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I share some of your frustrations. I don't like what the current administration is doing. I would much rather the US gave plenty of support to Ukraine to allow them to finish the fight.

But it is a core of my system of thinking to give people the benefit of the doubt. Do I think Trump might be a Russian asset? He might be, and he certainly behaves like one. But it is also possible he is not. A lot of what Trump does can also be explained without the assumption that he is a Russian asset. The only assumption is that he really believes in the slogan "Make America Great Again" (even if that means, "and the allies be damned"). In any case, it's very unlikely he's surrounded only by Russian assets.

If you look at Trump this way, you see that the media has seriously exaggerated lots of his moves. The "rare earth deal", where supposedly the US is squeezing Ukraine out of 500 billion dollars, is nothing like that. Once you learn about one such exaggeration, you are on the lookout. And to me the "kill switch" thins seems like quite an exaggeration too.

Your view might differ. It's ok.

What is less ok is to use a tone that this forum considers to not be conducive to a healthy exchange of ideas. See for example [1].

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html



I have a different viewpoint. Trump likes to paint himself as a businessman who is a master of a deal and delivers. All these sudden moves with tariffs etc., even if they make no sense, show that he is active and "doing something", including fulfilling some promises he made during the elections.

Now, one of the major promises was that he would end the war in Ukraine. The problem is, this is a very heavy issue and can't be solved just because he wants. Russia is not interested in the slightest in stopping the war, and for sure they don't want to show they were stopped by an American president. So Trump's only chance to deliver is to push on Ukrainians to surrender. And this is what he is currently doing, day by day. Once he breaks them, he will be able to say "I introduced peace".

Neither Ukraine nor the EU wants this because the capitulation of Ukraine would only mean giving Putin more time to stock up supplies and attack again later (he doesn't need a good reason for that).




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