Trump, Putin, and the Future of Ukraine’s War

 

President Donald Trump met Russian President Vladimir Putin last week for the much-anticipated summit, I guess we would call it, in Anchorage, Alaska.

Remember the last time American diplomats of a high ranking—Jake Sullivan and Antony Blinken, the respective secretary of state and national security adviser to the Biden administration—met with the Chinese, they were humiliated and nothing came of it.

Trump thought he could get a ceasefire. After three hours, both Trump and Putin came out to give statements to the press. There was no question-and-answer.

Putin gave a long harangue. How would you characterize it? It was mostly a recital of Russian grievances and the need to be friendlier to America. It was an outreach, not to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy or Ukraine or Europe, but to America.

And it was in line with Russian strategy that they think Donald Trump is a strong leader, but also, he is more forgiving, or at least more malleable, about seeking a peace settlement rather than the “whatever it takes” attitude of the Biden administration. And he also believes that the Europeans are tired—after three and a half years—that Ukraine is exhausted. And so, he can appeal to Donald Trump to put an end to it on Russian terms.

What are the terms? Well, Trump didn’t outline them in his portion of the post-summit report to the media and to the world. He wasn’t depressed. He didn’t say we should have had a ceasefire. He just said that there were a lot of elements that were, more or less, concluded successfully between Putin and Trump. But more importantly, for the big sticking points, he would have to talk to the Europeans, as was noted and necessary, and President Zelenskyy.

And we know what the outlines are, don’t we? We’ve talked about them. Ukraine will not be in NATO. They don’t have the military wherewithal. They have the moral edge and the moral right—but they don’t have the military wherewithal. Nor does Europe or the United States want to go to that length to give it to them against nuclear Russia to reclaim the Donbas—all of the Donbas—or Crimea.

So, what the sticking point is, right now, these two armies are locked inside the Donbas. Basically, 50 to 100 miles on an undulating line from the Russian borders. And there could be a DMZ, like the one in Korea, and then that could be the basis for a permanent border. But the problem is that Putin has not got the entire Donbas and the regions around it. And the Ukrainians are stiffening.

Both sides are worn out. There’s been a million and a half casualties that are wounded, dead, missing, captive. But Russia has greater reserves than does Ukraine. So, there’s a desire on both sides to have an armistice.

The sticking points is that the Constitution does not allow Zelenskyy without an assent from his parliament to give away land to a foreign interloper. And Putin does not think, at this point, he has ground down the Ukrainians enough or acquired enough of their eastern territory to justify the full hearty invasion that’s cost probably a million Russians.

But here’s what I want to get to, very quickly. There’s a lot of criticism of Donald Trump because he didn’t blast Vladimir Putin. I don’t quite understand that.

Just remember that during World War II, Josef Stalin had killed 20 million of his own people. He had invaded free Poland, along with Nazi Germany. He had attacked free Finland in 1939 and ’40 and then annexed 10% of it. He had helped Germany from Sept. 1, 1939, to June 22, 1941. He was our enemy. And then suddenly, and only when Germany turned on him, did he come to us. And we accepted that alliance on the principle that he was useful. And we gave billions of dollars in aid. Thirty percent of the wherewithal of Stalin came from the British Empire or the United States government.

So, you know, President Franklin D. Roosevelt met with him at Yalta. He even called him “Uncle Joe.” This was a man who killed 20 million of his own people.

In 1972, President Richard Nixon went to China, and he tried to have a reboot of the strategic global order and play off Russia against China to the self-interest of the United States. But the point was, he sat down with the greatest mass murderer in history, Mao Zedong, who was responsible for 70 million people dead.

Was Donald Trump not to meet with Putin? Or was he to employ the vocabulary of President Joe Biden? “You’re a murderer. You’re a thug. You’re a criminal,” as Biden said of him. “And we’re gonna do whatever it takes.” Does he have support for that? For an unlimited blank check to Ukraine? No. So, he’s trying to get along with a killer in a way that past presidents have reached out to mass murderers.

