Trump’s Un-American Parade: What looks like an excess of strength may really be a deficit of liberty.; The Atlantic, June 13, 2024

 T. H. Breen, The Atlantic; Trump’s Un-American Parade: What looks like an excess of strength may really be a deficit of liberty.

"To discern the values of a nation and its leaders, watch their parades. Tomorrow, on the 250th anniversary of the U.S. Army, President Donald Trump plans not only to display the country’s military might but also to present himself as its supreme leader. Some 6,600 soldiers and 200 tanks, warplanes, helicopters, and the like are expected to descend on Washington, D.C., to the tune of tens of millions of dollars. According to reports, parachuters will land on the Ellipse, where Trump instructed rioters on January 6 to “fight like hell,” and submit to him a folded American flag. All of this will occur on the president’s birthday, which spurs the question of whether we’re celebrating the country or the man who seeks to dominate it.

President George Washington offered a very different model of an American parade—one better suited for a moment that tested the nation’s founding principles. In October 1789, Washington was scheduled to visit Boston, which had planned a celebration in his honor. Unlike Trump, Washington resisted attempts to turn the event into a military display. The very notion of a ceremony organized around him made the first president uneasy...

Washington served in the Continental Army, so he understood the sacrifices that soldiers make for their country, and the public reverence those sacrifices are due. But he also knew the dangers of using the military for personal purposes. He saw clearly the need for the citizens of a republic to stand vigilant against the pretensions of a leader who would use the Army to flex his own might. He had no wish to become America’s elected monarch."

Corruption Has Flooded America. The Dams Are Breaking.; The New York Times, June 8, 2025

 Ben Rhodes, The New York Times ; Corruption Has Flooded America. The Dams Are Breaking.

"President Trump has more than doubled his personal wealth since starting his 2024 election campaign. Billions of foreign dollars have flowed into his family’s real estate and crypto ventures. A plane that doubles as a “palace in the sky” has been given for Mr. Trump’s use by the government of Qatar.

It is easy to dismiss this as just a bigger and more brazen version of the self-dealing we saw during the first Trump term. But it poses a more fundamental danger. Our political system is being transformed into something that no longer serves the people. Indeed, the United States is seemingly becoming just another country with a corrupt strongman personalizing and profiting from power...

Corruption is a powerful tool, but it is not popular. To build a movement powerful enough to push back on Mr. Trump’s self-dealing, Democrats must show people how it will affect their lives."

Ukraine has exposed Trump’s true identity: as a vandal, an autocrat, a gangster and a fool; The Guardian, April 25, 2025

 Jonathan Freedland, The Guardian; Ukraine has exposed Trump’s true identity: as a vandal, an autocrat, a gangster and a fool

"Whether Trump succeeds in making Kyiv buckle or not, the new reality is clear. The US president is taking an axe to an international order constructed in the aftermath of a bloody world war, a system that has held, however imperfectly, since 1945. A central tenet of that order was that big states could not simply swallow up smaller ones, that unprovoked aggression and conquest would no longer be allowed to stand. Yet here is Trump bent on rewarding just such an act of conquest, not simply acquiescing in Putin’s land grab in Ukraine but conferring on it the legitimacy of approval by the world’s most powerful nation.

Note how he speaks as if Putin had every right to seize the territory of his neighbour. Asked this week what concessions, if any, he had extracted from Moscow, Trump replied that Putin’s willingness to stop the war, rather than gobbling up Ukraine in its entirety, was a “pretty big concession”.

This is not only a disaster for Ukraine, though it is obviously that. It is also the destruction of global architecture that has stood for many decades – and it is hardly a lone case. Trump’s tariff fetish is similarly upending a system of international trade that had made the world, and especially the US, more prosperous. The consequences are already visible, in plunging global stock markets, gloomy growth forecasts and warnings of a recession that will start in the US and then spread everywhere else.

Trump’s eagerness to acquiesce in Putin’s seizure of Ukraine makes a dead letter of international law, with its prohibition of the crime of aggression, and that too points to a wider pattern. For Trump is at war with the law at home as well as abroad. Indeed, in three short months, it has become an open question whether the rule of law still operates in the US...

