Russia invaded in 2022, Trump was elected in late 2024 and took office in 2025. The out of context quote that kicked all this off was in 2017 or 2018. Somehow you picked the one year out of the last 10 or so that didn't matter for any of this.
The really wild thing about this whole narrative is how unlikely this entire sequence of events was. Let's review:
1) Trump gives some rambling answer to an Estonian journalist in 2017 (or 2018) in which he says about 4 different things, all of which conflict with each other.
2) That journalist clips the answer to make it sound like Trump wants to leave NATO.
3) European leaders lose their mind and for the first time in 35 years actually up their military spending. Something that every US president since Bush Sr has made a major foreign policy goal that ever single administration failed at.
4) So completely by mistake, a journalist nobody has ever heard of, handed Trump the biggest foreign policy win for any US president since Bush Sr.
5) Russia invades Ukraine
6) Sweden and Finland join NATO
7) Trump wins the 2024 election and cuts off some of the Ukrainian aid (but not intelligence sharing).
8) The removal of US limitations on Ukraine allows them to strike Russian oil infrastructure.
9) Russia can no longer afford to fund their war in the way they had been.
10) Ukraine is now actually winning.
So somehow, Trump has gotten a huge foreign policy win and helped turn around the war in Ukraine completely by accident. Its like watching a cow talk.
Not by accident. By the immense sacrifice of the Ukrainian people and it's armed forces coupled with US goals just happening to align on Iran. I somehow doubt the Ukrainians mind very much that shahed production is now pivoted towards targets closer to Iran than to Ukraine.
I mean Trump didn't intend to help. But somehow NATO is in a better state and Ukraine is winning. Its only in the largely imaginary political narrative where NATO is somehow weaker. What is weaker is the credibility of several European leaders. And nobody here thinks that this was some master plan or 10D chess by Trump.
Russia invaded in 2022, Trump was elected in late 2024 and took office in 2025. The out of context quote that kicked all this off was in 2017 or 2018. Somehow you picked the one year out of the last 10 or so that didn't matter for any of this.
The really wild thing about this whole narrative is how unlikely this entire sequence of events was. Let's review:
1) Trump gives some rambling answer to an Estonian journalist in 2017 (or 2018) in which he says about 4 different things, all of which conflict with each other.
2) That journalist clips the answer to make it sound like Trump wants to leave NATO.
3) European leaders lose their mind and for the first time in 35 years actually up their military spending. Something that every US president since Bush Sr has made a major foreign policy goal that ever single administration failed at.
4) So completely by mistake, a journalist nobody has ever heard of, handed Trump the biggest foreign policy win for any US president since Bush Sr.
5) Russia invades Ukraine
6) Sweden and Finland join NATO
7) Trump wins the 2024 election and cuts off some of the Ukrainian aid (but not intelligence sharing).
8) The removal of US limitations on Ukraine allows them to strike Russian oil infrastructure.
9) Russia can no longer afford to fund their war in the way they had been.
10) Ukraine is now actually winning.
So somehow, Trump has gotten a huge foreign policy win and helped turn around the war in Ukraine completely by accident. Its like watching a cow talk.
Not by accident. By the immense sacrifice of the Ukrainian people and it's armed forces coupled with US goals just happening to align on Iran. I somehow doubt the Ukrainians mind very much that shahed production is now pivoted towards targets closer to Iran than to Ukraine.
I mean Trump didn't intend to help. But somehow NATO is in a better state and Ukraine is winning. Its only in the largely imaginary political narrative where NATO is somehow weaker. What is weaker is the credibility of several European leaders. And nobody here thinks that this was some master plan or 10D chess by Trump.
Can't undo a 2013 tech sharing agreement because you got a call in 2023...
Technically NATO is much harder to undo, and yet there we go.
It's much easier to discontinue military (and other) cooperation than it is to unshare knowledge.