KJS DC 10-26

Let me give you the timeline. Not an opinion. The timeline.

Trump authorized a deal to help Russia sell diesel fuel — at a moment when the entire Western alliance has spent three years trying to cut off the revenue that funds Putin’s war machine.

Elon Musk turned off Starlink over Crimea during a Ukrainian military operation, later explaining he did it to prevent a “nuclear war.” Ukraine’s military called it a betrayal. Musk had discussed the decision directly with Putin beforehand. He acknowledged the conversation.

Trump removed sanctions from Russia. Unilaterally. Without congressional authorization. Without allied consultation.

Trump endorsed Benjamin Netanyahu nine days before the Israeli election — an unprecedented intervention by an American president into the democratic process of an allied nation.

Trump fired the military’s senior leadership and replaced them with officers selected for personal loyalty. He fired the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. He fired the head of NSA. He dismissed the Inspector General of the Defense Department.

Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner received a $2 billion investment from the Saudi sovereign wealth fund — six months after leaving a government in which he served as Middle East envoy. The fund is controlled by Mohammed bin Salman.

Trump’s own Treasury Secretary is a hedge fund billionaire. His Commerce Secretary retained financial interests in firms his trade policies directly affect. His Middle East envoy co-founded a crypto company with Trump’s sons that has now extracted over $1 billion from retail investors who have collectively lost $3.8 billion.

Now step back. Here’s a question.

If you wanted to weaken NATO, you would create doubt about whether the United States would honor Article 5 — the mutual defense commitment. Trump has done this repeatedly and publicly.

If you wanted to help Russia, you would lift sanctions, help it sell fuel, and undermine the military technology — Starlink — that gave Ukraine an asymmetric advantage. These things happened.

If you wanted to isolate America from its traditional allies, you would pick public fights with Germany, France, Canada, and the EU while cozying up to Hungary, Russia, and Saudi Arabia. This is the documented policy record.

If you wanted to make American democracy look like a performance, you would have the president’s allies attempt to overturn an election, then run again, then upon winning use the justice department to protect yourself from accountability while prosecuting your political opponents. This is the documented record.

None of this requires a secret handshake. It requires only that the incentives of the people making these decisions align with the outcomes being produced. And the outcomes being produced — consistently, repeatedly, in one direction — are outcomes that benefit Russia, weaken NATO, isolate America from its democratic allies, and concentrate power in the hands of a small group of interconnected men who are getting richer while the country absorbs the cost.

Let’s say you are 17 to 27 years old. You did not live through the Cold War. You were not taught in school what the entire architecture of Western alliances was built to prevent — the kind of great power land seizure that Russia is now practicing openly in Ukraine and that China is preparing to practice in Taiwan.

That architecture — NATO, the democratic alliances, the sanctions regimes, the international institutions — was built by the generation that watched what happens when it doesn’t exist.

You are watching it be dismantled. Piece by piece. By a president whose financial relationships with the people benefiting from the dismantlement have not been fully disclosed.

So

You are not paranoid.

You are paying attention.

One of the most important things we can do right now is stay awake.

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