The other thing is, very quickly, while there are the contours of a peace settlement, Donald Trump is not responsible for this war. He’s the most powerful man in the world. He wants to help Ukraine get a just settlement. He is working with the Europeans. He’s beefed up NATO. But remember this, in the last four administrations, Putin has invaded Georgia under President George Bush, they invaded Crimea and Donbas under President Barack Obama, they tried to take Kyiv under Biden. It didn’t go anywhere under Donald Trump.

Donald Trump was not the author of the failed “reset.” Remember the 2009 Geneva debacle, where Hillary Clinton pushed that “reset button” and we were supposed to be friendly with Russia. And basically, what we did is we said, “You should be democratic. You gotta be Western. You’re gonna have to have a liberalizing … ” Well, they didn’t back it up. So, they were loud but carried a twig, rather than spoke softly with a club.

Donald Trump had nothing to do with American diplomat Victoria Nuland and all of that earlier effort to put Ukraine in NATO and to interfere in the government of Ukraine. He had nothing to do with that. His children, he, none of them went over to Ukraine and tried to shake down the Ukrainian government to pour money into a presidential family, and then, as Joe Biden did, went over there and fired the prosecutor on threats. And he used our money to threaten the Ukrainians. He has no history of that.

He sent offensive weapons to Ukraine that Biden had embargoed. He was pretty tough on the Russians, in a way Biden never was. He said, “Don’t do the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, Germany. Don’t do it.” He killed a lot of the Wagner Group. He got out of an asymmetrical missile deal. But he had no fingerprints on the Ukrainian war.

He didn’t say, as Joe Biden did, when he came into office, “Our reaction as America will be contingent on whether it’s a minor invasion.” Think of that. That was a green light to Putin, as was his suspension of offensive military arms to Ukraine.

So, what am I getting at? The summit was about what we could expect. Putin wants to win over America so that America will back off from Ukraine, and so it can get some more mileage westward and further deteriorate or erode or detrite the Ukrainian military. The Ukrainian military is pretty tough. It’s hanging in there. It wants enough aid to leverage Putin. And between those two poles, there will be a DMZ.

And if there is a peace settlement, it will be the work—whether the Left likes it or not—of Donald Trump, the one world leader, among the three, that has nothing to do with this war. Didn’t start on his watch. It wasn’t a result of his policies. And it surely was not his responsibility that Vladimir Putin found himself inside Ukraine and threatening to destroy the independence of the Ukrainian people. That was not Donald Trump’s doing, but it may well be his doing to stop it.

Gavin Newsom’s $250M Redistricting Power Grab

California has been in the news recently because it’s going to have an unusual redistricting effort. That means we’re going to redraw the maps of our 52 congressional seats.

And we’re gonna do that, according to our governor, because Texas has been doing that. And California Gov. Gavin Newsom is running for president in 2028, so he wants to show that he is on the cutting edge of Democratic opposition to Texas.

But there’s a problem. Texas doesn’t have an independent commission—not that they’re really independent, but in theory, they are. They just gerrymander. And Texas has an underrepresentation of Republicans in congressional seats.

What I mean by that, if you look at the aggregate vote in Texas for the president or for senators or for the state Legislature, and you get an aggregate Republican versus Democrat vote, and then you see how many seats they have and does that percentage represent it? The majority—no, it doesn’t in Texas.

In fact, most red states, if the 50 states are ranked 1 to 50, do the number of congressional seats in this state represent the Republican or Democratic aggregate overall vote, as adjudicated by either state legislature races or statewide races, or the presidency or the senators? You can use different formulas, but they’re pretty much the same, that red states do not—not that they don’t gerrymander, but they don’t gerrymander as effectively. So, that’s why Texas is taking this action, to get parity.

But what Gavin Newsom is doing is very strange. He is undermining an independent commission. It’s been dominated by the Left, but he doesn’t even trust it. He’s not calling it back into session, necessarily. He’s calling a special session with a predetermined map created by Democrats to redistrict.

And here’s the problem. California, like most blue states, such as Massachusetts or Illinois, New York, they are already heavily weighed toward Democrats. Here in California, depending on what formula we use, about 38% to 40% of the state typically vote for a Republican ticket—state or federal. And yet, if you look at their nine congressional seats, that’s about 17%. So, they’re 20% to 22% underrepresented.

