Hi All,
The original point of this piece was an analysis of what is happening with the Graham-Blumenthal Tariff/Sanctions Bill (or more accurately, what is not happening). This bill might be dead again because Trump does not want it—which in and of itself does not mean a lot as the bill was crafted so that it really would not help Ukraine anyway. That being said, it might still be worthy of support, regardless.
However, before I get to that, I thought I should follow up yesterday’s weekend update with a report about what happened when Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff actually reached Ukraine Sunday.
If you saw the update, it stated that the key thing in this visit was the sequencing. By having Kushner and Witkoff go first to Moscow (which allowed Witkoff to get all warm and fuzzy with Putin), Trump was making it clear that US policy is to reach a common position with Moscow first—and then try to force Ukraine to accept that position.
This seems to be exactly what happened. After meeting with Kushner and Witkoff in Kyiv, President Zelensky had to admit that little if anything was achieved. Even while putting the best face possible on the talks, he concluded that the ultimate result of the meeting was that “the war will continue”. Zelensky then went on to state that he is now planning on war going on through at least the winter (which as I said yesterday, holds out the prospect of being particularly brutal). Admitting this, all he could do was hope that Ukraine was not completely abandoned but received “support for both air defense and the energy sector”.
The USA has made no concrete pledges in these areas—despite all the noise.
Maybe the most revealing moment of the day, however, was when Jared Kushner, sitting next to Zelensky, expressed the Trump administration’s ultimate hopes for the talks. What Kushner said was that he and Trump wanted a “win-win” kind of deal for Russia and Ukraine. The amazing thing was that he said that thinking he was being positive for Ukraine! He was there, in Kyiv, a capital of a country Russia had invaded, has brutalized, and whose soil and people Russia is attempting to steal—and he said he wants to get Putin a “win” of some sort.
He even contextualized the remarks by saying that Ukraine would have to become friends with Russia again—saying that the USA and Germany were once enemies so it could happen. He seems unaware that the US and Germany became friends only after Germany was defeated and conquered—but hey ho.
I suppose in the end all we can say is that the visit was another part of the con being played by the Trump administration. This con is that they will actually do anything that materially helps Ukraine. The Trump administration remains committed to getting Putin what the Russian dictator wants, and whatever it does for Ukraine is to achieve that end.
Graham-Blumenthal Is Part Of The Con
Now for another element of the con. As you might have heard (though the reporting on it was rather quiet), the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Mike Johnson, has put off, and might have killed off, a vote on the Graham-Blumenthal tariffs/sanctions bill.
