Glory to Ukraine!
Glory to the defenders of Ukraine and of modern civilization!
Today in the issue:
- The son-in-law praises the father-in-law for his fight for peace – we’ve heard this somewhere before
- The prospects of Marco Rubio or why he has little chance for a big political future
▶ On Thursday, the first meeting of Trump’s “peace council” took place in Washington.
Epigraph. From the speech of Khrushchev’s son-in-law Alexei Adzhubey at the XXII Congress of the CPSU on October 26, 1961:
“It might have shocked the diplomatic ladies of the Western world, but it was just great when Comrade Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev once, during one of the provocative speeches made by a Western diplomat, took off his shoe and started banging it on the table. (Burst of applause. Laughter).
Everyone immediately realized; we are decisively against it, we don’t want to listen to such speeches! Moreover, Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev placed the shoe in such a way (in front of our delegation sat the delegation of fascist Spain) that the toe of the shoe almost touched the neck of the Francoist Minister of Foreign Affairs, but not quite. In this case, diplomatic flexibility was shown! (Laughter. Burst of applause)”
Almost 65 years after Alexei Adzhubey praised his father-in-law for banging his shoe on the table at the UN, history repeated itself in exact detail. The son-in-law of the 47th President of the United States, Jared Kushner, praised his father-in-law. Praised in the same context – as the main fighter for peace in the world.
Alexei Adzhubey was forgotten the day after the coup that ousted his father-in-law Khrushchev. He was followed by the son-in-law, who was the chief editor of the newspaper “Izvestia,” the second most important newspaper in the nomenclature of Soviet propaganda. Most people will forget Jared Kushner as soon as his father-in-law leaves the White House. The second member of the duo of the collective unofficial Secretary of State – Steve Witkoff, who at the same meeting on Thursday also praised Trump as a great fighter for peace in the world, will also be forgotten.
Trump’s “peace council” will be forgotten the day after he leaves the White House. The first to forget about it will be those whom Trump invited there, who were in Washington at its meeting. It will also be forgotten by the President of Kazakhstan, Tokayev, who proposed the establishment of the Trump award, which the “peace council” will present to those distinguished in the fight for peace. Obviously, the first laureate of this award should be, well, who do you think? I think it should be Donald Trump. Otherwise, what’s the point of all this?
There was a “World Peace Council” organized by Stalin, very active in the 1970s. It actively proclaimed Comrade Brezhnev as the main fighter for peace worldwide, and the USSR as the bastion of peace and progress. This council also awarded a gold medal to the chief fighters for peace. The main fighter was, naturally, Brezhnev, who received this medal. With the disappearance of the USSR, the World Peace Council also vanished.
The fate of Trump’s “Peace Council” is inevitably similar.
Trump’s Peace Council was formally created to ensure peace in Gaza. But to date, it cannot achieve the main goal—disarming Hamas. The provisional administration of Gaza created by this council is in Egypt and cannot even move to Gaza, where Hamas holds real power in areas not occupied by Israeli troops.
Therefore, today’s declared plans to form new police forces in Gaza with 5,000 officers who must be trained, to send a 12,000-strong international military contingent, and to rebuild Gaza or, as Trump previously stated, to build the “Riviera of the Middle East” there, remain just plans.
The 47th President promised to allocate $10 billion for the needs of the council he created, but it’s unclear where he’ll get them from. The budget recently approved by Congress doesn’t provide for such expenses. Arab countries have promised another $5 billion. However, the planned work for Gaza’s reconstruction requires $75 billion.
Notably, the entire event, including Trump’s speech, wasn’t even broadcast live by many TV channels. Apparently, they did not consider it significant enough to interrupt their usual programming.
▶ In light of Secretary of State Rubio’s speech at the Munich Security Conference, characteristic questions have arisen from those interested in American politics. Does Rubio have a chance to run for president? If so, will he run on the classic Republican platform or the MAGA platform? How is Rubio evaluated in the US as the head of American diplomacy?
