Rubio melts down on air over accusation U.S. is ‘placating Putin’

Don forget ending all US cyber operations against Russia

The only person to talk about backing out of NATO since its creation has been Putin/Xi and Trump/Musk.

That's not true. Ron/Rand Paul, Ross Perot, Pat Buchanan, and a number of other paleocons have been championing this for decades.

Trump's just the first guy to make it all the way to the White House with the view. But it isn't unique to Trump, nor is it particularly unpopular. Lots of Americans, particularly poorer and more rural ones, see these foreign alliances as an unnecessary extravagance.

They don't like it any more than they liked NAFTA or the WTO or the UN.

NATO is Russia/China’s greatest deterrent.

What is The North Atlantic Treaty Organization detering China from doing, exactly?

Just to be fair: Only women can be elected president for the next 47 presidents.

We currently have a woman president. Trump signed an EO saying that all Americans are female so he's the first woman president.

Did you watch the video? He never had a melt down. He was frustrated but overall kept his cool and spouted the lies he was supposed to say.

It's all unintentional. Their based will accept anything their king and his court declare as the truth.

From their perspective it is all intentional, don't let their blind loyalty sway you to their view.

Would having MTG as president help?

The summary is reasonable though. Again we are cutting trump and his underlings a ton of slack about his campaign claims of fixing the war in 24 hours, and 6 weeks into his presidency. No, we should not accept political hyperbole just because it comes from trump, and Stephanopoulos was rightly asking how does calling Zelenskyy a dictator (and undercutting Ukraine-supporting allies) but sucking up to putin move peace talks forward?

As I said before, the way trump makes these deals is like putting duct tape on your passenger door, calling yourself a master mechanic, and then blame next mechanic when the car falls apart.

The Daily Beast with a bullshit, misleading, clickbait headline? Surprising.

I'm sure I downvote Daily Beast articles more than any other site. I wish people would find other sources - although the stories might not sound as exciting.

SLAMMMED! BLASTED! CCCCOMBO BREAKER!

Hey hey hey don’t forget you’ve got to allow for all the time trump spends with putins dick up inside his arsehole - gotta be at least a 50/50 split imo

Stopping any cyber offense/defense towards russia is just straight up treasonous at this point.

Its treason, and US own citizen are cheering him on for it. Russia actually won the cold war. Props to Putin for that.

Oh Mr Rubio, only difference is Israel aipac is funding all of you congreswith bribes do their bidding

seems absolutely sane by comparison to your boss, there, buddy.

Coming at the Israeli genocide in Gaza and calling it "sane" is one hell of a take.

"We had fun at this amazing diner. The food was out of this world!! Literally the best night of my life."

"So you had fun and ate good food?"

Feels like you gotta reach for top shelf words to keep up.

So Trump's going to give Ukraine all the weapons that they want?

Yes, yes, a billion times yes.

To me, the fundamental problem - the primary reason that it seems so difficult to deal with Trump - is that so many politicians and analysts and commentators are still spproaching issues as if the old rules are still in place, and they quite simply aren't.

Every time that another analysis or editorial appears that discusses the "failures" of the Trump administration, since their policies will undermine the original goals of the agency/programs in question, it's ultimately just meaningless noise, since it starts with the patently false presumption that the original goals still count. They don't.

The Trump administration isn't failing to achieve traditional goals - it's succeeding in achieving an entirely new and different set of goals. And there isn't going to be any meaningful commentary until it focuses on those new goals.

Agree, the paradigm has changed and needs fresh eyes.

This is exactly correct, and the Rubios and Grahams currently participating will be discarded like fish and chips paper before the sun sets.

Putin wrote the book on this and it’s playing out page by page.

What would be the best way for that to happen? More specifically, how can we pull this off safely?

We have very little historical precedent to go on. The USSR collapsed in 1991. There was some nervousness around what was going to happen with all their nukes. Ultimately, we ended up with Russia, led by Putin.

How would we stop Putin from triggering nuclear retaliation?
If we stop that, how do we make sure some other oligarch doesn't immediately take his place?
If Russia were to completely collapse, what would happen to Russia? Would we be willing to let China take over? If not would we be willing to maintain an indefinite occupation of Russia?

There may be good answers to all of these questions. It seems the more practical solution is to contain Russia. Do you think the EU would be ready to adopt a constitution if it came up again?

Suppose there's a cockroach colony in a residential building. Separating it into few parts is not going to do much good. If you mean that by collapse - same elites retaining power - then it's just not good enough.

And if you mean removing them, rich natural resources have proven to be good for those who have them and bad for those who don't, so no.

Turning it into a real federation or even confederation - yes. Like Germany.

And placating Netanyahu and is better than finishing off that genocide with a nice ethnic cleansing

I don't think Rubio's analogy is in any way adopting the idea that Biden's extremely limited pushback on Netanyahu was because Israel did anything wrong, but instead just trying to legitimize Trump's attempts at coercion as normal. Somehow that's the thing he thinks people have a problem with, not the target.

Well said. Username also checks out

That's certainly possible, but it's by no means necessary, and not even particularly likely.

Trump is a spoiled, petulant, childish narcissist. He wouldn't react well to blackmail – his ego would lead him to be at least situationally passive/aggressive about it.

And in fact, that's why I do think he's being blackmailed by Israel (and specifically via information, evidence, video clips and so on that they got from Epstein). His sort of lukewarm, on-again/off-again support for them is just what I'd expect in that situation - he'll go along, but he's at least going to drag his feet.

With Russia though, I really think the primary motivator is that he idolizes Putin. You can see it in his face in any images from any of their meetings - he lights up like a schoolgirl with a crush. And that would explain why he's so enthusiastic and even reckless about allying with Russia - because he thinks he can only gain from it, since he'll get to be a trusted ally to his idol.

Which also illustrates the fact that he's sort of stupid and short-sighted, because if he was smarter and more circumspect, he'd know that, given the chance, Putin is going to play him like a fiddle.