[guest post by Dana]

Let’s go!

First news item

Trump blames President Zelensky for letting the war with Russia start:

Donald Trump blamed Russia’s war on Ukraine on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy — an escalation of a pattern of sympathetic rhetoric toward the war’s aggressor, Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“He should never have let that war start. The war’s a loser,” Trump said, referring to Zelenskyy, on a podcast with conservative commentator Patrick Bet-David published Thursday. The former president added that President Joe Biden had “instigated that war,” which he has repeatedly maintained “would never have happened” if he had been president.

Additionally,

So, Trump will blame President Zelensky and even President Biden for what’s happening in Ukraine, but you know who he won’t blame? The very person who began this war: his good buddy, Vladimir Putin.

Second news item

On the heels of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar’s death, President Biden spoke to Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu:

Biden called Netanyahu from Air Force One on his way to Germany and congratulated the prime minister on the elimination of Sinwar by Israeli soldiers operating in southern Gaza.

“The leaders agreed that there is an opportunity now to push for the release of the hostages and stressed they will work together to that end,” the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office said.

The White House said Biden and Netanyahu discussed “how to use this moment to bring the hostages home and to bring the war to a close with Israel’s security assured and Hamas never again able to control Gaza.”

Of course the $64 question is how to achieve those goals.

Third news item

President Zelensky and the bottom line:

“There are two choices. Or Ukraine will have nuclear weapons, or we should have some kind of alliance, and apart from NATO we do not know any functioning alliances today. We want to choose NATO, not nuclear weapons.”

He added that the Budapest Memorandum failed, and Ukraine is the only one affected by it.

“If Russia violated this document, although it is and was the guarantor of this memorandum, then how can we believe in this document? And how can we trust all the partners who guaranteed the preservation of our territorial integrity and sovereignty? These were not only agreements between Ukraine and Russia, but between Ukraine and all partners. Which of these great countries, of all the nuclear powers, are affected? All? No, just one. Ukraine. Who gave away the nuclear weapons? All? No, just one. Ukraine. And who is fighting right now? All? No, just one. Ukraine.”

This:

either Ukraine gets full NATO membership or it will have to pursue nuclear rearmament.

These are the only two scenarios that can guarantee Ukraine’s survival in the long run.

Fourth news item

Anne Applebaum on Trump speaking like Hitler, Stalin and Mussolini:

In using this language, Trump knows exactly what he is doing. He understands which era and what kind of politics this language evokes. “I haven’t read Mein Kampf,” he declared, unprovoked, during one rally—an admission that he knows what Hitler’s manifesto contains, whether or not he has actually read it. “If you don’t use certain rhetoric,” he told an interviewer, “if you don’t use certain words, and maybe they’re not very nice words, nothing will happen.”

His talk of mass deportation is equally calculating. When he suggests that he would target both legal and illegal immigrants, or use the military arbitrarily against U.S. citizens, he does so knowing that past dictatorships have used public displays of violence to build popular support. By calling for mass violence, he hints at his admiration for these dictatorships but also demonstrates disdain for the rule of law and prepares his followers to accept the idea that his regime could, like its predecessors, break the law with impunity.

Fifth news item

On the Christian vote in November:

The only way to justify voting for Trump as a Christian is to negate the importance of character in leadership, justify all sorts of immoral behavior, and believe that the ends you desire justify the means to get there.

Then you also have to pretend like he didn’t say all the racist and sexist things, display admiration for dictators around the world, alienate allies, accept that he is not pro-life, ignore all the lies, ignore all the tantrums, and ignore the fact that the only reason his first term wasn’t utterly catastrophic was because there were some principled conservatives serving in his administration at the time that restrained him from the chaos he could’ve unleashed.

And they also have to have a high tolerance for illegal and immoral behavior and scandal…

Sixth news item

Bad news for Trump:

The judge in Donald Trump’s election-fraud case has rejected all of the former president’s arguments for sealing evidence in the case.

Judge Tanya Chutkan will unseal the evidence appendix on Friday, despite Trump saying that it will be used against him by the Kamala Harris presidential campaign.

The Republican nominee is accused of conspiracy to defraud the United States; conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding; obstruction and attempting to obstruct an official proceeding; and conspiracy against rights in connection with an alleged pressure campaign on state officials to reverse the 2020 election results.

Seventh news item

A few letters to the editor in the Washington Post make very clear that Kamala Harris shouldn’t expect Black men to vote for her because of race. As one writer said, “It is not the job of Black men to blindly vote for Ms. Harris; it is her job to earn our vote.”

A sample from one letter:

I came across former president Barack Obama’s recent statements admonishing Black men for not blindly supporting Vice President Kamala Harris in her quest for the presidency. I have to say: As a Black man, I was very insulted by his remarks, which were more condescending than anything former president Donald Trump has said about “Black jobs.”

Mr. Obama’s allegation omitted one obvious fact: Black men have already voted for a woman for president. In 2016, 81 percent of Black men voted for Hillary Clinton. She didn’t lose because of us; she lost because 47 percent of White women voted for Mr. Trump, slightly higher than the 45 percent of them who voted for Ms. Clinton. In 2020, an even higher percentage of White women, 53 percent, voted for Mr. Trump. I highly doubt that Mr. Obama would ever speak to White women in the same belittling tone that he spoke to Black men.

And from another letter:

Former president Barack Obama’s speculation that the reluctance of Black men to be enthusiastic about Kamala Harris’s candidacy is based on sexism misses the mark.

Black men have good reason to be skeptical of a Democratic presidential candidate who, as a prosecutor, participated in the acceleration of mass incarceration of Black people resulting from Democratic President Bill Clinton’s law-and-order legislation. They watched while Mr. Clinton also engaged in punitive “welfare reform” that bolstered the false stereotype of welfare recipients as Black people looking for a handout. Mr. Obama offered a message of hope, then bailed out Wall Street even as his inadequate response to the financial meltdown — another result of Clinton-era deregulation — caused untold millions in home equity in the Black community to evaporate. No major finance executive was held responsible for this devastation.

Have a good weekend.

—Dana