It seems that the main point here is this. Marco Rubio is a man with great ambitions. He has been actively involved in politics at the state level in Florida and even became the speaker of the Florida House of Representatives at the age of 34. In 2010, at the age of 39, he was elected as a senator from Florida. He was always in the public eye, often speaking out and demonstrating his presidential ambitions. In 2016, he attempted to run for president, participated in the Republican primaries, called Trump a fraud at his rallies, but lost to both Trump and Senator Cruz, dropping out early. However, he continued to work actively in the Senate. He became chairman of the Intelligence Committee (in this role, he completed the political investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 elections—the Intelligence Committee unanimously approved the report, which stated that Russia interfered to help Trump), and when the Senate majority shifted to Democrats in 2021, he became the committee’s vice-chairman.
The announcement that he would become Secretary of State in the Trump administration was quite unexpected.
But for Rubio, this obviously meant the opportunity to get closer to his cherished dream—the White House, the Oval Office.
Here, however, there is an issue that inherently contradicts Rubio’s great ambitions. This issue is the lack of self-respect. The Secretary of State, simultaneously appointed as National Security Advisor, a person who in a normal hierarchy should coordinate the development of foreign policy decisions and simultaneously implement these decisions, agreed to be effectively, in many cases, a figurehead at the “wedding,” where the main roles are played by the president’s friend Vitkoff and his son-in-law Kushner, conducting all crucial international negotiations. He agreed to settle for the role of a speaker at international forums. He agreed to praise the president in the harmonious choir of all those surrounding the 47th president, though he had previously called him a fraud.
The problem is that the lack of self-respect contradicts great ambitions. And it usually prevails. Sacrificing self-respect, one can certainly occupy a formally high position. But by not respecting one’s own dignity, by undermining it, one cannot count on the favorable regard of a substantial number of other people, without which it is impossible to run for president. Therefore, Rubio’s future as a successful presidential candidate seems problematic today.
As for the Republican Party, today it is primarily a party of the MAGA ideology from the grassroots. Rank-and-file Republicans who adhere to the MAGA ideology now form the majority within the party. Its composition has changed significantly over the past 10 years. The most classic among classic Republicans, the late Vice President Dick Cheney and his daughter Liz Cheney, supported Kamala Harris in the last presidential election. Former classic Republican George Conway is now running for the House of Representatives from the Democratic Party. Classic Republican Nikki Haley garnered practically no more than 10% of votes in almost all states in the 2024 Republican primaries.
The Republican Party has combined its economic, fiscal conservatism (“low taxes,” “small government”) with extreme social conservatism (banning abortions, fighting immigration, fighting transgender rights, opposition to equality and equal opportunities, often outright racism, labeling anyone who disagrees as enemies and communists). Moreover, “small government” no longer applies to modern Republicans, as the level of intervention by the Trump administration in all spheres of life, including education, science, and media, is unprecedented in U.S. history.
Therefore, the modern Republican Party, if it does not stand on such a platform, will not be able to win any elections without the votes of people with ultra-right views, who simply did not participate in elections before Trump’s emergence.
The alternative is a complete change of platform. This means abandoning at least many aspects of social conservatism to attract votes from moderate voters in large and medium-sized cities. But there is no movement of the Republican Party towards such an alternative, not even close.
Some changes in its platform might occur only if Republicans suffer a painful defeat in an election. For example, losing their stronghold—Texas. Is this possible?
We will discuss this issue over the weekend in the next review.
There are 1066 days left until the end of the story called “Fear: Trump in the White House” © (the title of Bob Woodward’s book published in 2018).
Thank you to everyone who read this. Take care of yourself and your loved ones. Take care of each other, help each other. Wishing everyone health.
Ultimately, what happens in the world depends on us. On whether we fight evil, do good, remain mere observers, or passively wait and believe that someone, somewhere, will decide for us or whether we fight evil and do everything possible to ensure that Good prevails.
We must not let evil win. The victory of evil would mean the end of the world we live in. We cannot allow that. Especially now.
Ukrainian friends, I embrace and love you all. Take care of each other, I ask you very much.
Ukraine is and will always be.
And evil will be defeated and punished. And this is inevitable.