So, what Gavin Newsom is saying—“I’m gonna spend $250 million. And I’m gonna rush through the Legislature—dominated with supermajorities from my party—a bill to turn a proposition over to the people so they will vote to suspend this already gerrymandered plan and get a hyper one so that we are going to go from 17% of our congressional districts, probably down to about 8%. And we will have 8%, even though the state votes 38% to 40% Republican.”

So, the problem is he’s, A, challenging an independent commission that he used to praise; B, he’s taken overrepresented Democratic congressional districts and he’s trying to, even more, overrepresent them.

And he’s trusting that the people will not mind spending a quarter of a billion dollars to have this rushed election before the next year’s November, and then they will vote for it, and this will show that he is a fighter and on the cusp. But the national mood is against him because, as I said, most of the red states are underrepresented through gerrymandering, and most of the blue states are overrepresented.

What Gavin wants to do is, he’s targeting Republican congresswomen and congressmen. And he thinks that he can redraw the districts and put two Republican incumbents in the same district. And then, one will either drop out or they’ll have to run against each other, and one will win, and they will be diminished by half. He doesn’t care about the 40% of his own state that won’t have any congressional representation. That’s not in his plan.

This is all the act of commission. But what is Gavin doing about the state? We’ve had 12 million people leave the state the last 10 years—12 million. These were people not on public assistance. These are the entrepreneurial upper-middle class. They’ve gone.

We have the highest electric rates in the country, over 35 cents a kilowatt-hour. We’re the highest except for Hawaii. We have the highest gas prices. And now we have this carbon fuel formula and this new inflation-adjusted gas tax. So, we’re gonna have the highest gas taxes and the highest actual price of gasoline. And together they’re going to go up to maybe $6 a gallon. But that’s not the end.

He has driven out—through hyper-regulation and bullying and berating oil refineries, we’re gonna drive two main ones out and we’re not gonna have very many left. And if that should happen, gas could go up to $7 or $8 a gallon.

Is he talking about Pacific Palisades? It essentially hasn’t been rebuilt, it’s completely in cinders. Why? Because of California regulations, environmental, social, equity, DEI—you name it. No zoning going on. A big fight that they want to take this beautiful Pacific Palisades historic neighborhood and have high-density, low-income housing in many areas, etc., etc.

Bottom line: Here is Gavin Newsom using four-letter words, expletives, boasting that he is going to attack President Donald Trump by spending a quarter-billion dollars to even make the notorious California congressional election map even more unfair as a reply to Texas, which is not—it’s not fair now. They may be doing something extraordinary, but they’re trying to get their congressional districts to reflect their party breakdown in their state.

And Gavin is doing this while he won’t address gas, he won’t address the flight of people, he won’t address the highest taxes in the nation, aggregate, he won’t address electricity prices.

And I just drove about 200 miles home today. I can tell you that if you get on the California freeways, such as they are, it’s taking your life in your own hands. They have been unchanged, essentially, since the 1970s, when the population was not 41 million, but about 17 million. So, the population has doubled and the infrastructure is the same.

And Gavin Newsom is doing what? He’s doing another performance art, wiggling his head, saying the F-word, the S-word, trying to dare Trump to stop him. All in performance art for his next presidential run.

Final observation: What he’s counting on is nobody looks at the price of electricity, the price of food, the price of housing, the price of gas, on the infrastructure, crime rate, etc. in California because he, more than any other Californian, as a Bay Area city council person, as a San Francisco mayor, as a lieutenant governor, and as a governor, has ruined the state. He took a natural paradise and he turned it into purgatory.

 

What the Left Gets Wrong About Trump-Putin Summit

 

Last week, President Donald Trump completed his summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska. They both gave, as I said earlier, brief statements for the press. No questions.

And then that meeting was met with a storm of criticism from the Left, from senators, congressman, and pundits. They said that he’d given in too much for Putin, Putin had dominated him, Putin was gonna do this to him and that. They kind of forgot the idea that Putin came to the United States soil, not vice versa.

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt met with Josef Stalin, called him “Uncle Joe,” the greatest mass murderer in Russian history. President Richard Nixon met with Mao Zedong, who is the greatest mass murderer in all of history and civilization.

