The Long Con Comes To An End

The Trump Administration Takes Off The Mask (Again)

Yesterday, Friday 21 November, ended up being one kind of day but it was supposed to be another. 21 November, in case you had forgotten, was supposed to be the day that the Trump Administration levelled crippling secondary sanctions on Chinese, Indian and Turkish companies that buy Russian oil. Indeed, the Treasury Department even hinted earlier this week that those secondary were ready to go. It capped off six weeks of a frenzy of reporting about how Trump was going to really hit Putin hard. Piles of articles (many of which had a fundamentally flawed understanding of the oil markets) were written about how Trump’s sanctions were real this time. Even The Bulwark, fell for this con, and we saw a hopelessly naive article by Cathy Young about how Trump really was going to hurt Putin this time.

What happened yesterday was we returned to reality—this. The intervening months had been a long con.

Well, yesterday came and went and, drumroll please….no secondary sanctions have been announced. Now, Chinese, Indian and Turkish oil companies can get back to business buying as much Russian oil as they want/can. Soon Russia will be making more than they were.

btw, the Chinese probably never stopped buying Russian oil, but that is a piece for another day.

Instead, what actually happened on November 21 was that the Trump Administration came for Ukraine—as they always intended to do. The Secretary of the Army, Dan Driscoll, a very close associate of VP JD Vance, went to Kyiv and tried to bully the Ukrainians into accepting Trump’s 28 Point Plan to neuter Ukraine. Driscoll formally presented the plan to divide Ukraine now, and end it later, and the reality of what Ukraine and Europe was facing finally sunk in. Here was how the Atlantic story on the meeting began.

The most depressing thing from the above story was that the diplomat was surprised at what the administration was doing; or I should say that the unnamed diplomat had fallen for the Trump Administration’s long con. The long con was that they would ever do anything meaningful to hurt Putin and help Ukraine, that somehow they were honest brokers in this war. They never were. They have always wanted Putin to get the best deal possible and they have always wanted to severely weaken Ukraine. Whatever steps the administration took to seem to help Ukraine were performative; steps that were designed to make it look like they would be tough on Putin, but in the end never were more mirage-like than anything else.

Such were the oil sanctions. They caused endless speculation about how much Russia was going to suffer, how tough Trump was going to be etc. However, if there are no secondary sanctions (and right now they look rather unlikely) than in the end they are irrelevant and if anything provided a short term burst of revenue to Russia in late October.

Something similar happened with weapons sales. Yes, after waiting almost half a year, and ending US arms aid to Ukraine, the Trump administration did a small maneuver and set up PURL (NATO’s Prioritized Ukraine Replacement Lists). PURL sounded great, if a rip off for Europe, as it allowed European states to purchase at full cost US weapons which could then go to Ukraine or could replace existing weapons which would go to Ukraine.

And what happened with PURL? Well, much like with sanctions, it was launched to great fanfare but produced little. $2billion of arms sales have been recorded, though as of early November $500 million of these had been held up. So Ukraine might have received the replacement costs of between $1-2 billion in weapons (the real value would be far less).

That is a tiny fraction of Ukrainian needs. The Biden Administration, for instance, provided Ukraine with about $130billion in military aid. And they did not sell the weapons, the gave them as aid

And here is where Trump’s long con worked devastatingly well to help Putin and hurt Ukraine. It sapped European states of the immediacy that they desperately needed to support Ukraine. It lulled them into thinking the US was still there to help, that they were not faced by an existential threat, and could wait before taking drastic action. After PURL, for instance, European military aid for Ukraine declined!

The long con also involved letting Ukraine fire (once) it seems western cruise missiles into Russia and the other day (once) ATACMs into Russia. I am assuming the US will not authorize those any more.

So while the US did the absolute minimum it could to help Ukraine and hurt Russia, it pretended like it was doing far more, that it was ready to turn the screws on Putin. Nothing could be further from the truth. All the while the US administration was working very closely with the Russians to devise the 28 point peace plan which is now being forced on Ukraine.

The long con did its job.

And it was long. All we have seen in the last few days is a return to the Trump administration’s true and enduring position. It was a position that they made completely clear in February when Trump and Vance ambushed Zelensky in the Oval Office. In case you have forgotten, here is the video. Watch it again—for it is the truth.

The problem Trump faced was that this meeting backfired. It lost him popularity and it lost him leverage over Ukraine and Europe. When that became clear, probably a few weeks, maybe two months, later, the long con began.

From that point hints were dropped, performative moves were made, even occasional statements by Trump were released which made it seem that the administration was changing position, that it was really going to be hard on Putin.

It was an effective and devastating con, and it worked. Europe and Ukraine were left confused and hesitant, desperate not to offend a US president they dreamed might be won to their side. It would never happen, as the administration is right back to where it was at the start of its term. I wrote this piece just after the inauguration saying Trump’s plan had been the same for six months—we can now make it 15 months.

The Trump Plan Has Been Basically The Same For 6 Months

At least now the con is over and the Trump administration (and Trump and Vance are the drivers here—not Witkoff who is a patsy) is back to telling the truth. They want Putin to win and Ukraine to be devastated.

Sadly they fooled too many people for too long with their con. We can only hope the damage is not terminal.

Note for paying subscribers. I’ve been keeping the pieces on this week free as the issues are so important. However I am including a special section for you below. I have been trying to gain information from all my best sources, and I cannot quote anyone by name, but I have, I believe a pretty good idea of what happened and I will pass that on in broad ways. So the following section is for you. Its not pretty, but there is one hopeful kicker at the end.

How The Con Worked—Where It Might Be Heading