HALF-FULL REPORT 02/21/25
What a breath of the fresh air of sanity on the cover of the New York Post this morning (2/21) after a week of heartbreaking lunacy.
The cover story is written by one of the world’s most prominent and best-selling conservative authors, Douglas Murray, and is such a critically important must-read for TTPers that it is a companion article in full to this HFR: Mr. President: Putin Is The Dictator — 10 Ukraine-Russia War Truths We Ignore At Our Peril.
The small print intro on the cover:
“’It’s right for President Trump to want to stop the bloodshed in Ukraine, but there are certain truths we all must remember – namely that Vladimir Putin is solely responsible for this war. He is the one who started it, and the one who committed unspeakable horrors. Any peace that appeases Russia will not be looked on kindly by history,’ writes Douglas Murray.”
Murray concludes:
“President Trump has a chance to bring an end to this war, to stop the killing. Maybe even win a Nobel Prize for Peace. But he will not be honored if the peace is an appeasement, one that bows down in the face of evil as it denies obvious truths.
The judgment of history will be even harsher — decades of peace and prosperity in Europe and America thrown away to a resurgent Russia harassing the east. Without a strong peace, it won’t be just Ukraine that suffers. It is all of us.
That is the ultimate truth.”
This week has been truly bizarre, almost schizophrenically so, fully half-empty, yet also fully half-full. How did it get that way? Here’s the explanation…
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Houston, we have a problem. The President is in amygdala hijack – the irrational emotion part of his brain is in charge of his behavior, not the rational thinking clearly part – at least in foreign policy and thankfully not domestic.
We – which certainly includes me – ignored the clear warning signs emerging in the first minutes behind the Resolute Desk again.
Gratuitously insulting Mexico with “Gulf of America”, Canada with 51st state ridicule, bully threatening little Denmark to seize and “own” Greenland – all for no real purpose save for narcissistic braggadocio. America doesn’t push its neighbors and allies around – that what Russia does, not us. It should be embarrassing to us that our president is behaving this way.
Yet everything between Trump and Zelensky was okay two weeks ago, when on Feb. 7: Zelensky says he’s open to Trump’s rare earth request: ‘Let’s do a deal’. But when Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent presented the contract to Zelensky in Kyiv on Feb.12 and arrogantly demanded he sign it immediately, Zelensky was shocked both by how unbelievably one-sided it was and by Bessent’s behavior.
So he refused, saying he had to study it and it might require a Ukrainian electorate referendum for approval. As Ambrose Evans-Pritchard wrote in TTP, the deal was: Trump’s Confidential Plan To Strangle Ukraine.
Zelensky’s refusal to agree to Trump’s absurdly one-sided deal, combined with the standing ovation exultation he received over his magnificent speech at the Munich Security Conference – see Zelensky at Munich on TTP – in stark contrast to the sour reception Vance received in refusing to not even mention Ukraine, resulted in Trump literally losing his rational mind.
Completely unprovoked and out of the blue, on Wednesday (2/19), Trump posted on his Truth Social what only can be described as a deranged rant full of outright lies manufactured in the Kremlin attacking Zelensky. This has caused people all over the world to doubt Trump’s mental stability:
His numbers are simply sky-hooked, made-up out of then air. The numbers on aid to Ukraine are publicly available, e.g., from The Economist:
And calling Zelensky a “Dictator without elections” when that describes Putin precisely… that’s plain morally disgusting, causing world headlines to express contempt and revulsion:
Ukrainians are stunned that the President of the United States would say such a thing:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15C1Dv8O39I
Senator Roger Wicker (R-MS), Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, had this to say about Putin:
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/MCGbPuXPjTQ
Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC) feels the same:
Unexpected and very fiery pro-Ukraine speech by Senator Tillis in the Senate on Wednesday, specifically mentioning Trump, drawing a contrast in their positions. He just got back from Ukraine. This is a positive, Trump needs the Senate to pass his budget: pic.twitter.com/oN2wVfXBAd
— John Jackson (@hissgoescobra) February 21, 2025
While General Keith Kellogg, Trump’s very own Special Envoy to Ukraine, had this to say after a lengthy meeting today with Zelensky in Kiev:
There’s a revealing photo of Trump delivering one of his tirades in the Oval Office with the framed portrait of Ronald Reagan hung in the background.