But in any case, within, I don’t know, 48 hours, he had arranged for the major heads of state of Europe to fly all the way—without much notice—to meet with him, along with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. And they all were on the same page. They were all very complimentary. And they were, basically, sending a message to the world that a million and a half people have been dead, wounded, captured, missing on our European doorstep. And no one has an answer. And yet the Left still was angry about this.

And so, it begs the question, do you have any collective memory? The Ukraine war started when Vladimir Putin invaded the Crimea and Donbas under the presidency of Barack Obama. Remember the hot mic in Seoul, where he said, “Tell Vladimir that if he gives me space for my last election, I’ll be flexible on missile defense”? Do you remember that? He also invaded, as you remember, in President Joe Biden’s tenure. He tried to take Kyiv. He didn’t during Donald Trump’s four years.

So, I don’t know what they want. What does the Left want when they’re so critical of this rapprochement between Europe and the United States, and a collective front against Putin?

What do they want? Do they want more of the Biden policy? Just give them enough to keep fighting and dying with no end in sight? With no plan, either, for strategic victory or for a settlement or a negotiation. Do they have any compassion that—a million more? Do they want another three years of this Stalingrad?

So, they offer no constructive suggestions. No shadow government is saying, “This is what we would do.” This applies beyond, by the way, the Ukrainian war. It applies to illegal immigration, crime, and the tariffs. Just give us a constructive alternative. But instead, they don’t.

There was a point in this European delegation that met with Donald Trump where the president of Finland, Alexander Stubb, made a statement. And it was nonrecognized at the time, but it was very astute.

And he said, “I’m from a very small country. And we have an 800-mile-long border with Russia. And we were invaded by Russia.” He was referring to the Winter War of November 1939 that lasted until 1940. And what he was saying is, “We managed to survive by negotiations and deterrence. A mixture of the two.”

The message he was giving to Zelenskyy and the Europeans was his own country’s story. After Josef Stalin did what Vladimir Putin did and says, “I’m going to take over Finland,” and he invaded, the Finns, who were outnumbered 20-to-1, they put up a heroic defense. They probably inflicted half a million Russian casualties. They fought without parallel for November, December of ’39, January, February. And finally, they were slowly being ground down.

So then, the president of Finland said to Josef Stalin, “I will cut a deal with you. You can take and annex 10% of my country, but that’s it. We will fight you to the death if you try to take any more. We will lose, but we will inflict so much damage that you will be weakened with your partnership with Germany that might not last.”

And so, they did cut a deal.

What was the result? There was an independent Finland. It agreed not to join, in further years, the enemies of Russia and not to be an ally of Russia. It was like Austria or Switzerland. It retained 90% of its territory. Was it appeasing? No. It fought tooth and nail to get that deal. And it stopped Stalin from absorbing all of Finland.

So, President Stubb—who was a close friend of Donald Trump—said to this delegation, “We’ve found a solution.” And what he was really signaling to Mr. Zelenskyy is, if you can give up 10% to 15% of this disputed land that you have with Putin, however unjust it is, however unfair, however tyrannical Putin is, and then pledge to be a neutral country, with help from the West to deter further aggression, you can cut a deal and save your country.

And yet, given those negotiations, the Left was not sympathetic. And so, all I’m asking them is, please give us an alternative strategy. How long do you wanna fight? Who is gonna fight? How many deaths, wounded are you willing to incur to push Vladimir Putin all the way back to where he was prior to the invasion of 2014, when Barack Obama allowed him to come in? Just a question.

Otherwise, I think you should take the advice of Alexander Stubb, the president of Finland, who offers a valuable lesson in how to deal with Russian aggression against a smaller power.

California’s Illegal Alien Sanctuary Policies Have a Body Count

 

over the last 20 years, I’ve noticed that it is not just that the California infrastructure has gotten much worse as the population has incrementally increased to 41 million people.

We have an infrastructure of the 1970s, when we had 20 million people. And now we have twice the number of people driving and the infrastructure is even worse than it was 50 years ago. And we may have somewhere around 100 million cars or 140 million cars, the estimates range, in California register.