There is no mystery to Trump. It’s all plain to see – the habits of the vandal, the autocrat, the gangster and the fool – with Ukraine as clear a guide as any. Not that that is any comfort to the people of that besieged land. They don’t want to be a cautionary tale, a demonstration case of the fecklessness and menace of Donald Trump. They want to be a free, independent nation. Their great misfortune is that the mighty country that should be their most powerful friend is now in the hands of an enemy."

NASA chief and Democratic lawmakers urge investigation into reports of Musk-Putin conversations; Business Insider, October 27, 2024

Erin Snodgrass and Katherine Tangalakis-Lippert , Business Insider ; NASA chief and Democratic lawmakers urge investigation into reports of Musk-Putin conversations

"NASA Administrator Bill Nelson and a growing number of Democratic lawmakers are calling for an investigation into The Wall Street Journal's report that SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has been in contact with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Several Washington officials began pushing for a probe less than a day after The Journal — citing several current and former US, European, and Russian officials — reported that Musk and Putin have had regular calls since 2022 in which they have discussed "personal topics, business, and geopolitical tensions."

Musk has not responded to requests for comment from Business Insider. In a statement on X, which Musk reposted, the official SpaceX account described The Journal's report as an "incredibly misleading story" based on "completely unsubstantiated claims from unnamed sources."

On Friday, Nelson told Semafor that calls between Musk, the richest man in the world, and Putin "would be concerning" if true, particularly for NASA and the Department of Defense. Nelson added The Journal's report should be investigated but did not specify by which agency."

Elon Musk’s Secret Conversations With Vladimir Putin; Wall Street Journal, October 24, 2024

Thomas Grove, Warren P. Strobel, Aruna Viswanatha, Gordon Lubold, and Sam Schechner, Wall Street Journal; Elon Musk’s Secret Conversations With Vladimir Putin

"Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and a linchpin of U.S. space efforts, has been in regular contact with Russian President Vladimir Putin since late 2022."

Surviving Putin's gulag: Vladimir Kara-Murza tells his story; The Washington Post, August 14, 2024

Today’s show was produced by Charla Freeland. It was edited by Allison Michaels and Damir Marusic and mixed by Emma Munger, The Washington Post; Surviving Putin's gulag: Vladimir Kara-Murza tells his story

"Pulitzer Prize winner Vladimir Kara-Murza, who was part of August’s massive prisoner exchange with Russia, sat down to talk with Post Opinions editor David Shipley about his time in jail, the importance of freedom of speech and what the future holds for Putin’s regime."

The Information War in Ukraine Is Far From Over; The New York Times, May 5, 2022

 SERGE SCHMEMANN, The New York Times; The Information War in Ukraine Is Far From Over

"As a former K.G.B. agent, Mr. Putin sees the world as a battleground of conspiratorial maneuvers. In his speeches, the color revolutions in Ukraine and other former Soviet republics and the Arab Spring and other global upheavals are machinations to bolster American domination. As an heir to the Soviet worldview, he believes more than many Western leaders do in the importance of information warfare, both to give his regime a veneer of legitimacy and to challenge liberal democracy. On this battlefield, lies are ammunition in Mr. Putin’s long and increasingly personal struggle to stay in power.

As the war enters a new phase, as the images and horrors become familiar and the costs rise, it will become ever more difficult for the Biden administration and for Mr. Zelensky to sustain their early lead in the information war. That makes it all the more imperative for the West to press the message that this is not a war Ukraine chose and that the cost of allowing Mr. Putin to have his way in Ukraine would be far higher than the sacrifices required to block him."

In the War Over Ukraine, Expect the Unexpected; The New York Times, March 15, 2022

Thomas L. Friedman, The New York Times; In the War Over Ukraine, Expect the Unexpected

"I am always amazed by the courage that seemingly average people manifest in war — in this case, not only by Ukrainians, but also by Russians who refuse to buy Putin’s lies, knowing that he is turning them into a pariah nation. So I marvel at the breathtaking courage demonstrated on Monday evening by Marina Ovsyannikova, an employee at Russia’s Channel 1, a state-run television channel, who burst into a live broadcast of Russia’s most-watched news show, yelling, “Stop the war!” and holding up a sign behind the anchorwoman saying, “They’re lying to you here.” She was interrogated and, for the moment, released — probably because Putin feared making her into a martyr.

