“Trump’s geographical slip during today’s news conference might have been a simple gaffe”
Might be? Crimminy! This is an example of Trump Derangement Syndrome. His slip-up doesn’t validate anything. No one serious, in either country, contemplates the US giving Alaska back to Russia.
It was pointed out on X, and I think it bears mentioning: that the double standard of Trump compared to Biden remains baffling. If Biden said this it would completely take over the news cycle.
Tapper and Thompson were specifically asked about this a few weeks ago when they were on their media tour for their book, and Thompson's response was something like, "I don't want to be pigeonholed as the 'old politicians' reporter so I'm not really interested in that story. Just because Trump is old doesn't make what Biden did right."
Once the terms of sale are negotiated by the deadly serious parties, the treaty would have to be ratified by the senate by a two thirds vote. You would then need to pass legislation to transfer sovereignty and address current property rights.
“This is not quite as bad as Trump inviting the Taliban to Camp David to talk about the peace negotiations in Afghanistan,” John Bolton, Trump’s former national security adviser, told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins on Friday. “But it certainly reminds one of that.”
I don't aim to be negative towards Halina, who I'm sure will contribute a lot of great pieces over her time here, but I think John Bolton is completely full of shit here, as he usually is. Either it's good to meet with Putin on US soil, in which case who cares where, or it's bad.
Optics are almost always overrated in foreign policy compared to actions. And people who make grand pronouncements about the optics are usually proven wrong.
I listened to some podcast where Bolton was interviewed and went on AT LENGTH about how stupid, evil, incompetent, and worthless Trump is. Then, at the end, he was asked if he was voting for Trump. "Oh, of course," he said immediately. Apparently Harris was somehow worse? Okay, you can fuck right off, Bolton.
I thought the freak out over meeting the Taliban at Camp David was silly and I hate Bolton, but it was much more than just Bolton who expressed shock at the location of that meeting at the time it happened.
Inviting the Taliban to Camp David I can understand an argument against.
Inviting Vladimir Putin to our turf, while putting it in the part of our country closest to theirs, is a totally normal thing and I think anyone who is getting outraged about it is part of the problem. Trump may give away the farm and if he does, we should be outraged, but there is no inherent harm in having a meeting with a major world leader on US soil.
He's a war criminal and would at least in theory be arrested if he travelled to Europe. Now in practice you can't really arrest him (the world is not a just place) but Europe deals with that by not letting him travel there. I know we're throwing norms out the window left and right but this will be another important one.
Sometimes you have to work with war criminals. We met with Stalin during WWII and no historians I've ever seen argue things would have been better if we didn't.
Also, while that may be true (and WWII was a different time), meeting with Putin is obviously stupid and playing right into his hands, but alas that's how things are going right now.
Some estimates project Russia's population to be half of what is now by the end of the current century. The Russians will have enough problems trying to fend off Chinese excursions into their terrority than to worry about Alaska.
So I'm just learning that The Revolving Door Project went after Matt yet again, this time on his Uber article last week. That site has to be in serious competition for suffering the most from Yglesias Derangement Syndrome. They've already chocked up 4 pages worth of tagging him in articles! And the query string is ominous, equating him with an "issue". https://therevolvingdoorproject.org/search?issue=matt-yglesias
I suppose I'll continue my run as SB's resident Russia hawk and say do not feed the bears. An incredible number of Russians do indeed believe stupid things like Russian ownership of American territories, and their population is so propagandized (or, I would tend to argue, malicious as a result of a couple dozen generations of brutalization at the hand of a succession of tsars) that they'll do incredibly dumb and counterproductive things to get their "Russian World". Clearly they will not actually stop their revanchist wars of conquest, and any land given to them is just more resources and slave soldiers they can send into the next meat grinder.
Mentally I am preparing for the US' abandonment of Ukraine. It won't appease the Russians, but I'm sure it'll be spun as a win for "peace" and "diplomacy" as we keep dying here. Fuck 'em all. They can have Ukraine over my dead body, and everyone I work with here feels the same.
For whatever reason, which I don’t understand, Trump and Vance prefer Russia to Ukraine and have never been able to give a coherent and defensible reason why.
Because China isn’t white and Christian, and by “Christian” I mean “using Christianity as pretext for doing thing 100% opposed to the actual teachings of Christ”
This is part of it, but it's also that China is still nominally "communist" and so being pro-China wouldn't feel like owning the libs. Of course, as a factual matter, China is communist in name only, and American right-wingers share more in common with the Chinese regime on political philosophy than either does with American or Western liberals.
Because I was curious: the population density in eastern Siberia is about 2.6x the population density in the state of Alaska.
“Trump’s geographical slip during today’s news conference might have been a simple gaffe”
Might be? Crimminy! This is an example of Trump Derangement Syndrome. His slip-up doesn’t validate anything. No one serious, in either country, contemplates the US giving Alaska back to Russia.
It was pointed out on X, and I think it bears mentioning: that the double standard of Trump compared to Biden remains baffling. If Biden said this it would completely take over the news cycle.
Tapper and Thompson were specifically asked about this a few weeks ago when they were on their media tour for their book, and Thompson's response was something like, "I don't want to be pigeonholed as the 'old politicians' reporter so I'm not really interested in that story. Just because Trump is old doesn't make what Biden did right."
Hypocrisy as far as I’m concerned
A movie I would love to watch is Russia trying to invade Alaska
Epstein? Job numbers? What are you talking about, look I’m taking over the DC police.
And maybe I’ll come for your city too.
Why is it that the default mode in response to this is to make it a joke? At this point, both Trump and Putin seem deadly serious.
