They have a lot to teach us, particularly to prepare for China.
9 thoughts on “The Great MAGA Reversal”
The “original” MAGA position on Ukraine was, unfortunately, the same sort of dim-witted and myopic idiocy of its 1930s-era America First forbears that presaged WW2. Not being interested in far away places doesn’t mean far away places aren’t interested in you.
When Trump entered office for the second time, the US had six consequential enemies. In descending order of importance, they were: the PRC, Russia, the DPRK, Iran, Venezuela and Cuba. It also has a few other enemies that are not consequential even if they wish they were, Nicaragua being the most significant of these based purely on geography.
It strikes me that the ultimate America First policy would be to actively rid the world of our consequential enemies. That would make the nation genuinely safe for even the most myopic and stupid among the MAGAns.
The Trump 2.0 administration has taken one of our erstwhile enemies off the list – Venezuela. If it would quit farting around and simply send in troops and liquidate the current regime, the same could soon be said of Cuba.
Iran, after a promising start – followed by the seemingly inevitable feckless mucking about with “diplomacy” – seems back on track for the only possible conclusion consistent with long-term US interests – the utter and complete destruction of the current Iranian regime and the confiscation of all of its fissionables. The destruction of its foreign levies we can leave to the Israelis.
If we had weighed in decisively in favor of Ukraine from the first hour of the Trump 2.0 Administration, we might already have witnessed Putin signing the instrument of unconditional surrender to Ukraine in the Kremlin with a company of Ukrainian tanks outside in Red Square to underline the change of status.
Even given the erstwhile general fecklessness about Russia and entirely unwarranted hostility toward Ukraine by the Trump 2.0 administration, it is certainly possible to reverse those own-goals and be in at the kill when Russia goes down for good. Given the rate of incremental advantage Ukraine keeps advancing anent Russia, even without much additional US help, Ukraine now seems fated to win the current war in, at most, two more years and perhaps as soon as the end of the current year.
Any true defeat of Russia, of course, must include confiscation of its nukes and fissionables stockpiles as well as the destruction of all strategic delivery systems and the industrial facilities used to build all of this.
Thus, if the Trump 2.0 administration plays its cards right from here on out, there is a very real possibility that the list of consequential enemies extant when it took office could be reduced by a full 2/3 by the time it leaves.
If, of course, the PRC comes unstuck from its own fundamentally insoluble internal problems before then, then the entire list can be put paid to on Trump’s last watch. The odds probably favor the PRC and the DPRK still being problems for President Rubio/Vance to deal with, but we – and Trump – still might get lucky.
As noted, it would be nice if the systematic destruction of US enemies was part of the MAGA agenda from the get-go, but one goes to war with the army one has, not the one one wishes one had. We may manage to stumble our way to victory even so.
Am not, and never have been a neo-con. Those were long-time Dems who flipped Repub over foreign policy back in the day. Nothing to do with me.
And do I sound like I’m crying? The crying these days is mostly going on in Russia among the relatives of men who go off to fight Putin’s stupid war and never come back. And that’s damned near all of them.
Putin likes it that way. Soldiers returning alive would tell tales about how things are really going in Ukraine. The few who manage the trick are likely being shipped off to gulags, same as most Soviet returning soldiers were after WW2. Russian “leadership” never trusts anyone who has been outside of Russia, even to fight for it.
If you’ve quit hearing from any of your Russkie pen pals lately, that’s most likely why. They’re either breakfast for Ukrainian buzzards or they’re doing a life term at Club Kolyma.
The coming mid-term elections will tell if MAGA is “Ukraine First”. I doubt it. Trump and the Republicans have lost all the Hispanics, Independents and others that came on board with the promise of NO NEW WARS.
I’m gone too. Ukraine, Venezuela, Iran, maybe Cuba?
I’m telling my congress-critters to impeach Trump, and remove (whoever he is theses days) him. Then cut ALL money to these useless wars.
We have serious issues with “Muslim Brotherhood” infiltration and
Democrat corruption and fraud. Not one thing being done by Trump or the Republicans.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has led efforts to penalize regional factions of the Muslim Brotherhood, citing ties to violence and extremist groups like Hamas. Rather than applying a single blanket designation to the entire decentralized movement, the administration has targeted specific chapters through formal terrorism blacklists.
Specific Actions and Designations
January 2026: Secretary Rubio and the State and Treasury Departments designated the Lebanese, Egyptian, and Jordanian chapters of the Muslim Brotherhood as terrorist organizations or global terrorists due to links supporting Hamas and regional destabilization.
