>>22693073 VDH: 10 Takeaways From the Zelenskyy BlowupPN1/2

YouTube Video by VDH and points

10 Takeaways From the Zelenskyy Blowup

Victor Davis Hanson | March 01, 2025

1) Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy does not grasp—or deliberately ignores—the bitter truth: Those with whom he feels most affinity (Western globalists, the American Left, the Europeans) have little power in 2025 to help him. And those with whom he obviously does not like or seeks to embarrass (cf. his Scranton, Pa., campaign-like visit in September 2024) alone have the power to save him. For his own sake, I hope he is not being “briefed” by the Obama-Clinton-Biden gang to confront President Donald Trump, given their interests are not really Ukraine’s as they feign.

2) Zelenskyy acts as if his agendas and ours are identical. So, he keeps insisting that he is fighting for us despite our two-ocean distance that he mocks. We do have many shared interests with Ukraine, but not all by any means: Trump wants to “reset” with Russia and triangulate it against China. He seeks to avoid a 1962 DEFCON 2-like crisis over a proxy showdown in proximity to a nuclear rival. And he sincerely wants to end the deadlocked Stalingrad slaughterhouse for everyone’s sake.

3) The Europeans (and Canada) are now talking loudly of a new muscular antithesis, independent of the United States. Promises, promises—given that would require Europeans to prune back their social welfare state, frack, use nuclear, stop the green obsessions, and spend 3% to 5% of their GDP on defense. The U.S. does not just pay 16% of NATO’s budget but also puts up with asymmetrical tariffs that result in a European Union trade surplus of $160 billion, plays the world cop patrolling sea-lanes and deterring terrorists and rogues states that otherwise might interrupt Europe’s commercial networks abroad, as well as de facto including Europe under a nuclear umbrella of 6,500 nukes.

4) Zelenskyy must know that all of the once deal-stopping issues to peace have been de facto settled: Ukraine is now better armed than most NATO nations, but will not be in NATO; and no president has or will ever supply Ukraine with the armed wherewithal to take back the Donbas and Crimea. So, the only two issues are: How far will Putin be willing to withdraw to his 2022 borders? How will he be deterred? The first is answered by a commercial sector/tripwire, joint Ukrainian-U.S.-Europe resource development corridor in Eastern Ukraine, coupled with a Korea-like DMZ; the second by the fact that Putin, unlike his 2008 and 2014 invasions, has now lost a million dead and wounded to a Ukraine that will remain thusly armed.

5) What are Zelenskyy’s alternatives without much U.S. help: Wait for a return of the Democrats to the White House in four years? Hope for a rearmed Europe? Pray for a Democrat House and a third Alexander Vindman-like engineered Trump impeachment? Or swallow his pride, return to the White House, sign the rare-earth minerals deal, invite in the Euros (Are they seriously willing to patrol a DMZ?), and hope Trump can warn Putin, as he did successfully between 2017-21, not to dare try it again?

Quo vadis, Volodymyr?

https://www.dailysignal.com/2025/03/01/10-bad-takeaways-from-the-zelenskyy-blowup/

https://youtu.be/8wFx3WSVdm8

>>22693799

2/2

6) If there is a ceasefire, a commercial deal, a Euro ground presence, and influx of Western companies into Ukraine, would there be elections? And if so, would Zelenskyy and his party win? And if not, would there be a successor transparent government that would reveal exactly where all the Western financial aid money went?

7) Zelenskyy might see a model in Netanyahu. The Biden administration was far harder on him than Trump is on Ukraine: suspending arms shipments, demanding cease-fires, prodding for a wartime, bipartisan cabinet, hammering Israel on collateral damage—none of which Westerners have demanded of Zelenskyy. Yet Netanyahu managed a hostile President Joe Biden, kept Israel close to its patron, and when visiting was gracious to his host. Netanyahu certainly would never before the global media have interrupted, and berated a host and patron president in the White House.

8) If Ukraine has alienated the U.S., what then is its strategic victory plan? Wait around for more Euros? Hold off an increasingly invigorated Russian military? Cede more territory? What, then, exactly are Zelenskyy’s cards he seems to think are a winning hand?

9) If one views carefully all the Oval Office tape, most of it was going quite well—until Zelenskyy started correcting Vice President JD Vance firstly, and Trump secondly. By Ukraine-splaining to his hosts, and by his gestures, tone, and interruptions, he made it clear that he assumed that Trump was just more of the same compliant, clueless moneybags Biden waxen effigy. And that was naïve for such a supposedly worldly leader.

10) March 2025 is not March 2022, after the heroic saving of Kyiv—but three years and 1.5 million dead and wounded later. Zelenskyy is no longer the international heartthrob with the glamorous entourage. He has postponed elections, outlawed opposition media and parties, suspended habeas corpus and walked out of negotiations when he had an even hand in spring 2022 and apparently even now when he does not in spring 2025.

Quo vadis, Volodymyr?

https://www.dailysignal.com/2025/03/01/10-bad-takeaways-from-the-zelenskyy-blowup/

>>22693803

YW I always like the whole story and the video was a bonus

I have never seen a U.S DOS AG so supportive of Trump, God Bless Rubio

Citizen Free Press

@CitizenFreePres

MARCO RUBIO BLOWS UP GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS.

