emptywheel has written one of her typically lucid and terrifying columns:
“The mistake, in analyzing the Alaska meeting is not just about Ukraine.
Marcy Wheeler, of emptywheel
It’s about the United States.
It’s not just that Putin can bide his time in Ukraine.
It’s that the longer he holds out, the greater his true objective — turning Trump into his puppet and the United States into a dying kleptocracy that is child’s play to manipulate — comes into grasp.
Putin may still be fighting in Ukraine. But he has achieved far more than he probably hoped for in the US. He has all but defeated every nuisance the Main Enemy once stood for: rule of law, free trade, freedom of speech, science, human rights, reason.
It’s not just that Trump is welcoming a dictator on US soil. It’s that the dictator is coming to reclaim what Russia owns.”