March 2026: The U.S. Department of State officially designated the Sudanese Muslim Brotherhood as a Foreign Terrorist Organization and Specially Designated Global Terrorist, pointing to mass civilian executions and ties to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
I believe what Trump actually promised was no new forever wars. So far, so good. Venezuela hardly qualifies as a war. More like a fairly elaborate fugitive apprehension. Though we apparently did kill a few hundred Cuban “advisors.”
Iran would have been over by now if none of the pointless and time-wasting “diplomacy” had been done. The job there now seems to be on its way to an acceptable end – that of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
We’re still three months out from the mid-terms. The tea leaves are, at best, unclear. The Democrat cause is not being helped by its old guard trying to pet its rabid commies on the head while saying “nice doggie.” That seems surpassingly unlikely to end well.
So write your Congresscriters all you want. Allow me to suspect that this wouldn’t be the first time you have dispatched such an “impeach Trump” missive. But the Dems would have to have majorities in both houses to even make a run at doing that. With all the own-goals the Dems have been making lately, that doesn’t seem a likely outcome.
Leland has already dealt with your ignorance/falsehood anent the Muslim Brotherhood.
The Trump administration is contra you, doing quite a bit about Democratic corruption. The USAID Democrat theft machine is already gone and the Justice Dept. is putting periscopes up the butts of pretty much every blue state administration. Building cases takes time, but the process is certainly well underway. I suspect we’ll hear a lot more about all of this in October.
I have no doubt that during Vald and Donald’s great conversations Vlad told Don what he could do with his diplomacy. And explained what the post satellite world would look like after a few nukes were exploded in space.
LOL! The Russians like to rattle their nukes but won’t ever use them, either in Ukraine or in space. The reason is not what the US would do in response but what the PRC would do in response. Especially anent that “a few nukes in space” thing. The PRC has a lot more space-based infrastructure these days than Russia does and would not be happy at all to see it fried. If the PRC ever got wind that the Russkies were about to try something this dumb, they would likely save the US the trouble of de-nuclearizing Russia by striking all of Russia’s strategic and tactical nuclear assets first – and maybe throw in a comprehensive de-population strike too just to make sure there is no Russia in future to ever try something that stupid again.
“The Federal Communications Commission in the U.S. said on Tuesday it would ban the import of foreign-made humanoid robots in a move that targets China, arguing they pose a national security risk.”
The “original” MAGA position on Ukraine was, unfortunately, the same sort of dim-witted and myopic idiocy of its 1930s-era America First forbears that presaged WW2. Not being interested in far away places doesn’t mean far away places aren’t interested in you.
When Trump entered office for the second time, the US had six consequential enemies. In descending order of importance, they were: the PRC, Russia, the DPRK, Iran, Venezuela and Cuba. It also has a few other enemies that are not consequential even if they wish they were, Nicaragua being the most significant of these based purely on geography.
It strikes me that the ultimate America First policy would be to actively rid the world of our consequential enemies. That would make the nation genuinely safe for even the most myopic and stupid among the MAGAns.
The Trump 2.0 administration has taken one of our erstwhile enemies off the list – Venezuela. If it would quit farting around and simply send in troops and liquidate the current regime, the same could soon be said of Cuba.
Iran, after a promising start – followed by the seemingly inevitable feckless mucking about with “diplomacy” – seems back on track for the only possible conclusion consistent with long-term US interests – the utter and complete destruction of the current Iranian regime and the confiscation of all of its fissionables. The destruction of its foreign levies we can leave to the Israelis.
If we had weighed in decisively in favor of Ukraine from the first hour of the Trump 2.0 Administration, we might already have witnessed Putin signing the instrument of unconditional surrender to Ukraine in the Kremlin with a company of Ukrainian tanks outside in Red Square to underline the change of status.
Even given the erstwhile general fecklessness about Russia and entirely unwarranted hostility toward Ukraine by the Trump 2.0 administration, it is certainly possible to reverse those own-goals and be in at the kill when Russia goes down for good. Given the rate of incremental advantage Ukraine keeps advancing anent Russia, even without much additional US help, Ukraine now seems fated to win the current war in, at most, two more years and perhaps as soon as the end of the current year.
Any true defeat of Russia, of course, must include confiscation of its nukes and fissionables stockpiles as well as the destruction of all strategic delivery systems and the industrial facilities used to build all of this.
Thus, if the Trump 2.0 administration plays its cards right from here on out, there is a very real possibility that the list of consequential enemies extant when it took office could be reduced by a full 2/3 by the time it leaves.