'If Trump were a democrat, he would win the Nobel Prize.'

From

Geiger Capital

12:59 PM · Mar 3, 2025

·9,307

https://x.com/CitizenFreePres/status/1896621554462810382

FBI Deputy Director Bongino repeatedly said pipe bombs planted ahead of Jan. 6 were ‘inside job’ 1/2

By Andrew Kaczynski and Em Steck, CNN

Updated: 4:00 AM EST, Sat March 1, 2025

Dan Bongino, the incoming deputy director of the FBI, suggested on his popular podcast in January that the agency he is now about to help lead was complicit in planting pipe bombs around Washington ahead of the Capitol riot on January 6, 2021.

“I believe the FBI knows the identity of this pipe bomber on January 6th, four years ago, and just doesn’t wanna tell us ‘cause it was an inside job,” Bongino said on his podcast.

“Folks, this guy was an insider,” he added. “This was an inside job. And it is the biggest scandal in FBI history.”

A former Secret Service agent and NYPD cop, Bongino has become a successful conservative media personality in part by spreading conspiracy theories about the so-called deep state that alleges federal workers are plotting to undermine the president’s agenda.

The FBI is a frequent target of his ire.

Bongino has called the bureau “corrupt” and even suggested it doctored surveillance footage of the pipe bomb suspect, suggesting the bomb was planted by law enforcement to create a narrative that Trump supporters were trying to assassinate then-Vice President-elect Kamala Harris.

“I’ve told you this many times,” he added on the January show. “The person who planted that bomb was definitely an insider. It was not an anti-Trump person. It was someone planting a bomb to create a narrative that crazy MAGA people are trying to assassinate Kamala Harris.”

The unsolved case of who planted two pipe bombs the night before the riot, one near the Democratic National Committee and the other near the Republican National Committee, has fueled a wide range of conspiracy theories, many of which have been fodder for Bongino’s successful podcast.

A Department of Homeland Security watchdog reportpublished in 2024 detailed how close Harris came to the “viable” pipe bomb placed near the DNC that day.

The Dan Bongino Show is consistently one of the most popular podcasts on the Apple Podcast charts.

In response to a request for comment from Bongino, a White House spokesperson praised him to CNN.

“President Trump brilliantly selected Dan Bongino—a highly-qualified former NYPD police officer and U.S. Secret Service agent—as the next Deputy Director of the FBI,” the spokesperson said. “As President Trump said, Bongino will work alongside Director Kash Patel to bring law and order, fairness, and justice back to America, and his willingness to give up his wildly popular podcast shows his dedication to serving our country.”

A FBI spokesperson told CNN, “The FBI does not have any comment.”

Bongino did not respond to a CNN inquiry.

https://lite.cnn.com/2025/03/01/politics/kfile-dan-bongino-january-6th-pipe-bomb-fbi/index.

Wait till Kash and Dan prove they are rightwill CNN retract this garbage?

>>22694466

2/2

Kash Patel, the newly-confirmed FBI director,has also raised conspiracy theories about the pipe bomb, including in January, on a conservative podcast.

Together, Patel and Bongino, two of MAGA world’s most well-known figures, will help President Donald Trump remake the FBI amid his long-standing grievances with the bureau stretching back to the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.

A CNN KFile review of Bongino’s social media account on X found that he first began to sour on the FBI in May 2017 after a special counsel was appointed to take over the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation, accusing the “deep state” of trying to undermine Trump. He has since published multiple books alleging an anti-Trump cabal trying to sabotage the president.

CNN also found that Bongino deleted numerous tweets, including one from the day of the Capitol riot that attacked then-Rep. Liz Cheney for saying the states had to uphold the Constitution and certify the results.

“What happens when states violate the Constitution? Does a ‘Constitution’ serve a purpose if it only binds parties that believe it’s a Constitution?” Bongino wrote.

Bongino also deleted tweets that refer to the “deep state,” including one in which he wrote, “The Deep State is determined to have Trump’s scalp.” It is unclear when the tweets were deleted or why.

Bongino routinely doubled down on conspiratorial rhetoric regarding the FBI, adding that if declassified information confirmed the pipe bomb was an inside job, the FBI would deploy another cover-up of a training exercise gone wrong.

“They’re going to say it was a training exercise. We put these training bombs down there because we weren’t sure the security around Kamala Harris and Joe Biden on January 6th was gonna be any good. We put these training devices to test everyone,” Bongino said. “No, this was not a training. This was an effort to frame MAGA people.”

(note by anonBongino will be reporting into his job on March 15, 2025, he’s finishing up his podcast, they are trying to attack him before he gets there.)

https://lite.cnn.com/2025/03/01/politics/kfile-dan-bongino-january-6th-pipe-bomb-fbi/index.html

>>22694470

Ok provide theSauce

>>22694471

Of course Zelenskyy wants it to go on, he can’t be prosecuted if not

>>22694486

I agree but it will be blamed on Trump somehow