Glory to Ukraine!
Glory to the defenders of Ukraine and the entire modern civilization!
Sincere condolences to all those affected by the latest barbaric Russian terrorist attacks. Eternal memory to the deceased… Healing and recovery to the wounded…
- Silence again in response to Russian strikes. Shameful and disgraceful again
- An acting Director of National Intelligence appointed. Incompetent, yet loyal
- Two separate celebrations of the 250th anniversary of the USA in a divided country
- Thomas Friedman: “Trump failed as commander-in-chief.” “Every day we tolerate such behavior, we jeopardize the future of our children”
▶ The first event is not news. There was no official reaction from the State Department and American officials to the latest barbaric Russian missile and drone strikes on Kyiv, Dnipro, and other Ukrainian cities. Silence. Shameful and disgraceful.
▶ On Tuesday morning, the 47th president announced, as usual, in a tweet, that he appointed an acting Director of National Intelligence to replace the resigned Tulsi Gabbard. The American intelligence, coordinating the work of 17 intelligence agencies, will now be led by a person with NO experience in intelligence, foreign policy, security, or diplomacy.
This is Bill Pulte, the director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency and the chairman of the board of directors of Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac – government-controlled financial companies that purchase mortgages from banks and bundle them into mortgage-backed securities (MBS) for investors, thereby ensuring a continuous flow of funds into the housing market.
As you can see, the new acting director of intelligence has absolutely no relation to what he will now be leading. However, he is absolutely loyal to the president, actively trying to help him fabricate criminal cases against New York Attorney General Letitia James and Senator Adam Schiff for allegedly obtaining housing loans under low-interest rates fraudulently. The attempt failed. But the president appreciated Pulte’s diligence.
According to the law, one can head any government agency in acting status for up to 90 days. The president must then submit a nomination to the Senate for confirmation in the corresponding position.
▶ The main event planned by the president to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the USA, “Freedom 250,” apparently will not take place. The 47th president envisioned this event as a grand concert featuring the most popular musical performers. However, almost all invited musicians and singers refused to perform at the event organized by Trump. On Saturday, the president tweeted that he might have to hold a MAGA rally in Washington, a large MAGA meeting with the same name “Freedom 250.”
The musicians who declined to perform under Trump’s patronage will hold and celebrate Independence Day at an alternative festive concert, “America 250,” organized without the president’s participation.
There will be two very different, distinct celebrations of the country’s 250th anniversary in every sense…
▶ On Tuesday, the New York Times published an article by three-time Pulitzer Prize winner Thomas Friedman titled “Trump Has Failed as Commander in Chief.” This article accurately reflects what is happening in the country today.
Trump Has Failed as Commander in Chief https://t.co/j8SJmoS6dY
— Thomas L. Friedman (@tomfriedman) June 3, 2026
Here is its full translation.
“With each passing month of his presidency, Donald Trump behaves more like the ‘commander in thief’ of America rather than its commander in chief.
(Here, the original contains a clever, apt wordplay in English – ‘commander in thief’ and ‘commander in chief’ – translator’s note).
How does this manifest? Allow me to list. Today our country is at war: tens of thousands of soldiers are deployed near Iran. Typically, when our country is at war, the primary domestic task of the commander in chief is to maintain the unity of the country. After all, nothing is more demoralizing for American soldiers fighting abroad than looking back and seeing their own country tearing itself apart. And nothing more strongly encourages the enemy to persist in waiting for more favorable conditions to end the war with America than the sight of America fighting itself.
And how did Trump handle this unifying duty of commander-in-chief? He didn’t lift a finger to gain the support of Democrats on the war issue. Instead, he preferred to act as a “commander-in-chief-thief.” At the very moment when Trump calls our men and women in uniform to make the ultimate sacrifice, he himself makes a brazen, provocative attempt to rob the US Treasury—in his own interests, as well as in the interests of his family and political allies; the latter may include those who stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021. This is so outrageous that even some of Trump’s most devoted Republican sycophants couldn’t come to terms with it.
Trump colluded with his own Department of Justice, headed by his former personal attorney, to use taxpayer money to create a political “shadow expense fund” of $1.776 billion. These funds were supposedly intended to compensate those Trump supporters who allegedly “suffered from weaponized justice and legal prosecution” by his predecessor. In reality, as noted by this newspaper’s editorial board, such a move would be “a reward for loyalists willing to break the law and use violence on behalf of the president.”
Fortunately, a federal judge temporarily halted the implementation of this scheme—a scheme no one characterized more accurately than former Senate Republican Majority Leader Mitch McConnell: “So, the nation’s chief law enforcement officer is asking for some ‘shadow payout fund’ to pay people attacking police officers? Absolute nonsense, moral depravity—take your pick.” Faced with such powerful opposition, Trump signaled he was ready to abandon his monstrous plan; however, I will only believe it when I see this remarkably corrupt, self-serving maneuver finally and irreversibly buried.
If Trump had even an ounce of decency, instead of scheming to allocate $1.776 billion for potential payouts to these so-called “defenders of the borders of freedom”—his staunch supporters who wreaked havoc in the halls of Congress—he would have called on Congress to direct the same amount to support the true defenders of the borders of freedom today—the Armed Forces of Ukraine. For it is they who are currently standing against Vladimir Putin’s attempt to crush Ukrainian democracy and simultaneously undermine Russia’s ability to threaten other free countries in Europe. God bless the Ukrainian fighters.
Alas, it seems Trump is willing to allocate money only to those who tried to trample our Constitution at home—but not to those who strive to embody the principles of our constitutional democracy abroad.