If, of course, the PRC comes unstuck from its own fundamentally insoluble internal problems before then, then the entire list can be put paid to on Trump’s last watch. The odds probably favor the PRC and the DPRK still being problems for President Rubio/Vance to deal with, but we – and Trump – still might get lucky.
As noted, it would be nice if the systematic destruction of US enemies was part of the MAGA agenda from the get-go, but one goes to war with the army one has, not the one one wishes one had. We may manage to stumble our way to victory even so.
Neocon tears
Am not, and never have been a neo-con. Those were long-time Dems who flipped Repub over foreign policy back in the day. Nothing to do with me.
And do I sound like I’m crying? The crying these days is mostly going on in Russia among the relatives of men who go off to fight Putin’s stupid war and never come back. And that’s damned near all of them.
Putin likes it that way. Soldiers returning alive would tell tales about how things are really going in Ukraine. The few who manage the trick are likely being shipped off to gulags, same as most Soviet returning soldiers were after WW2. Russian “leadership” never trusts anyone who has been outside of Russia, even to fight for it.
If you’ve quit hearing from any of your Russkie pen pals lately, that’s most likely why. They’re either breakfast for Ukrainian buzzards or they’re doing a life term at Club Kolyma.
The coming mid-term elections will tell if MAGA is “Ukraine First”. I doubt it. Trump and the Republicans have lost all the Hispanics, Independents and others that came on board with the promise of NO NEW WARS.
I’m gone too. Ukraine, Venezuela, Iran, maybe Cuba?
I’m telling my congress-critters to impeach Trump, and remove (whoever he is theses days) him. Then cut ALL money to these useless wars.
We have serious issues with “Muslim Brotherhood” infiltration and
Democrat corruption and fraud. Not one thing being done by Trump or the Republicans.
10 seconds on Google…
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has led efforts to penalize regional factions of the Muslim Brotherhood, citing ties to violence and extremist groups like Hamas. Rather than applying a single blanket designation to the entire decentralized movement, the administration has targeted specific chapters through formal terrorism blacklists.
Specific Actions and Designations
January 2026: Secretary Rubio and the State and Treasury Departments designated the Lebanese, Egyptian, and Jordanian chapters of the Muslim Brotherhood as terrorist organizations or global terrorists due to links supporting Hamas and regional destabilization.
March 2026: The U.S. Department of State officially designated the Sudanese Muslim Brotherhood as a Foreign Terrorist Organization and Specially Designated Global Terrorist, pointing to mass civilian executions and ties to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
I believe what Trump actually promised was no new forever wars. So far, so good. Venezuela hardly qualifies as a war. More like a fairly elaborate fugitive apprehension. Though we apparently did kill a few hundred Cuban “advisors.”
Iran would have been over by now if none of the pointless and time-wasting “diplomacy” had been done. The job there now seems to be on its way to an acceptable end – that of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
We’re still three months out from the mid-terms. The tea leaves are, at best, unclear. The Democrat cause is not being helped by its old guard trying to pet its rabid commies on the head while saying “nice doggie.” That seems surpassingly unlikely to end well.
So write your Congresscriters all you want. Allow me to suspect that this wouldn’t be the first time you have dispatched such an “impeach Trump” missive. But the Dems would have to have majorities in both houses to even make a run at doing that. With all the own-goals the Dems have been making lately, that doesn’t seem a likely outcome.
Leland has already dealt with your ignorance/falsehood anent the Muslim Brotherhood.
The Trump administration is contra you, doing quite a bit about Democratic corruption. The USAID Democrat theft machine is already gone and the Justice Dept. is putting periscopes up the butts of pretty much every blue state administration. Building cases takes time, but the process is certainly well underway. I suspect we’ll hear a lot more about all of this in October.
I have no doubt that during Vald and Donald’s great conversations Vlad told Don what he could do with his diplomacy. And explained what the post satellite world would look like after a few nukes were exploded in space.
LOL! The Russians like to rattle their nukes but won’t ever use them, either in Ukraine or in space. The reason is not what the US would do in response but what the PRC would do in response. Especially anent that “a few nukes in space” thing. The PRC has a lot more space-based infrastructure these days than Russia does and would not be happy at all to see it fried. If the PRC ever got wind that the Russkies were about to try something this dumb, they would likely save the US the trouble of de-nuclearizing Russia by striking all of Russia’s strategic and tactical nuclear assets first – and maybe throw in a comprehensive de-population strike too just to make sure there is no Russia in future to ever try something that stupid again.
“The Federal Communications Commission in the U.S. said on Tuesday it would ban the import of foreign-made humanoid robots in a move that targets China, arguing they pose a national security risk.”
https://x.com/ABC/status/2082417506887647292