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Live from the Chaos-Monkey Cage: What, I ask you, did you expect?

Donald Trump: ‘I can’t tell you [whether I have spoken to Vladimir Putin]. I can’t tell you. It’s just inappropriate…. The reason that I don’t like to tell you [about my secret plan to end the war] is that, as a negotiator, when I sit down and talk to some very brilliant young people: young, young, young, young. Compared to me, you’re very young. But when I talk to people—when I start I think I have a very good plan to help, but when I start exposing that plan, it becomes almost a worthless plan…. I would like to see Ukraine—okay, ready? You have to go back a little bit further. It would have never happened if I were president. Would have never happened…. It makes it so bad. And I had a meeting recently with a group of people from the government, where they come in and brief me, and I'm not speaking out of turn, the numbers of dead soldiers that have been killed in the last month are numbers that are staggering, both Russians and Ukrainians, and the amounts are fairly equal. You know, I know they like to say they weren't, but they're fairly equal, but the numbers of dead young soldiers lying on fields all over the place are staggering. It's crazy what's taking place. It's crazy. I disagree very vehemently with sending missiles hundreds of miles into Russia. Why are we doing that? We're just escalating this war and making it worse. That should not have been allowed to be done. Now they're doing not only missiles, but they're doing other types of weapons. And I think that's a very big mistake, very big mistake. But the level, the number of people dying is number one, not sustainable, and I'm talking on both sides. It’s really an advantage to both sides to get this thing done…. I want to reach an agreement, and the only way you're going to reach an agreement is not to abandon [Ukraine]. You understand what that means, right?… Well, I just said [what] it [means]. You can't reach an agreement if you abandon, in my opinion. And I disagree with the whole thing, because it should have never happened. Putin would have never invaded Ukraine if I were president for numerous reasons. Number one, they drove up the oil price. When they drove up the oil price, they made it a profit-making situation for him, the oil price should have been driven down. If it was driven down, you wouldn't have had it wouldn't have started just for pure economic reasons. But when it hits $80, $85, and $90 a barrel. I mean, he made, he made a lot of money. I'm not saying it's a good thing, because he's also suffered, but they are moving forward. You know, this is a war that's been—this is a tragedy. This is death that's far greater than anyone knows. When the real numbers come out, you're going to see numbers that you're not going to believe… <phillipspobrien.substac…

What Trump actually said:

  1. I won’t tell you anything—not whether I have talked to Putin, not what my plan to end the war is, not what “not abandoning Ukraine” means..

  2. War is horrible. This war is horrible. This war, especially, is more horrible than people realize…

  3. I want to reach an agreement to end this war…

  4. The Ukraine-Muscovy war would never have happened had I still been president…

  5. The Biden Administration really messed up: when the war started it should have provided massive incentives to pump more oil and should have drained the SPR in order to drive oil prices down so that Putin would have lost heavily rather than gained in terms of Russian government finances from his oil exports…

(1) is certainly true—he does not tell us anything. (2) I can endorse as well—it is true. (3) is a term of art—one can “want” for things to happen without being willing to lift a finger to make them happen; perhaps that is what “want” means in this case—I really do not know, and I do not believe anyone else does, perhaps not even Trump himself. (4) strikes me as a strong sign of clinical mental illness: grandiose narcissism.

& (5)—I do not know whether it is true or not, whether Putin’s Muscovy has seen the price of the energy it sells rise enough to offset what the sanctions-induced fall in the quantity sold has been. But it is, I think, the only sign of active neural circuitry we have here.

Dec 15
at
9:50 PM