From the Bulwark / Yahoo!News:
"Trump’s Message to Victimized Countries: You Know You Want It
ON MONDAY, PRESIDENT TRUMP ANNOUNCED a federal takeover of law enforcement in Washington, D.C. He said the director of the U.S. Marshals Service would take control of police operations, get “tough,” and clean up the city. As reporters in the White House briefing room looked on, saying nothing, Trump concluded: “Everybody in this room, they may not express it, but they all want that to happen.”
That’s how Trump thinks about consent: Even if you don’t grant it, he presumes it. He has talked this way about women he allegedly groped, countries he tariffed, and foreign populations whose lands he tried to annex. Now, as he prepares to meet with Vladimir Putin, he’s applying the same coercive arrogance to the country Putin wants to dismember: Ukraine...
This year, as he returned to the White House, Trump set out to grab land, starting with Canada and Greenland. In polls, Greenlanders said they didn’t want to be annexed. But Trump tried to take their territory anyway. He claimed that “the people of Greenland would love to become a state of the United States of America.”
Likewise, Canadians said overwhelmingly that they didn’t want to join the United States. But Trump tried to pressure them into submission. “A lot of people in Canada are liking becoming our beautiful, cherished fifty-first state,” he insisted.
Meanwhile, Trump strong-armed Ukraine into giving the United States a share of its mineral wealth. To extract this agreement, he temporarily choked off Ukraine’s access to military aid and intelligence as it battled the Russian invasion.
On Truth Social, Trump told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to “move fast or he is not going to have a Country left. In the meantime, we are successfully negotiating an end to the War with Russia.” In an outrageous Oval Office confrontation in February, Trump warned Zelensky to cough up the minerals: “You’re either going to make a deal, or we’re out. And if we’re out, you’ll fight it out. I don’t think it’s going to be pretty.”
THEN TRUMP TURNED HIS BULLYING to America’s trade partners. On April 2, he announced extortionate tariffs. When the markets plunged, he changed his plan, promising what the White House billed as “90 deals in 90 days.” But the “deals” turned out to be another case of Trump pretending to get consent.
By April 22, there was no visible progress on trade agreements. Nevertheless, in an interview with Time, Trump said he was done. “I’ve made all the deals,” he asserted. “I’ve made 200 deals.” The interviewers asked him when the deals would be announced. “Over the next three to four weeks,” he replied. “We’ll be finished.”
By May 6, there were still no deals. Trump said reporters should “stop asking” about them. Soon, he predicted, “We’ll give you a hundred deals.” (What happened to the other hundred?) “And they don’t have to sign.”
They don’t have to sign? What kind of deal is that?
Gradually, it became clear that Trump was redefining the term. By May 23, more than four weeks after the Time interview, only Britain had confirmed a trade agreement. But Trump claimed that he also had a deal with the European Union. “We’ve set the deal. It’s at 50 percent,” he said. By 50 percent, he meant his unilateral tariff on the E.U. And by “we,” he meant himself. The E.U. had agreed to nothing.
Trump defined “deal” to mean whatever tariff rate he dictated. On June 17, he declared, “We’re actually finished with every deal, if you really think about it. Because all I have to do is say, ‘This is what you’re going to pay.’” On June 29, he added, “We’ll send a letter, and we’ll say . . . ‘You’ll pay a 25 percent tariff, and we wish you a lot of luck.’ And that’s the end of the trade deal.”
Through this ruse, Trump pretended to meet his ninety-day deadline. He issued tariff letters in early July and announced, “The letters are the deals. The deals are made.” By continuing to export products to the United States, he argued, other countries were, in effect, consenting: “They pay that tariff, and that is a contract, essentially.”
At various points in the trade standoffs, when other countries seemed to be retaliating or holding out, Trump—with the same confidence he has often expressed about women’s interest in him—assured the world that the uncooperative countries secretly wanted to please him. When China slapped him with retaliatory tariffs in April, he insisted, “China wants to make a deal. They just don’t know how quite to go about it.”
NOW UKRAINE IS BACK in the crosshairs.
Last week, after talks with Putin, Trump began to dictate terms for a peace agreement between Russia and Ukraine. “There’ll be some swapping of territories,” he said. Zelensky rejected that idea, but Trump brushed him aside. On Monday, the American president repeated, “There’ll be some land swapping.”
Trump said he would “reveal” a proposed agreement crafted by Putin: “I’m going to meet with President Putin, and we’re going to see what he has in mind. And if it’s a fair deal, I’ll reveal it to the European Union leaders and to the NATO leaders and also to President Zelensky.”
If Zelensky didn’t accept the deal or find a way to appease Putin, he’d be in big trouble, Trump warned. “I’ve seen a poll coming out of Ukraine,” said Trump. “Eighty-eight percent of the people would like to see a deal made.” The real number, according to Gallup, is 69 percent. But exaggerating it is part of Trump’s strategy. He’s trying to undercut Zelensky and force him to settle.
Trump also signaled that if Zelensky didn’t agree to a deal, Trump would blame the war on him. “I disagree with what he’s done—very, very severely disagree. This is a war that should have never happened,” said Trump. He accused Zelensky of having chosen “to go into war and kill everybody.” It’s victim-blaming, plain and simple.
This is how Trump has lived his whole life. He stiffs contractors and makes them accept whatever he’ll pay. He announces tariffs and calls them “deals.” He shakes down an ally for its minerals and calls it a “partnership.” He tells a victim nation to cede land and calls it a “swap.”
When you’re the president of the United States, they let you do it."
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I wonder, however, after such "deals", how many allies America will have when it needs them.
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