggle it into the United States.
    Beijing could possibly have Wang meet with senior Trump administration officials in a neutral country, the newspaper reported.
    https://www.foxnews.com/politics/chinese-official-reportedly-seeking-accommodation-trump-fentanyl-precursors-trade-war
    😉

    Like

  13. Scott O Avatar

    I keep laughing at Bloated BeerBelly
    “Trump’s staffing choices…”
    Kambree Nelson is not a “staffing choice” nor was she “featured”.
    She attended a briefing. She is not involved with govt policy nor is she any part of the govt.
    How about this:
    ““You’ve heard the term ‘full moon.’ Sometimes you need to take the opportunity to come out and see a full moon, which is that complete rounded circle, primarily made up of gases,” Jackson Lee began. “So the question arises: could humans live on the moon given its gaseous composition?””
    There’s always the problem of over-loading an island and having it tip over according to another Dem solon.
    BeerBelly goes for the geniuses that think a man can become pregnant and there isn’t any more snow.
    He still believes Biden is sharp as a tack.
    And he shows up here with nonsense he pulls out of his ass – what a maroon.
    Folks – this is the Democrat party these days.

    Like

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