Dispatches from Vilnius

Photo illustration: Brendan Lynch/Axios In his latest statement on Ukraine, Trump bemoaned 25,000 people being killed last month, most of them Russian soldiers on the front line. Here we are 20 months after he famously declared he could end the war in 24 hours, and he has resorted to pleas to stop the fighting. In his addled mind, it is Ukraine that is driving up the price of diesel fuel by bombing refineries and storage tanks in Russia. No doubt these drone attacks have contributed to the spike in fuel prices, but oddly enough Trump doesn't seem to think his own war in Iran has anything to do with it. He insists that he has control of the Strait of Hormuz even if tankers still find themselves mired in the Persian Gulf. Twenty percent of all fuel products come from this region. His attempts to broker a compromise have failed miserably. There is little respect for Witkoff and Kushner at this point, largely because the only terms they are willing to consider are those set forth by ...

  You have to hand it to the Irish, they certainly know how to give a warm welcome at Trump's private golf course at Doonbeg, County Clare. You think the guy knows how universally reviled he is at this point? Probably not. At least he wasn't hopping from AF1 to AF2 by catering truck this time. I watched the instadoc, as Netflix called it, last night and it was like something you would expect to see on Instagram - meaningless other than to stretch the story over 28 minutes to make it look like they had done some research. The only reason I keep my Netflix subscription is because I'm dying to see the Lizzie Borden miniseries they have coming up, and Florence Pugh in East of Eden . After that I can finally quit this ridiculous paid subscription service. Trump did meet with Irish President Catherine Connolly, who rolled out the Honour Guard for him. I guess that made up for the rude reception he got on the golf course. It wasn't much better in the streets of Dublin with b...

I guess once you've "jumped the shark," anything is game and that certainly seems to be the case with Donald Trump, who has reshaped his story that he was carried away by two firefighters when the United States Steel tower collapsed a couple days after the World Trade Center towers. He allegedly had lent his work crew to help clean up the debris, but there are no records of this occurring or him ever being there.  He's knocked this story around for ten years, using it as a means to express his proximity to events and make it sound like he has some special insight. I suppose the "firemen" are symbolic of the brave warriors he knows he has to venerate even though it is himself he wants to put at the center of events.  The irony is he didn't attend the 25th anniversary memorial service in New York, choosing to go to the Pentagon instead, where he could give a speech. Not surprisingly, he and his right-hand man, Petey Hegseth, tried to make 9/11 all about I...

Given that all of Eastern Germany voted for AfD in the 2025 national parliamentary election, it is not a big surprise they took Saxony-Anhalt . I suppose it is the sheer size of their majority that shocked poll watchers as this was supposed to be a close election. It had been close the last time but the CDU won and was able to form a majority state government. Now, they can only hope no one is willing to form a coalition with the ultra right-wing party and that they will able to form a government with the minority place holders. It might be time to consider moving the capitol of Germany back to Bonn if this pattern holds up. For whatever reasons of their own, East Germans are pining for the days before the Berlin Wall came down, with AfD local party leader, Ulrich Siegmund , riding around on an old East German Schwalbe moped. This imagery really seemed to appeal to voters, who have some sort of misplaced nostalgia for life under the iron curtain. The Soviet Union had cleaved off the n...