You’re right that Trump can play the game. He has proven that, I do agree.
It’s just that if I were president, and I were in a democracy that in all practical terms, means all decisions are ceded over exclusively to myself as president and our elected representatives who all piled up in factions on the Hill, and if I consider my base voters, I would not increasingly promote foreign and domestic confusion at the same time, I am confusing my foreign and domestic friends. Sun Tzu, not withstanding.
Thinking for a moment in terms of “wars” for example. Americans are wholly against funding the war in Ukraine, and certainly absolute with No Sale for American sons tramping around in any battle for Ukraine, or paying any price for NATO’s dirty tricks ops against Russia, lined up with their antagonist stupidity against Russia.
We need only remember our own reaction to tiny Cuba with a Big Crisis. Neither Russia nor Cuba were at liberty to crush Cuban speech in Florida, or to disappear Russian Orthodox Churches there, harass their unarmed people with battalion rule, as the AZOV. The two oblasks were after all a Federation of Russia.
Gaza is an issue. The conscience becomes cinged after so much killing, in a space so tight and filled with unarmed civilians who are cannon fodder for both sides. Needs to stop.
The Epstein flip is weird, to me. The anger that day, when Trump incinerated the reporter for inquiring about Pam brushing off the ENTIRE case, blew me away. No one saw that coming.
Funny that it caused him to publicly say that Virginia “was stolen” from the MaraLago spa.
I don’t believe that was very common knowledge, and not sure the Giuffre family had heard it, or heard it put that way in those terms.
So now, he’s magically, “over it”, read the tea leaves and is ready to launch “Everything”, but for distinguishing those “innocent” apart from the salacious.
It’s actually the global money exchanging that I find most interesting, at this point. Ghislane got justice. Epstein is dead in justice.
The Victims were led into the arena by Ghislane. A deal on her charges or her penalties will turn people away from American Justice of the rich and famous. No Deals.
Many of your observations are valid. I believe that President Trump plays the long game and doesn’t worry too much about short-term disquiet or hand-wringing, even among his most fervent supporters.
So much of the world latched onto the false accusation that PDJT was “in bed with” or too friendly with Putin that the two of them may have determined that putting some distance between him and Putin through an expressed commitment to Ukraine serves many good purposes. So far though, they’re just words. Until those words are converted to actions, I don’t see any chance there will ever be Americans’ sons’ boots on the ground in Ukraine under President Trump. He’s involved in a very complex negotiation between what is really Russia and the World (represented by Ukraine) and I trust him more than anyone else to get it right.
My overall approach to understanding President Trump is that he says a lot of things and I’m convinced that most of it isn’t even meant for us. Then the anti-Trump media intentionally amplify his comments to inflame his base and get them to abandon him. I’m not participating in that game and prefer to trust that we didn’t come this far to get squeamish about a few things we perhaps don’t have enough information about to fully understand.
Do we have a better alternative anyway?