August 13, 2025

Cataclysmic betrayal of Ukraine in the offing. By Hal M. Brown

 


First, some history thanks to Sabrina Haake’s Substack today: 

What the US owes Ukraine and why

Trump is about to get played again by a notorious war criminal, on American soil, without understanding why the US helps Ukraine at all

Now to Trump biographer Michael Wolff’s opinion about what Trump is attempting to do in his meeting with Putin. Wolfe see it as an attempt to distract from the Epstein story. It is described in the RawStory article 'I need a big thing!' Trump said to be considering major betrayal as Epstein distraction.

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He saw the first part of what I call his “don’t look here, look here instead” plan as the takeover of Washington , DC. Part two is an even more hideous part. This is the betrayal of Ukraine. 

Here’s an excerpt from the RawStory article:

“That is what he got to,” Wolff said. “‘I’m going to have to do Ukraine.’”

Wolff claims the president will pull the U.S. out of any involvement in the Russia-Ukraine conflict, which Trump believes will appease the isolationist MAGA base, after he meets with Russian President Vladimir Putin this week in Alaska.

“He’s going to sacrifice Ukraine for Epstein,” Wolff said. “Essentially, this is, in his mind, a trade. It is the MAGA people who have pressed this Epstein issue constantly. I mean, they’re the threat.”

White House staffers were caught off guard by Trump resuming his direct involvement in reaching a settlement in the conflict, and they aren't sure what he will do, but Wolff said “nobody in the White House can see this turning out so well for Ukraine."

Could it be that there is something so potentially damaging in the Epstein saga that he fears it could actually become a Nixonian level gate? Wolfe apparently thinks it might. Consider:

But the author ultimately thinks this distraction will fail to silence questions about Epstein, who described himself in an interview with Wolff as Trump's "closest friend."

“The Epstein drumbeat is real,” Wolff said. “It is unceasing and it is threatening, most of all, to Donald Trump.”

How bad could a highly credible revelation be about Trump’s involvement in a sex with minors ring be to unnerve him? This is the serial sex abusuer who survived the Pee Tapes and the E. Jean Carroll case. 

If this goes beyond what Trump knew about to what Trump actually did would this merely be dismissed as “fake news” by MAGA? After all, this is a group which accepted Pizzagate as real.

If they accepted this as real there’s no reason that they wouldn’t believe that even with photographic evidence they’d believe Trump either didn’t do it, or if he did, there was nothing wrong with it. In addition, what with the ability to use AI to make deep fake images, they could just say that this is what these were.

In fact, if Putin does have actual pee tapes which he’s been using as blackmail, there’s a ready made way to debunk them.

In MAGA world, nothing is real unless Trump says it’s real. Conversely, if Trump says something is fake, it has to be fake.

Meanwhile let’s see how much blood Trump will have on his hands if, as expected, he sells out Ukraine.

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August 12, 2025

Manic misspelling rage poster Trump gave Paul Krugman a gift so he added “Deranged BUM” to his Substack profile. I wish he'd call me a disparaging name too. By Hal M. Brown

 


Paul Krugman hardly needs publicity. Check this out:

Below is what the Daily Beast article about this looks like.

If you’re reading this and don’t know who Paul Krugman is, and admire him for his insights, you must be a Trumper who by some twist of fate stumbled on my Substack. 

This is the comment I posted on Krugman’s Substack:

Here’s the image I put on BlueSky:

I’ve written so often about Trump’s psychopathology that I am weary of the voice in my head composing new ways to describe the mental aberrations that make him the most dangerously unhinged nation’s leader in history out crazying crazy leaders like Caligula and Idi Amin. 

Like other manic malevolent leaders, think Wonderland’s Queen of Hearts, he relishes his power to order “off with their heads.” 

The Queen of Hearts had her loyal court. Trump has his. Some of them showed their loyalty yesterday after they spoke following the unhinged manic and malevolent off-the-rails address by Dictator Donald.

In his serious Substack regarding Trump’s lies about violence in D.C. Krugman managed the following bit of levity:

I’m not in competition with Krugman for click. His Substack today, as I write this, got 925 hearts, 240 comments, and 175 restacks.

But, hey I’m human, and considering the time and effort I put into my writing I like knowing people appreciate little old me. I would welcome joining the Trump Esteemed Enemies list and having him call me a nasty name. I could write a Substack about it and put the name in my profile.

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What can I possibly say about how chilling what is reported in this story is?

Excerpt from RawStory:

Internal documents obtained by The Washington Post and reported on Tuesday reveal a secret Pentagon plan by the Trump administration to create a standing force of military personnel that could be rapidly deployed to U.S. cities or communities to quell public protests or any situation President Donald Trump deems "domestic civil unrest."

The proposal to create what it dubs a "Domestic Civil Disturbance Quick Reaction Force"—which evidence shows has been under serious consideration by the administration over recent months—would utilize existing statute, including invocation of Title 32, to authorize the deployment of specialized National Guard units anywhere in the country within hours, according to the documents.