But what I’m getting at is this: It’s very dangerous now to drive on California freeways. There are either two lanes or three lanes, maximum. And we’ve had a new trend where truck drivers will get in the middle lane, on a three-lane freeway, and just stay there. And then you have two lanes of solid truck traffic and only one lane—in the left, if it’s three lanes—for cars. The truck drivers seem not to be as respectful of traffic as in the past.

I bring this up because an illegal alien, Harjinder Singh from India, crossed over into the United States illegally in 2018. And he was ordered to leave. He ignored that during the Biden administration. He was issued a work permit that was revoked by the Trump administration later when it came in.

But that’s controversial, but what is not controversial? Singh, who could not read or speak English, essentially, could only identify one or two traffic signs, for some reason was given a work permit. But more importantly, he was given a California driver’s license, even though he was known to be an illegal alien and not proficient in English.

And California thinks that as the home of the most illegal aliens in the country—a state in which 27% of the people were not born in the United States and it has the largest sanctuary city infrastructure, where they do not comply with Immigration and Customs Enforcement requests to deport criminal illegal aliens—that it’s unique and it’s self-contained. It’s not. People that it grants licenses to or residence to, who are here illegally and are not familiar with traffic laws, they go all over the United States.

So, what happened this past week, Singh was driving a semi-truck in Florida, and for some reason he decided—a major thoroughfare—that he was just going to make a U-turn and cut across the divider and go in the opposite direction, in the middle of fast-moving traffic. And so, the inevitable happened. As he’s making this turn, his own camera shows him nonchalantly looking around as a car has no choice but to hit his semi-trailer. And two people were killed instantly. The third died in the hospital.

What was very disturbing was the expression on Singh’s face. It was calm. He looked around. It was almost as if, “Oh. I made a U-turn. Somebody hit my truck. I wonder what happened?” He didn’t get out and try to help anybody. He stood at the side of the road, finally.

But why was he driving? He was driving because California issued him a license when they knew he was an unlawful resident of the United States and he was not proficient in English, at least enough to be able to read rudimentary traffic signs and signals.

In other words, he killed three people. And he’s now charged with vehicular manslaughter because of the lax policy of California.

What I’m getting at is, when I drive, I see a lot of drivers like that. I don’t know what their immigration status is. I don’t know where they’re born. All I know is that there are so many trucks on the California freeway. The infrastructure is so poor and this generation of truck drivers does not abide by the prior courtesies and policies of previous generations of truck drivers. It makes driving in California an experience like “Road Warrior” or “Mad Max.” And the trucks dominate, sometimes, all the lanes for periods of time on California freeways. And more importantly, they drive outside of California.

So, California Gov. Gavin Newsom is in a fight with President Donald Trump—back and forth—who issued him a temporary work permit. But I think Gavin Newsom, who champions the cause of unlawful immigrants, is going to lose that argument against Donald Trump, who tries to deport them.

But more importantly, it’s beyond controversy. Gavin Newsom’s California issued this man a driver’s license. This man was not a U.S. citizen. He was not here legally, and he could not read or write English, apparently. And the wages of that, we found out in Florida, were the death of three innocent people. And no remorse. No apologies on the part of California or Gavin Newsom.

Bottom line: California is dangerous to itself, in a myriad of ways, but it’s also dangerous to everybody outside of California because its pathologies are not contained within its borders.

Democrats Betray Democracy to Stop Trump review

 

The Democrats have a new narrative, the Left in general does, that they are saving democracy from President Donald Trump. And that justifies “almost any means” necessary to achieve the end of destroying or preventing Donald Trump from governing effectively.

The problem with all of this is they are destroying democracy to destroy Donald Trump.

What do I mean? One of the issues that they are agitating is the redistricting of congressional districts in Texas and California now. And the general problem the Left has is, if you look at gerrymandering to make these jigsaw puzzle piece-like districts, the Left is way ahead of the Right. In other words, states that have proportions of 30% to 40% to 50% for Donald Trump do not have that level of representation in the Congress.

And there’s been sophisticated studies of gerrymandering. And it boils down to the Republicans are short some six to 10 seats in the House, based on the proportion of the national vote they have received.

