https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-orders-four-mile-military-parade-for-his-79th-birthday/
President Donald Trump is making plans for a military parade in Washington, D.C., on his 79th birthday, according to a report.
The display of military might will march around four miles from the Pentagon in Arlington County, Virginia, to the White House, the D.C. source told the publication.
John Bolton
ReplyDeleteI worked for Donald Trump. This is the key to understanding him
It’s not about America, and there’s no connection to the real world
What does Trump really intend? What is bluff, braggadocio, and bargaining and what is not? Because he does not have a philosophy or a national-security strategy, and often doesn’t seek pre-conceived objectives, observers from left to right are often confounded. Trump is the very epitome of “transactional,” his one immutable focus being himself. Accordingly, assessing such aberrational behaviour, what’s really happening inside his head, can be nearly impossible. Media, politicians and businesspeople alike frequently persuade themselves he is simply posturing, but are continually surprised by what he does. Consider Ukraine, Nato, and tariffs.
Trump, many said, would never embarrass himself by a Ukraine settlement that conceded too much to Russia. During the 2024 campaign, Trump repeatedly boasted that the Ukraine war (and the Middle East war) would never have occurred had he been President, thereby criticising Biden’s (and, later, Kamala Harris’s) weakness. However, neither Trump supporters nor opponents perceived his obsession with resuming his personal friendship with Vladimir Putin. To Trump, good personal relations between leaders signify good relations between their countries, an enormously oversimplified view of the world.
Putin said he wanted peace, and Trump accepted it. That is why Trump has made so many concessions to Russia, and why Volodymyr Zelensky rightfully feels so beleaguered. This is the personal motivation so many observers missed, speculating instead on “policy” reasons why Trump would not change America’s Ukraine policy. He had no desire to vindicate Ukraine’s freedom and independence, and felt no imperative to show strength against Russia’s unprovoked invasion to deter, for example, China’s irredentism regarding Taiwan.
Moreover, starting in his first term, Trump has wanted a Nobel Peace Prize. He envied Barack Obama’s award, in his first year in office for no apparent reason, and felt he deserved one too. Accordingly, Trump saw resolving either Ukraine or the Middle East as possible paths in his second term’s opening months. This is likely the reason Trump often bragged that he could resolve Ukraine on his first day in office, or at least in twenty-four hours after getting Putin and Zelensky alone in a room. It also explains why, in his March address to Congress he called the war “senseless”. Obviously, such a war is easier and quicker to end than one where real issues are at stake. This is a man in a hurry for his Nobel. ,,,
Those who believed Trump would not undercut Ukraine or, even worse, shift sides to support Putin, were repeatedly surprised. They took comfort, for example, when Trump named long-term advisor Keith Kellogg as his chief peace negotiator. But Moscow objected that he was too “pro-Ukraine,” and he was swept aside, purged one might say. Kellogg showed Trump unwavering fealty, but that was, as always, insufficient for Trump. The record of a given staff member is not a safe predictor of how he will act.
DeleteOn Nato, observers said, Trump was merely bargaining when he declared America wouldn’t defend members not meeting the 2-per-cent-of-GDP military spending target. And so too, they said, he was just bargaining when he raised the target to 5 per cent. But Trump means what he is saying here. Nato is not safe from US withdrawal, especially if allies fail to grasp that the potential for withdrawal is still top-of-mind for Trump.
Then there’s Trump’s fascination with tariffs. The damage Trump has caused Ukraine and Nato pales by comparison to what his tariffs will do to America’s economy and the entire international economic system. If Trump had acted on April 1 instead of 2, he could quickly have said it was all an April Fool’s Day joke, thereby saving the global economy trillions of dollars of damage when markets started heading south. Unfortunately however, Trump is totally serious, a fact evident long before “Liberation Day.”
Here too, “experts” and anxious businesspeople steadfastly ignored Trump labelling “tariff” the dictionary’s most beautiful word. Tariffs, they said, will be targeted, carefully calibrated, and he’ll do deals quickly. It’s all a bargaining tactic, Treasury Secretary Bessent said in October, 2024: “escalate to de-escalate”. Even as global stock markets drop like rocks, experts are still rationalising what his “strategy” is.
Wrong again. Trump is more likely to win the Nobel Prize for literature than for peace. As with Ukraine, Trump listens primarily to himself, not to others. He creates his own world, this time an imaginary trade world, and then lives in it. Trump isn’t lying so much as he is ruling a parallel universe, like a boy’s tree house, where numbers mean what he says they mean. He doesn’t react well when the real world’s numbers don’t match: after all, who’s in charge here?
Trump can’t tell US friends from its enemies, either politico-militarily or economically, and doesn’t seem to care. What matters are Trump’s friends and enemies, which are manifestly not the same as the America’s.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/04/07/donald-trump-bolton-understanding-apparently-erratic-action/
Years ago I read an article on Elvis Presley which answered why he did the bizarre things he did. Why the outfits? Why the Jungle Room? Why did he shoot a TV when he didn't like the show that was on?
ReplyDeleteThe answer was simple: Elvis might've been very talented but he was still the product of the trailer park he grew up in. White Trash has a certain culture but is limited in its excesses because the average White Trash is poor. Elvis, on the other hand, was rich. The regular White Trash guy would love to shoot the TV instead of changing the chanel or have a garish room people raise their eyebrows at but can't afford it. He could.
Trump is the same in this regard. He's not a politician. He's not a devout American. He's a walking hunk of ego concerned only about enriching himself and ensuring his fame for posterity. And as the President, he has the nearly unlimited power to accomplish those things. Trump is what you get when an egotist with no deeper thoughts than "How do I make myself the centre of attention and get rich from it" gets this kind of power.