The article summarizes The Washington Post (subscription) article “Pentagon plan would create military ‘reaction force’ for civil unrest.”

The photo that they chose to illustrate it is fairly benign as it shows only three soldiers and a few military vehicles.

The soldier in the foreground doesn’t seem to have a firearm, but he does have a long baton under his arm and, oddly, an American flag on his back.

The obvious questions are how long, if this happens, will it be before a peaceful protestor is killed, and if this happens how will the country react to this?

August 11, 2025

Trump's song was "It's My Party and I'll Do What I want To." Now it's "It's my Country and I'll Do What I want to."

 



Leslie Gore’s 1963 hit, “It’s My Party,” was a lament:

It's my party, and I'll cry if I want to
Cry if I want to, cry if I want to
You would cry too if it happened to you

Nobody knows where my Johnny has gone
Judy left the same time
Why was he holding her hand
When he's supposed to be mine?

It's my party, and I'll cry if I want to
Cry if I want to, cry if I want to
You would cry too if it happened to you…

Trump’s version is anything but a sad song. Not for him, it isn’t. It is a victory ballad. Once upon a time, he could spaz dance to the original version about “merely” owning the Republican Party lock, stock and fucken smoking barrel. Now he all but owns the country.

Trump doesn’t have the gene for crying. In it’s place may be the sadism gene which produces visceral pleasure when he’s able to assert his dominance by inflicting pain on others. It’s a true hard-on for him if he can make his enemies writhe in pain, but just being able to make anybody suffer gives him pleasure. The head of the IRS, for example, wasn’t really an enemy until he didn’t obey without question. Laura Loomer can tell him he needs to get rid of someone and I doubt he even looks into whether they’re really an enemy. He just does it because he can. 

Rewarding those who bow down to him orgasmicly. Punishing those who cross him is an earthshaking O.

Every day we wonder what fresh pile of stinking steaming sulfurous vapor will issue forth from the hell from he has unleashed, whether upon the country or the world.

Today, or at least this week, he may do a twofer. He may sell out Ukraine to Russia, and at no addtional cost except to the victims, he may sell out homeless people and home rule in Washington, D.C.

UPDATE:

I doubt Trump ever reads HUFFPOST, but if he did, he’d salivate over main page headlines like this:

Trump has more legal cover for doing this in DC (see What Trump can — and can’t — do in his bid to take over law enforcement in DC. Even so, there is no doubt it is a test of how far he can go. The next step would be to hype up another lie in order to declare martial law nationwide. That would ostensibly give him justifaction for using the military anywhere. It would be a test as to whether there are enough true patriots in the armed forces to allow it to happen. If there are enough of them who say enough is enough, we are looking at the possibility of a soft coup or a classical coup d'état.

P.S.

The DOJ is launching an investigation of Leticia James and Adam Schiff today, too. For certain, it’s a great day in the morning for Donald J. Trump, the preeminent sadist of our time.

Addendum:

I’m not going to explore this here, but it is a relevant question to consider whether or not Trump has a a rage, or anger addiction. People with this are sometimes called “angerholics.” There are numerous articles about this (here).

For all his victories, Trump still can’t resist venting his spleen, or whatever organ, at enemies. For example this story:

Excerpt:

After midnight Monday — and seemingly out of nowhere — Donald Trump lashed out at the New York Times with a claim the venerable paper should be sued by people who chose to stay out of the stock market since 2016 because of the newspaper — and a former columnist's influence.

The president began by focusing his ire on Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman, apparently unaware that the columnist left the Times several months ago. Krugman wrote at the time on The Contrarian, "If you check out my Substack, you will see that I have by no means run out of energy or topics to write about. But from my perspective, the nature of my relationship with the Times had degenerated to a point where I couldn’t stay."

Regardless of the widely publicized departureTrump took to Truth Social in the early hours of Monday to write, "Paul Krugman of the New York Times has been predicting Doom and Gloom ever since my great election success in 2016. In other words, he has been wrong for YEARS, as ALL markets have been hitting new HIGHS, and are now higher than ever before."

This is just a small story compared to what else is going on, howver we deserve something to wish for:

Here’s another article, this by Michael Cohen, about the vice president: “JD Vance Makes Dumb Look Strategic.”

On an unrelated matter, those who are regular readers know I have been permanently suspended from Facebook. (Here’s my Substack about this.) I can’t post links to my Substacks there, nor can I even read it. Mark Zuckerberg, who owns it, has pissed off his neighbors. In the mold of Trump, I am sure he doesn’t care, and he probably enjoys that he has the power to do this. Read: How Mark Zuckerberg upended a quiet California neighborhood to maintain his own private paradise.

Recommended reading:

My comment was simply that I think it is too late to do what Thom Hartmann suggest.

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Yesterday's Substack.

Cataclysmic betrayal of Ukraine in the offing. By Hal M. Brown

  First, some history thanks to Sabrina Haake’s Substack today:  What the US owes Ukraine and wh y Trump is about to get played again by a n...