How to Make "That" Make Sense

Yesterday Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said this, on the occasion of Trump’s tariffs against Canadian goods:  “So today,the United States launched a trade war against Canada, their closest partner and ally, their closest friend. At the same time, they’re talking about working positively with Russia, appeasing Vladimir Putin, a lying, murderous dictator. Make that make sense.”

OK, let’s do that:  perhaps it does make sense if you consider that Donald Trump is a Russian asset, a Manchurian Candidate who returned from a business trip to Russia in the late 1980’s to proclaim in full page ads in major U.S. newspapers that the U.S. defence of Europe and Japan was subsidizing these countries and a waste of taxpayer’s money(which shows that he hasn’t changed his tune on that subject since then);  who ran a Russian money laundromat selling overpriced New York real estate to the Russian mafia;  who twenty years later began a winning Presidential campaign by borrowing the Russian propaganda technique of fire hosing multiple lies, obtaining additional help from the Russian “Internet Research Agency”, and publicly asking for Putin’s help to dump private emails from the democratic party onto the internet, which Putin, in fact, did the next day.

So you may be asking, if Trump is the Manchurian candidate, why didn’t he do more to benefit Russia in his first administration?  Well, the answer may be that, not having any previous political experience, he didn’t know how to, and his administration, which was largely made up of responsible people, constrained him from doing so.

But this time, both his words and actions actually do respect Russian priorities.  Putin has invaded Ukraine and wants to take it over and do away with  democratically elected leader Vladimir Zelensky;  and in the last week Trump has tried to make a unilateral deal with Russia, shutting out Zelensky, and giving Putin everything, without asking for any concessions in return.  He’s insulted Zelensky and the European Union, and betrayed his North American trading partners, while basically telegraphing that he won’t bother defending Europe  if Putin decides to invade another European country - a clear violation of the Nato agreement. And then he suspended intelligence surveillance of Russia, started the process of cancelling sanctions against Russian Oligarchs, and suspended military aid for Ukraine.  So last Friday, a Kremlin spokesman said  that Trump’s “rapidly changing all foreign policy configurations…largely aligns with our vision.”

As the Kremlin has pointed out, Trump has acted quickly to fulfill their wishes.  It took only one week for President Trump to deliver the breakup of Nato, the emasculation of American intelligence, the crippling of Ukraine’s defence and the welcoming of Russian Oligarchs to America’s shores - almost everything that Russia has wanted - handed to them on a silver platter. There - does that make enough sense now?