Additionally, the Department of Justice under Trump’s leadership quietly included – as a supplement to the “special expenses fund” agreement – a one-page document signed by Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche. This document stated that the government would be “FOREVER PROHIBITED and UNABLE to prosecute or bring” deferred tax claims against Trump, his family members, or his companies. It remains unclear what the future will hold for this measure.
President Trump has another nickname indicating ethical issues: “chief trader” – as recently dubbed by the Associated Press. Why? According to AP, “presidents in recent decades have refrained from trading stocks of companies whose fortunes they could influence – either positively or negatively – with a single stroke of a pen; however, Donald Trump broke this precedent in the first quarter of this year by conducting over 3,600 securities transactions. Moreover,” the agency adds, “many of these transactions involved companies whose profits directly depended on decisions he made as head of state.”
An average of 50 stock trades were conducted per day; these included securities of American defense contractors, whose positions depended on the situation related to the war in Iran. “If he held the position of Secretary of Defense, his actions would be considered a crime,” Richard Painter, chief ethics advisor in the George W. Bush administration, told AP. “Formally, he has the right to act this way, but it represents a blatant violation of public trust.”
Trump has not only nearly completely cut off the flow of American financial aid to Ukraine, but is also reducing the number of American military personnel in NATO countries – precisely at the moment when Putin, sensing defeat in the war, is increasingly threatening these states.
While Americans are just beginning to realize that Trump is turning into a predator, tearing at our own system – attempting to manipulate justice to fund his “pirates” involved in the events of January 6 and to secure immunity from ongoing tax investigations concerning himself and his family – our allies are coming to the conclusion that Trump’s America itself is becoming a dangerous predator to them.
Indeed, something is happening with America’s traditional allies that I thought I would never see, neither in this life nor the next. In the post-war era, we and our allies collectively adhered to a doctrine of containment concerning the Soviet Union, and later Russia; the goal of this doctrine was to prevent any Kremlin attempts to forcefully expand its influence over the free world or to subjugate neighboring states.
But now this has come to an end.
Our allies watched as Trump threatened to turn Canada into the 51st state and take Greenland from Denmark. They saw him unleash a war with Iran without consulting NATO, and then demand that the Alliance help us extricate from a situation that turned into complete chaos. They witnessed him drastically reduce US financial aid to Ukraine, equate the Russian aggressor with that country morally, and on top of that, impose reckless, ill-conceived tariffs against all our allies.
As a result of all this, something unprecedented is happening: “Containing Trump’s America is now becoming as much a strategic priority for our allies as containing Russia used to be,” Nader Mousavizadeh, CEO of the geopolitical consulting firm Macro Advisory Partners and former senior advisor to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, told me.
And how could it be otherwise? If you look at how Trump unleashed a flurry of tariffs on Canada, it is hard not to conclude that, during Trump’s second administration, the worst position for any country is “to be America’s closest ally with fully integrated economies, energy systems and armed forces,” noted Mousavizadeh. Now it is obvious to everyone, he added, that Trump will “weaponize any country’s dependence on America to extract as much as possible—in the narrowest, purely tactical and transactional sense of American might.”
It is no surprise that after Trump intensified rhetoric regarding the annexation of Greenland, European NATO members—Germany, Sweden, France, Norway, the Netherlands, Finland, and the United Kingdom—announced plans to send small military contingents to Greenland to support the Danes.
Daniel Fried, former US ambassador to Poland, noted in his article for the Atlantic Council that although these NATO allies tried to present their move as a necessary measure to strengthen security in the Arctic, they also “used the word ‘containment.’ For Europeans to speak of the United States in such terms—even indirectly—means reaching a new low point in relations; however, it is necessary,” he emphasized.
Let us not forget that early in his presidency, Trump forced Ukraine to provide the US with access to critical minerals in exchange for American aid in countering the Russian army’s attempt to seize the country. This is the true “Trump doctrine”: oppose America—get tariffs; depend on America—become a target for extortion.
“The only rational response for our allies is to try to ‘deter and diversify,'” concluded Mousavizadeh. And if Trump continues to act in the same way throughout his four-year term, he added, “no NATO leader will be able to responsibly agree to the degree of dependence on American technologies, defense, or financial systems,” which the Alliance countries have long taken for granted.
This week I spent in Portugal and was amazed at how often European business leaders talked about losing faith in American institutions, as well as in America as a guarantor of global legal norms—a role they always considered unshakeable. For them, it is literally a disorienting experience—as if for travelers who have lost their compass.
In short, having a president who behaves like a “commander-in-thief” rather than a “commander-in-chief” is costing us dearly—both domestically and internationally. This perversion of the essence of the American presidency undermines the very alliance structure that ensured victory in two world wars and the Cold War, and also gave rise to one of the longest eras of peace and prosperity in history. Every day that we tolerate such behavior, we jeopardize the future of our children.
There are 963 days left until the end of the story titled “Fear: Trump in the White House” © (the title of Bob Woodward’s book, published in 2018).
Thank you to everyone who read. Take care of yourself and your loved ones. Take care of each other, help each other. Health to all.
Ultimately, what happens in the world depends on us. Whether we fight against evil, do Good, remain mere observers, passively wait and believe that someone somewhere will decide for us, or fight against evil and do everything possible for Good to prevail.
We must not allow evil to win. The victory of evil would mean the end of the world we live in. We cannot allow that. Especially now.
Ukrainian Friends, I hug and love you all. Please take care of each other.
Ukraine exists and will always exist.
And evil will be defeated and punished. And this is certain.
