[guest post by Dana]

Breaking:

President Donald Trump is ordering military aid to Ukraine to be paused after his Friday Oval Office spat with Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky, a White House official told CNN.

“The President has been clear that he is focused on peace. We need our partners to be committed to that goal as well. We are pausing and reviewing our aid to ensure that it is contributing to a solution,” the White House official said.

Of course it goes without saying that it is Congress that makes decisions about appropriations, not the Executive. But that apparently no longer matters.

Additionally, when Trump says that he is “focused on peace,” I understand him to mean that he is focused on making Putin happy. We already know how he feels about the “ungrateful dictator” Zelensky, and by extension, an ungrateful, war-provoking Ukraine. His focus is on his bromance with a murderous dictator, and keeping the thug happy.

This Russia realignment is jarring, and hard to believe is happening (or already happened). In my mind, the response to such a shockingly bad pivot seems more muted than it should be, especially given the far-reaching impacts this will have on the West. I can only assume that a muted response is because Americans a) don’t care; b) don’t understand the implications; c) believe that Trump knows what’s *best* for voters; or d) that in a mere 5 weeks of Trump in the Oval office, people find themselves exhausted. We know that Trump certainly has his own best interest at heart. And by that, I am referring to his angling on how he can make a profit. Because somehow, someway he will. In everything he touches, that is Priority 1. But also, let’s keep in MND that this latest rebuff to Ukraine comes just days after Trump and Vance blew up at Zelensky’s lack of gratefulness. Tit for tat, because that’s the way that children play who haven’t learned better when angered or publicly shamed.

“When you add it all up – Trump’s concessions to Putin, insults to Zelenskyy, extortion of Ukraine, bad negotiation tactics and refusal to enforce a peace deal – there’s no evidence that Trump is serious about mediating a peace, and there’s a lot of evidence to suggest that all he cares about is courting Putin.”

—Dana