Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2024/02/11/trump-offers-putin-europe-meanwhile-the-media-is-focused-on-biden-forgetting-a-name.html
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And there’s still not enough overt media neglect of trump’s horrific statements and behavior that it remains un-media worthy to interview the media itself on that issue? (“We’re waiting until trump declares that nazi concentration camps were sensible business endeavors and we ought to bring them back, then we’ll pounce! So any day now…”) -sigh-
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It’s truly amazing how he can take an actually reasonable/debatable point, like “Post-cold-war Europe is rich enough that they should be paying for most of their own defense spending” and do… that… to it.
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The media is continuing to operate under the assumption that everything Trump says is puffery and exaggeration and that he doesn’t mean it. Trump lies a lot, but he means everything he says. We know this now. It’s not up for debate. When he says he wants to do something, he means it. But the media is still like, “Ha Ha Ha! That Trump, he’s a hoot! The stuff he says, it’s so funny! Good thing he doesn’t mean a word of it! Ha Ha Ha!” It drives me nuts.
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Exactly!
Most countries in NATO should be spending more on defence, but the US also needs to remember that foreign countries pay for hosting its overseas forces and its own power projection capability depends on that network of bases around the world.
If the Europeans get the idea that the US is an unreliable ally, they may decide to spend a lot more money on their own forces and have an EU army.
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“people should pay their bills” ? coming from a man who looks like he stiffs his tailor and hairstylist ?
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I bet there’s a market for “trump nuts” on trucks and pickups.
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It would be so easy for both him and his followers to know how NATO works,
and yet…
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“You gotta pay. You gotta pay your bills,” Says the guy with multiple bankruptcies who’s famous for stiffing his contractors.
Remember folks, every accusation is a confession with Trump.
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Traitor gonna traitor
He can’t help himself.
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It’s not like it’s a surprise at this point; but the sort of moral dysfunction required to not recognize a conceptual distinction between an alliance and a protection racket is something to behold.
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Trump’s default personality is wannabe mob boss and pimp.
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Like the UK, America pays a premium to fight its wars in other people’s countries. It is always cheaper in the long run than the alternative.
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It’s not about us “paying for our own defense”. That is not what this debate is about at all. No country in Europe could withstand an attack by a nuclear superpower by itself. It only works if we band together, and NATO is the current way of doing it (even if I expect it to be supplanted in the medium term by the EU’s common defense policy). NATO is an organisation that hugely benefits the US. They get overseas bases that allow them to wage war all over the world, they get to stuff barrels of pork into their military industrial complex, and they get the fig leaf of multilateral action when aggressively furthering their national interests abroad.
That is what NATO is about, not some charity where the US selflessly defends foreigners.
Which makes it all the more ironic that Trump is advocating dismantling the US’s ability to project force and being a truly global superpower
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Vlad told him it was a genius idea. 
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