The Democrats know that, but they’re angry about the Texas reapportionment and gerrymandering. And their attitude is: “We’ve already gerrymandered our states to the maximum. Don’t dare try to emulate us.”

James Carville said that they have to get tougher. That’s the new mantra: Gotta get tougher. Gotta get meaner. Sen. Cory Booker screams and yells and throws a fit about every three weeks in the Senate. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries picks up his baseball bat. There’s usually a video with “the squad” or representatives using the word “s—” or the F-word, kind of pornographic. Rep. Jasmine Crockett periodically calls Donald Trump names that can’t be repeated on air. But you can see the anger.

And now the new idea is that they haven’t been tough enough. They have been too tough.

There’s been three great scandals in the 21st century. The first was the Russian collusion hoax that was prompted by Hillary Clinton and facilitated by the Obama administration on its way out. That almost destroyed the Trump campaign, sabotaged his transition, and ate up 22 months of his first two years.

The second was the Biden FBI and CIA—but especially the CIA and the intelligence agencies—got 51 people, former intelligence authorities, to lie to the American people on the eve of the second debate to affect the 2020 election, and claim, falsely, that Donald Trump was lying about the laptop of Hunter Biden, that it was “fake,” that it was a “Russian production,” and Donald Trump then was colluding, again, with the Russians.

That was a complete lie. It was Hunter’s laptop. We know because the FBI had it in its possession and authenticated it.

And finally, the great scandal that the Democratic Party and the obsequious media knew that President Joe Biden was non compos mentis, he was not cognitively able to fulfill the office of the presidency. And they kept that from the American people, until they could no longer keep it, when he finally challenged Donald Trump to a debate and melted before our very eyes. Sort of like the Wicked Witch in “The Wizard of Oz.” He melted into a non-entity.

So, my point is, if you look at the Democrats, they have staged three great scandals to try to destroy the Trump administration and by extension, democracy.

They impeached Donald Trump twice. No one’s ever done that. They tried him as a private citizen. Nobody’s ever done that. They raided his home in Mar-a-Lago. That is a terrible precedent for an ex-president. No one’s ever done that. They tried to get him off the ballot in 25 states. No one had ever done that. There were two assassination attempts during the campaign. That had never happened before. They tried to debank him and make it impossible for Donald Trump to write a check, whether from Morgan Stanley or Bank of America, or any bank.

So, my point is this, when James Carville says, “We’re gonna get tough. We’re gonna get really tough. And we’re gonna let in Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C., to get four senators. Or we might have to pack the court to 13 justices,” I’m thinking, “Well, you always were going to do that.”

You were gonna pack to 15. In fact, if you had not lost the House and Senate during the Biden administration, had you had a normal president that was in control of his mental and physical abilities, then you would have not only packed the court and not only, as you promised, let in two states, but in addition, you would’ve gotten rid of the Electoral College by the hook and crook of the national voter compact. And more importantly, you would’ve abolished the Senate.

So the problem, James Carville and Democrats, is that you have sabotaged democracy. And you’ve done things that no one has ever done before to an oppositional candidate, presidential transition, and president.

And now you’re furious because you’re on the 40% side of every issue that’s dear to you—from the trans issue to the border issue, to the crime issue, to the Green New Deal issue, to foreign policy. And you have no political power. You don’t have the White House, you don’t have the Congress, you don’t have the Supreme Court. And your institutional power—the media, academia, the foundation—they are under assault.

And so, you’re frustrated and you’ve created this completely false narrative that you have to get tough, and you’ve been very Marquess of Queensberry rules-like. In fact, the opposite is true, everybody. You have been the most vicious and the most abject subverts of democracy, all for the short-term gain of destroying Donald Trump. And now that’s boomeranging upon you. And you don’t like to see it happen to you—what you tried to do to Donald Trump.

And there’s a whole vocabulary, cross-culturally, for what is happening to you now. It’s called payback is a “blank,” karma, boomerang, do unto others as you should do unto you, only eye for an eye, tooth for tooth. But this is called retribution. And it’s fully earned for what you’ve done to democracy, as long as it’s legal and it’s necessary.

But you’re angry because you’re impotent, and you’ve created false narratives that Donald Trump is doing what you have actually done. And what is that? Destroying democracy.