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Former President Donald Trump's United States of America

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Trump praises ‘genius’ Putin for moving troops to eastern Ukraine

Former president says Russian leader made ‘very savvy’ decision to recognise two territories of eastern Ukraine as independent

See link.

Donald Trump has said that Vladimir Putin is “very savvy” and made a “genius” move by declaring two regions of eastern Ukraine as independent states and moving Russian armed forces to them.

Trump said he saw the escalation of the Ukrainian crisis on TV “and I said: ‘This is genius.’ Putin declares a big portion of the Ukraine … Putin declares it as independent. Oh, that’s wonderful.”

The former US president said that the Russian president had made a “smart move” by sending “the strongest peace force I’ve ever seen” to the area.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news...-putin-trump-republicans-politics-latest-live
Trump, a long-term admirer of Putin who was impeached over allegations he threatened to withhold aid to Ukraine unless it could help damage the reputation of Joe Biden, praised the Russian president’s moves while also claiming that they would not have happened if he was still president.

“Here’s a guy who’s very savvy … I know him very well,” Trump said of Putin while talking to the The Clay Travis & Buck Sexton Show. “Very, very well. By the way, this never would have happened with us. Had I been in office, not even thinkable. This would never have happened.

“But here’s a guy that says, you know, ‘I’m gonna declare a big portion of Ukraine independent’ – he used the word ‘independent’ – ‘and we’re gonna go out and we’re gonna go in and we’re gonna help keep peace.’ You gotta say that’s pretty savvy.”

Trump’s intervention was criticized by the two Republicans serving on the House select committee investigating the January 6 Capitol riot, who are among the few Republicans who have been critical of the former president. Liz Cheney tweeted that Trump’s statement “aids our enemies. Trump’s interests don’t seem to align with the interests of the United States of America.”

Adam Kinzinger, meanwhile, retweeted a screenshot from the House Republicans that showed Biden walking away – which was captioned with the comment: “This is what weakness on the world stage looks like” – to denounce it in fiery terms. Kinzinger wrote: “As still ‘technically’ a member of house Republicans, let me, with all my might, condemn this damn awful tweet during this crisis. You can criticize policy but this is insane and feeds into Putins narrative. But hey, retweets amirite?”

During a lengthy speech on Monday that questioned Ukraine’s right to exist, Putin said he recognized the independence of two breakaway regions in Ukraine’s east – the Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR) and the Luhansk People’s Republic (LNR) – and that Russian troops will be sent there for “peacekeeping operations”.

The move has been roundly condemned by western leaders as a dangerous escalation of the tense situation at the border between the two countries and a violation of Ukraine’s sovereignty.

Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the US ambassador to the United Nations, said that Putin’s declaration was “nonsense” and that Russia was “creating a pretext for war”. Boris Johnson, the British prime minister, said that Russia was “plainly in breach of international law” by trying to break off the two territories.

Other than Cheney and Kinzinger, most other Republicans and leading conservative figures have vacillated between condemning Biden as being weak in his response to the situation and claiming that Putin is being vilified in a conflict that should not interest the US.

“Hating Putin has become the central purpose of America’s foreign policy,” said Tucker Carlson, the rightwing Fox News host on Tuesday. “It’s the main thing that we talk about. Entire cable channels are now devoted to it. Very soon, that hatred of Vladimir Putin could bring the United States into a conflict in eastern Europe.”

The use of "the Ukraine" is officially deprecated by the Ukrainian government and many English language media publications.

Ukraine, Not the Ukraine: The Significance of Three Little Letters

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“Ukraine is a country,” says William Taylor, who served as the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine from 2006 to 2009. “The Ukraine is the way the Russians referred to that part of the country during Soviet times … Now that it is a country, a nation, and a recognized state, it is just Ukraine. And it is incorrect to refer to the Ukraine, even though a lot of people do it.”
 
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I hear that people from Yukon have the same displeasure of The Yukon, though prefacing Yukon Territory with ”the” does seem grammatically correct. I‘m from the United Kingdom and don’t mind the “the”.
A little like "THE United States of America".

Speaking as one from "The Toronto", which is how The Doug Ford thinks about the city.
 
Given the historical context, I get what they are saying. "The Ukraine" throws back to when it was a piece of the USSR, and they want the world to step away from that.

English is a funny language and use of 'the' definite article seems driven as much by convention as by grammatical rules. Other languages are no doubt more strict or structured. We would say 'I'm travelling to the US' but not 'I'm travelling to the Montana' (people would think you're heading out to a restaurant!).
 

Ex-Trump national security advisor John Bolton says 'Putin saw Trump doing a lot of his work for him,' so he chose not to invade Ukraine

From link.

  • Former National Security Advisor John Bolton said "Putin saw Trump doing a lot of his work for him."
  • Trump considered withdrawing the US from NATO while he was president.
  • Bolton said it's one of the reasons that Putin did not invade Ukraine during Trump's time in office.

John Bolton, who served as President Donald Trump's national security advisor, on Wednesday said that Russian President Vladimir Putin didn't invade Ukraine while Trump was in office because "Putin saw Trump doing a lot of his work for him."

Bolton pointed to Trump's outspoken criticism of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the military and diplomatic alliance established in the wake of World War II.

"I think one of the reasons that Putin did not move during Trump's term in office was he saw the president's hostility of NATO. It was widely reported in American media," Bolton said during an interview with SiriusXM's Julie Mason. "And to Putin's mind, it's a binary proposition: a weaker NATO is a stronger Russia."

Bolton went on, "Putin saw Trump doing a lot of his work for him, and thought, maybe in a second term, Trump would make good on his desire to get out of NATO, and then it would just ease Putin's path just that much more."

Trump undermined NATO during his time in office. In 2018, he privately discussed withdrawing the United States from the alliance, raising concerns among national security officials.

Bolton, in remarks during a virtual event with The Washington Post on Friday, said that he believes Trump would have withdrawn from NATO if he had won a second term.

"I thought he put his foot over it, but at least he didn't withdraw then," Bolton said. "In a second Trump term, I think he may well have withdrawn from NATO. And I think Putin was waiting for that."

Bolton also told Vice last week that he doesn't think the former president would have stopped Putin if the Russian leader had invaded Ukraine while Trump was in office. His comments come as Trump has repeatedly said that Putin would never have invaded Ukraine had he been president and has criticized President Joe Biden over the US response to Russia.

Bolton served as Trump's national security advisor from 2018 to 2019, when Trump ousted him after the two repeatedly butted heads. Upon leaving the administration, he criticized Trump in his 2020 memoir and detailed several explosive claims about the former president, including that he wanted to "give personal favors to dictators he liked."

Read the original article on Business Insider
 

Jared Kushner’s Firm to Pay $3.25M for Deceiving & Cheating Tenants in Baltimore’s “Kushnerville”


Sept 27, 2022

A property management company partly owned by Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner has agreed to pay a $3.25 million fine to the state of Maryland and to reimburse potentially tens of thousands of tenants in Baltimore. The state of Maryland sued the Kushner-owned company after ProPublica published a 2017 investigation that exposed how the company hounded low-income tenants with a barrage of lawsuits, eviction notices and late fees — even when residents had the legal right to continue living there. We speak with Alec MacGillis, the author of the 2017 ProPublica report, who describes how Kushner was the leading architect in the housing scandal that left many residents paying for uninhabitable units riddled with pests and sewage issues. He says while the settlement is a “relative pittance” for Kushner, it has delivered some “solid form of accountability” for his company’s wrongdoings, and the money will likely make a difference in the lives of those tenants who were harmed.

 

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