I knew President Reagan well enough to know he would be ashamed of his successor’s behavior. So demeaning to himself and his high office, so classless, so utterly narcissistic, and so willfully blind to reality.
What could get him out of amygdala hijack and back to being normal once again?
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A lot of people can stand being criticized, even insulted, but almost no one likes being humiliated and laughed at.
Yesterday (2/20), the Daily Mail asked: Why Is Trump Putty in Putin’s Hands? The article reveals that Trump has been trying to do business with Russia – like building a skyscraper Trump Tower hotel adjacent to the Kremlin – since the Soviet days. That long ago the KGB identified him as easy to influence through flattery.
True or not, the point of the article is that he’s being made fun of. Same as Democrat floor speeches in the Senate ridiculing him, such as Dem Dick Durbin (D-IL calling Trump a “pushover for Putin.”
And how does he tolerate this? Russian State TV and Kremlin Insiders Laughing at Trump.
Or this: US Military Combat Veterans Volunteering in Ukraine Call Trump a “Coward” Towards Putin.
The answer must be, especially for someone with an ego the size of Mount Everest, he won’t. That he’ll come to his senses and realize he’s got the high cards while Putin is holding a busted flush.
As of now, other world leaders will be gathering in Kyiv next Monday to join with and in support of President Zelensky in commemoration of the third anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022.
Our president will not be there. He’s rather be in Saudi Arabia with the world’s most heinous war criminal.
Then again, he might take the words of Ronald Reagan to heart about the real meaning of “peace.” These are the words of President Reagan he needs to hear:
President Ronald Reagan pic.twitter.com/DUQsF2Gxjy
— Igor Sushko (@igorsushko) February 21, 2025
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhYJS80MgYA
On the other hand, President Reagan would absolutely and totally admire President Trump for doing what he advocated – in his words, “Get the government off our backs and out of our wallets.”
You can just see the enormous smile on Reagan’s face if he saw these dozen headlines:
Trump Executive Order Wipes Out 90 Years of Practice and Permanently Changes the Executive Branch
Trump’s Goal Is To ‘Abolish The IRS’ As Layoffs Loom: Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick
Trump Signs Executive Order Terminating All Federal Taxpayer Benefits Going To Illegal Aliens
Trump Ends Deportation Protection For 500,000 Haitians
Judge Rules Against Unions, Says Trump Administration Can Fire Government Workers
DOGE Deep-State Demolition Path Evident In Soaring DC Jobless Claims
Meet The Group Writing The Blueprint For Dismantling Bureaucracy In Every Red State
Education Department Slashes $600 Million In Funding For ‘Social Justice Activism’ Teacher Training
Zeldin EPA Discovers $2 Billion Stashed Away By Biden Admin For Stacey Abrams-Linked Climate Group
DOGE Recovers $1.9 BILLION That Housing and Urban Development ‘Misplaced’ During Biden Admin
Trump Praises $4.5 Trillion Tax Cut In House Budget, Wants Senate R’s To Get With The Program
So…. while we have narily a drop to drink in our half-empty foreign policy glass this week, we’re flowingly full in the half-full domestic policy glass.
Many Ukrainians revere Zelensky whom they consider holding their country together amidst the unimaginable horroes committed upon them by a 21st century Hitler. We’ll see just how many – or possibly how few – in the events and rallies solemnly commemorating the third full year of this inhuman war upon them this Monday the 24th.
Will it serve to jolt T47 out of amygdala hijack on this issue? He doesn’t have it elsewhere. Let’s look forward to his full recovery.