Dispatches from Vilnius

Steve Witkoff addressing the press on the White House lawn. Listening to Steve Witkoff herald Putin as a man who wants peace is one the most cynical things I've heard recently.  All through these "negotiations," Russian missiles have been raining down on Ukrainian cities.  An unrelenting barrage that has seen a daily average of 23 warheads since the start of the war in February, 2022.  The prime targets have been civilian buildings, although Putin claims these are military targets much like Netanyahu claims everything is fair game in Gaza.  To date, more than 12,000 Ukrainian civilians have died and another 30,000 injured, according to the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission. Not to mention the millions that have been displaced.  Then there is all the infrastructure  that has been destroyed. Putin's forces have taken out an estimated $58 billion in housing alone.  Close to $200 billion in infrastructure all together, as of December 31, 2024. ...

There's a whole lot of buyer remorse being expressed in town halls across the country as the full weight of Trump 2.0 begins to be felt by voters.  Yet, the media goes on and on about how the Democratic Party is in free fall and offers a number of bleak scenarios for 2026 and beyond.   Some Democratic leaders are even attaching themselves to some rather unsavory creatures.  Gavin Newsom has recently been found flirting with Steve Bannon , hoping to feed off the MAGA dissent in a presidential bid in 2028, but Bannon isn't abandoning the movement. Rather, he is robustly predicting Trump will win a third term. Bannon's chief problem isn't Donald, but Elon, whom he thinks has overstepped his role in the MAGA movement. Like most MAGAts, Steve seems to have a poor understanding of how the Constitution works.  It would take 2/3s of Congress and 3/4 of the state legislatures to amend the Constitution to allow a president to seek a third term.  Anyway, there's ...

The Kremlin's interest in Trump apparently dates back to 1987.  He first visited Moscow that year, ostensibly to research building two luxury hotels.  No sooner did Trump return to New York than he took out full page ads in major newspapers assailing NATO allies for not providing enough for their "common defense," accusing them of being "non-dues paying allies."  He went onto question the purpose of NATO and repeated a number of Soviet talking points. It's always been easy to bend Trump's ear, especially if you present your desired aims in a way that is favorable to his interests.  He has long seen politics as an extension of his real estate empire, one largely cultivated in his own mind, but substantial enough to attract Soviet and later Russian interest. For decades, Russian oligarchs laundered their ill-gotten gains through his numerous properties, keeping him afloat despite the enormous debt burden he had incurred.  As a result, Trump was favorabl...