Marina Ovsyannikova — remember her name. She dared to tell the czar that he had no clothes. What courage.

And finally, wars also reveal extraordinary acts of kindness."

Opinion: Travels with Milley: The general brings his ‘big green map’ to NATO’s flank; The Washington Post, March 8, 2022

David Ignatius, The Washington Post; Opinion: Travels with Milley: The general brings his ‘big green map’ to NATO’s flank

"On the eve of Russia’s Feb. 24 invasion, Biden ordered Milley and Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines to brief Congress on what the map showed — and then to give the same briefing, on “deep background,” to the Pentagon press corps. This was a declassified version of code-word intelligence, drawn from communications intercepts, surveillance satellites and spies on the ground. America’s best weapon against Putin, Biden decided, was the truth. The administration had found a way to weaponize intelligence."

Why Vladimir Putin has already lost this war; The Guardian, February 28, 2022

Yuval Noah Harari, The Guardian; Why Vladimir Putin has already lost this war

"Nations are ultimately built on stories. Each passing day adds more stories that Ukrainians will tell not only in the dark days ahead, but in the decades and generations to come. The president who refused to flee the capital, telling the US that he needs ammunition, not a ride; the soldiers from Snake Island who told a Russian warship to “go fuck yourself”; the civilians who tried to stop Russian tanks by sitting in their path. This is the stuff nations are built from. In the long run, these stories count for more than tanks."

Putin's war was launched on a runway of lies; CNN, February 25, 2022

Opinion by Frida Ghitis, CNN ; Putin's war was launched on a runway of lies

"In the end, Putin did exactly what President Biden told the world he would do: He invaded Ukraine on a runway of lies.

In Russia, where most people get their news from government-controlled media, many believed Putin's claims of a nefarious threat from Ukraine. But the rest of the world saw the propaganda fall flat in real time. 

"Orwellian" doesn't begin to describe the falsehoods. Putin announced he was sending "peacekeepers," as he ordered his military machine to move into Ukrainian territory. His soldiers went into Ukraine to supposedly "de-Nazify" -- smearing the Nazi label on a country that is a democracy, though a flawed one, whose president happens to be Jewish. Putin claimed Moscow needed to move in to defend Ukraine's Russian speakers from a nonexistent "genocide" by Ukrainians (a tactic made infamous of World War II).

Washington succeeded in thoroughly delegitimizing not only the phony Russian justification for war, but Putin's own credibility before the entire world. It may take some time for the Russian people, too, to grasp the depth of the deception, but eventually they will."

Opinion: Putin is trying to wipe out the work of his strongest opponent. He won’t succeed.; The Washington Post, February 2, 2022

Editorial Board, The Washington Post; Opinion: Putin is trying to wipe out the work of his strongest opponent. He won’t succeed.

"Dictatorship has a body language, a way of conveying grievance, grudge and vulnerability. Mr. Putin has once again revealed his acute anxiety about Mr. Navalny and all that he stands for. On Tuesday, the Russian censor, Roskomnadzor, instructed five Russian news media outlets — television, radio and online — to remove articles and broadcasts based on Mr. Navalny’s investigations of Mr. Putin and his inner circle within 24 hours — just in time for the anniversary of his sentencing. The radio station Echo of Moscow was ordered to delete 34 items; television channel TV Rain six items; the news websites Znak, 13 items, Meduza, 17 items and Svobodnye Novosti, nine. Some of them said they would comply.

What’s so offensive? Svobodnye Novosti was ordered to remove material about “Putin’s Palace,” the sprawling Black Sea pleasure palace that Mr. Navalny exposed as having been secretly constructed for Mr. Putin. The other eight items, published between 2018 and 2021, all stemmed from Mr. Navalny’s anti-corruption probes, including revelations about how Mr. Putin’s coterie accumulated expensive real estate, fancy cars and lavish clothing. The television channel said it was ordered to remove reports about an investigation of secret residences held by Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin among other items."

Belarus Forces Down Plane to Seize Dissident; Europe Sees ‘State Hijacking’; The New York Times, May 23, 2021

Anton Troianovski and Ivan Nechepurenko, The New York Times ; Belarus Forces Down Plane to Seize Dissident; Europe Sees ‘State Hijacking’

The dissident, Roman Protasevich, co-founded a Telegram channel that is a popular opposition outlet in Belarus. The plane was flying from Athens to Lithuania when it was forced down.

