Donald Trump the Megathread part II - mod warnings in OP, Updated 18/03/25

"I think the reason for it all is that Trump is a business man not a politician.

He sees the mineral wealth in Ukraine and wants to have a piece of it for the US, as payment for support for the last few years being his alleged reason, but in reality he's just a man who sees everything as a commodity to buy and sell."

I totally agree with your assessment 👍

unbelievable stuff, usually don’t be worried or pay attention to stuff like this.

This is hardly gonna last 4 years? Surely there are bigger forces at play in the US that wouldn’t allow trump to totally dismantle the US’s standing in the world?

Trump will not want another fiasco of a press conference. He can get away with one but MM woukd be a different proposition. English is his first language so he will be more nuanced in his words.

HHowever If Trump and Vance decided to have a go he be more than able for them. The bigger fallout for them.is what he woukd say after. Problem for Trump is if he needs Vance to continually holding his hand at meetings it will become obvious very fast.

Looking back on it was Vance there to rake the sh!t

Imagine being an American in 40 years time trying to explain to a grand child that you once voted for Donald Trump to be the President of America

“Europe needs to come hard on Trump”. What Trump has done is to make the issue MUCH BROADER than its reluctance to help UKr going forward and the BIG POSITIVE NOISES he is making re Russia. I would expect that a number of other countries would be very happy to ‘help the EU out’ re trade , security, military exercises, arms production, etc, etc, such as Japan, South Korea, Australia, NEW Zealand, etc. I would also be looking at all those countries that continually vote in favour of UN motions supporting Ukr

I'm watching on with some amusement more so to the hypocritical and hysterical reaction of commentators and leaders alike than to the events of yesterday themselves. Trump and Vance are fools, they've no filter, so the naked interests of US imperialism that many US leaders demonstrate are more on show without the mask of faux support for democracy and human rights.

Zelensky finding out what it's like to be on the wrong side of US imperialism - the families of the slaughtered Palestinians and their leaders must be looking on with a wry smile as he was summarily dismissed, they've had to endure the US supplying the money and guns wiping them out and the same EU leaders hysterically leaping to support Zelensky standing with the US against them.

I was surprised arch-president Musk wasn't also there

It will take time - we’re just now getting the measure of Trump and his administration of sex offenders and crooks and how they wish to behave towards the world - words were just words throughout the election - we’re now approaching the actions which of course aren’t pretty.

In terms of the EU economy, until new markets can be opened up, 25% tarrifs and massive uncertainty will stifle growth leading to job losses and most likely recession if not worse.

I don’t think anyone is actually “entertaining” them from an EU perspective - they’re engaging simply because not engaging right now will be worse for us- if ultimately Trump unleashes economic Armageddon on us, then yes, that will be the time to disengage - but right now I think EU and UK are trying their best to engage in order to try and minimise the economic penalties on their countries and search for new ways for all to make money and look good which is essentially what Trump is about

You're up early with a whole new tune. Yesterday you were blaming Zelensky for his disrespecting Trump by not turning up in a suit.

in most situations where you have one side arguing/ debating against another Or two sides trying to come to common ground especially - like this situation you normally have a ‘GOOD COP/ BAD COP “ situation .
But here we had a ‘BAD COP /BAD COP “ setup. If Trump wanted to increase the chances of VZ signing all he had to do was to ‘ water down’ the comments made by Vance. But he did 100% the opposite. Indicates to me that the US had lost interest in the deal at that point

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova on Telegram:

"I think Zelensky's biggest lie of all his lies was his assertion in the White House that the Kyiv regime in 2022 was alone, without support. How Trump and Vance held back from hitting that scumbag is a miracle of restraint"

The whole situation is a **** show but I think zelensky should have just stuck to meaningless diplomatic politic speak for the interview. Say lots of words without saying anything and don't ruffle feathers. And then start going off script behind the scenes and ruffle all the feathers you want. I think he fcuked up.

Really? Really? It appears to have been set up to ambush Zelensky

Do you think Trump aligning with Russia and destroying any form of a world order isn't gonna cost tens of thousands of lives? Him just removing aid from Ukraine is gonna cost lives. 9-11 is absolutely an apt description cause it's a key moment in history with far reaching consequences.

You guys really are very poor at looking at the big picture.

So in summary, Trump wanted President Zelensky to sign a ceasefire with an actively hostile aggressor who currently occupies Ukrainian territory and has been actively killing civilians. The USA in return gets $500 billion worth of minerals and Ukraine gets Trump's word that Putin wouldn't attack but if Putin does attack USA will do nothing. Even though there have been 25 instances in recent history where Russia has not honoured their agreement.