Once the terms of sale are negotiated by the deadly serious parties, the treaty would have to be ratified by the senate by a two thirds vote. You would then need to pass legislation to transfer sovereignty and address current property rights.
At which point Murkowski would be deeply concerned and vote for it anyways.
I know it won’t happen, but if Trump lets Putin leave Alaska not in shackles it’s high treason
“This is not quite as bad as Trump inviting the Taliban to Camp David to talk about the peace negotiations in Afghanistan,” John Bolton, Trump’s former national security adviser, told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins on Friday. “But it certainly reminds one of that.”
I don't aim to be negative towards Halina, who I'm sure will contribute a lot of great pieces over her time here, but I think John Bolton is completely full of shit here, as he usually is. Either it's good to meet with Putin on US soil, in which case who cares where, or it's bad.
Optics are almost always overrated in foreign policy compared to actions. And people who make grand pronouncements about the optics are usually proven wrong.
I listened to some podcast where Bolton was interviewed and went on AT LENGTH about how stupid, evil, incompetent, and worthless Trump is. Then, at the end, he was asked if he was voting for Trump. "Oh, of course," he said immediately. Apparently Harris was somehow worse? Okay, you can fuck right off, Bolton.
I thought the freak out over meeting the Taliban at Camp David was silly and I hate Bolton, but it was much more than just Bolton who expressed shock at the location of that meeting at the time it happened.
I thought the freakout about the Taliban Camp David meeting was it was held on 9/11, which really was tone deaf.
Inviting the Taliban to Camp David I can understand an argument against.
Inviting Vladimir Putin to our turf, while putting it in the part of our country closest to theirs, is a totally normal thing and I think anyone who is getting outraged about it is part of the problem. Trump may give away the farm and if he does, we should be outraged, but there is no inherent harm in having a meeting with a major world leader on US soil.
He's a war criminal and would at least in theory be arrested if he travelled to Europe. Now in practice you can't really arrest him (the world is not a just place) but Europe deals with that by not letting him travel there. I know we're throwing norms out the window left and right but this will be another important one.
Sometimes you have to work with war criminals. We met with Stalin during WWII and no historians I've ever seen argue things would have been better if we didn't.
That meeting was not in the US.
Also, while that may be true (and WWII was a different time), meeting with Putin is obviously stupid and playing right into his hands, but alas that's how things are going right now.
I agree Trump will do something dumb. But I don't think this meeting would be "better" if it was in Russia, or a neutral site like India.
A Russian co-worker of mine argued that the sale didn't happen because Russia 'never got the money.' So I sent him the image of the cancelled check.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska_Purchase#/media/File%3AAlaska_Purchase_(hi-res).jpg
Some estimates project Russia's population to be half of what is now by the end of the current century. The Russians will have enough problems trying to fend off Chinese excursions into their terrority than to worry about Alaska.
So I'm just learning that The Revolving Door Project went after Matt yet again, this time on his Uber article last week. That site has to be in serious competition for suffering the most from Yglesias Derangement Syndrome. They've already chocked up 4 pages worth of tagging him in articles! And the query string is ominous, equating him with an "issue". https://therevolvingdoorproject.org/search?issue=matt-yglesias
Dropping in to say that I am a big fan of the new threads format!
So much of this can be traced to the President of the United Kingdom, Barraco Barner, getting involved with Russia. Scary.
I suppose I'll continue my run as SB's resident Russia hawk and say do not feed the bears. An incredible number of Russians do indeed believe stupid things like Russian ownership of American territories, and their population is so propagandized (or, I would tend to argue, malicious as a result of a couple dozen generations of brutalization at the hand of a succession of tsars) that they'll do incredibly dumb and counterproductive things to get their "Russian World". Clearly they will not actually stop their revanchist wars of conquest, and any land given to them is just more resources and slave soldiers they can send into the next meat grinder.
Mentally I am preparing for the US' abandonment of Ukraine. It won't appease the Russians, but I'm sure it'll be spun as a win for "peace" and "diplomacy" as we keep dying here. Fuck 'em all. They can have Ukraine over my dead body, and everyone I work with here feels the same.
For whatever reason, which I don’t understand, Trump and Vance prefer Russia to Ukraine and have never been able to give a coherent and defensible reason why.
I think it's because Russia is a right-wing country, and Trump and Vance are right-wingers.
This is almost certainly all path dependent rather than principled.
Because Russia = strong white manly men who hate woke?
Men who rape with impunity
Maybe? I'm just not totally buying it.
They dislike liberalism and support regimes which oppose liberalism
So why aren’t they pro-China then?
they are not behaving in ways consistent with being anti-China
This is interesting. They certainly could be tougher on China.
Because China isn’t white and Christian, and by “Christian” I mean “using Christianity as pretext for doing thing 100% opposed to the actual teachings of Christ”
Racism/illiberal Asians not being trad-coded
This is part of it, but it's also that China is still nominally "communist" and so being pro-China wouldn't feel like owning the libs. Of course, as a factual matter, China is communist in name only, and American right-wingers share more in common with the Chinese regime on political philosophy than either does with American or Western liberals.
Also, separate, but Russia actively helped Donald Trump win an election.
The rightwing romanticization of Russia started years before 2016 though.
I'm really sorry, man. I wish the U.S. didn't suck so much right now.
Im going to Fairbanks, Russia mid September. Any recommendations?
Don't stay there for the winter.
Bring a warm jacket and long johns.
Great recommendations. Thank you.
yeah this is all accurate. weather should be fine.
Ugh, Matt got his e-bike stolen. https://x.com/mattyglesias/status/1955025957594468557