"It underscored that with the support of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, Mr. Lukashenko is prepared to go to extraordinary lengths to repress dissent."

Putin’s Long War Against American Science; The New York Times, April 13, 2020

William J. Broad, The New York Times; Putin’s Long War Against American Science

A decade of health disinformation promoted by President Vladimir Putin of Russia has sown wide confusion, hurt major institutions and encouraged the spread of deadly illnesses.

"As the pandemic has swept the globe, it has been accompanied by a dangerous surge of false information — an “infodemic,” according to the World Health Organization. Analysts say that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has played a principal role in the spread of false information as part of his wider effort to discredit the West and destroy his enemies from within.

The House, the Senate and the nation’s intelligence agencies have typically focused on election meddling in their examinations of Mr. Putin’s long campaign. But the repercussions are wider. An investigation by The New York Times — involving scores of interviews as well as a review of scholarly papers, news reports, and Russian documents, tweets and TV shows — found that Mr. Putin has spread misinformation on issues of personal health for more than a decade.

His agents have repeatedly planted and spread the idea that viral epidemics — including flu outbreaks, Ebola and now the coronavirus — were sown by American scientists. The disinformers have also sought to undermine faith in the safety of vaccines, a triumph of public health that Mr. Putin himself promotes at home.

Moscow’s aim, experts say, is to portray American officials as downplaying the health alarms and thus posing serious threats to public safety.

“It’s all about seeding lack of trust in government institutions,” Peter Pomerantsev, author of “Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible,” a 2014 book on Kremlin disinformation, said in an interview.

The Russian president has waged his long campaign by means of open media, secretive trolls and shadowy blogs that regularly cast American health officials as patronizing frauds. Of late, new stealth and sophistication have made his handiwork harder to see, track and fight."

DC's Doomsday Clock #8 Leaked Thanks to... Vladimir Putin?; Comic Book Resources, November 30, 2018

Vincent Pasquill, Comic Book Resources; DC's Doomsday Clock #8 Leaked Thanks to... Vladimir Putin?

[Kip Currier: Read the two sentences excerpted below from an 11/30/18 Comic Book Resources article about a soon-to-be-released comic book published by DC Comics...

"In Russia, all media depicting President Vladimir Putin has to be passed through the government for approval before publishing. As President Putin appears in the issue, DC reportedly submitted it for review to the Russian government."

and then let it sink in how fortunate we are to have freedom of expression and intellectual freedom in this country. The right to think and say what we want. The right to read what we want. The right to read a comic book of our choosing!

Read the article's first sentence again:

"In Russia, all media depicting President Vladimir Putin has to be passed through the government for approval before publishing."

That is as extraordinary to learn, as appalling as it is to contemplate. The idea that the head of a sovereign nation would be so threatened, so afraid of what might be said about him in a comic book--in any writing, for that matter--that "chilling effects" advance review--censorship--is mandated.

That is the quintessence of weakness and cowardice.

That is the essence of totalitarianism, the default position of autocrats and tyrants the world over.

We must never forget, sadly, that the vast majority of this world's citizens do NOT enjoy freedom of speech or expression, precious rights enshrined in our U.S. Constitution's 1st Amendment. This story is a stark reminder of how exceptional freedom of expression is, how priceless yet vulnerable its hopeful spark is, and how it must be safeguarded and nurtured.

And how important it is to champion freedom of expression for others around the world, as well as for those of us who can exercise this cherished and singular civil liberty. "We the people", indeed.]

Confronted with the bloody behavior of autocrats, Trump, instead, blames the world; The Washington Post, November 22, 2018

Kristine Phillips, The Washington Post; Confronted with the bloody behavior of autocrats, Trump, instead, blames the world

[Kip Currier: We must call out and hold accountable those leaders who engage in blurring the boundaries of objective truth, as in the example excerpted below, in which Donald Trump asserts that:

"Maybe the world should be held accountable, because the world is a vicious place."

Such a statement is the amoral apotheosis made manifest of a Gospel of the Inherent Unaccountability of Actors and States:

If everyone is culpable, then no one is culpable.

All are equal in blame.

No one is accountable to anyone else.

No system shall stand in judgment above any other.

Such a nakedly irreproachable manifesto flies in the face of bedrock principles undergirding the rule of law and the U.S. Constitutional system of checks and balances. It is a credo for unchecked anarchy, the very antithesis of originalism. It is the recurrent rhetoric and obfuscatory modus operandum of the oppressor, the despot, the tyrant. The aspiring authoritarian conman.

Its Orwellian aims--to cloud conceptions of "right and wrong", to gum up and break down the imperfect but fine-tuned cogs of systems and rules that hold people responsible for their action and inaction, to "gaslight", confuse, overwhelm with disinformation, demoralize, divide, and manipulate--must be named, called out, and rejected by those who see such self-serving machinations for what they are, and the threats to democracy, the rule of law, and free thinking peoples that they represent.

Inspired by and building upon the prescient words of George Orwell's 1984, to speak truth to power:

Mr. Trump--and those of your ilk, who weaponize facts and wield misinformation to attempt to delegitimize truth and reason--War is NOT peace. Freedom is NOT slavery. Ignorance is NOT strength.]

"In fielding questions from reporters about the killing of Washington Post contributing columnist Jamal Khashoggi, President Trump avoided blaming Mohammed bin Salman, despite the CIA’s findings that the Saudi crown prince had ordered the assassination.

“Who should be held accountable?” a reporter asked Trump Thursday. Sitting inside his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, the president took a deep breath, seemingly mulling his response.

Then he said: “Maybe the world should be held accountable, because the world is a vicious place.""

Once again, Putin gives us a lesson on the usefulness of the blatant lie; The Washington Post, September 14, 2018

Anne Applebaum, The Washington Post; Once again, Putin gives us a lesson on the usefulness of the blatant lie

"Why did she bother? Or, more accurately: Why was she told to bother? Because the production of blatant lies is useful."

The intelligence community has never faced a problem quite like this; The Washington Post, July 19, 2018

David Ignatius, The Washington Post; The intelligence community has never faced a problem quite like this

"The American intelligence community has never faced a problem quite like President Trump — a commander in chief who is suspected by a growing number of Republicans and Democrats of deferring to Russia’s views over the recommendations of his own intelligence agencies.

“There are almost two governments now,” worries John McLaughlin, a former acting CIA director. He discusses the Trump conundrum with the same vexation as a dozen other former intelligence officials I’ve spoken with since the president’s shockingly acquiescent performance onstage Monday with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

How are current intelligence chiefs handling this unprecedented situation? They are operating carefully but correctly, trying to balance their obligations to the president with the oaths they have sworn to protect and defend the Constitution. The officials continue to serve the elected president, but they are also signaling that they work for the American people."

Trump Wants Putin to Keep Meddling to Get Himself Reelected; The Daily Beast, July 19, 2018

Margaret Carlson, The Daily Beast; Trump Wants Putin to Keep Meddling to Get Himself Reelected

"From the gist of special counsel Robert Mueller’s indictments, Trump knows how sophisticated, how costly the Russian actions were, and how likely they are to take place again. Yet he’s made no moves to deny Putin a glide path to a sequel, no elevating election security to a priority as he did for the calamitous separating children at the border, which has all the money and attention in the world.

To the contrary, the White House hasn’t spearheaded anything close to the kind of Manhattan Project that protecting our democracy deserves, not even the cost-free appointment of an election czar, or a request to Silicon Valley to help. Small efforts to counter voting machine fraud, bots, fake news (the real kind) go along at a snail’s pace at the FBI and Homeland Security. Congress has allotted a mere $380 million, a pittance to the cause. It’s likely that Russia is putting more money into interfering in 2020 than the U.S. is putting in to stopping it."

“A shameless lie”: Holes poked in Donald Trump’s assertion that he misspoke when praising Putin; Salon, July 17, 2018

Shira Tarlo and Joseph Neese, Salon; “A shameless lie”: Holes poked in Donald Trump’s assertion that he misspoke when praising Putin

"As controversy mounted over his assertion that he believed Russian President Vladimir Putin's word over the findings of the U.S. intelligence community, President Donald Trump attempted to walk back his remarks, in part, by claiming that "other people" could have also meddled in the 2016 presidential election."