THREAD by Heather Cox Richardson: Today, when pushed to talk about the fate of the Kurds in Syria, Trump said: The Kurds "are very happy about the way things are going." (In reality, the Kurds are continuing to die; the "ceasefire" did not hold.)...
Then he added: "We've taken control of the oil in the Middle East ... the oil that everybody was worried about." ...
Huh? What does this even mean? We have withdrawn from Kurdish territory in Syria that we helped to hold until Trump ordered our troops out on October 7, and the Kurds are being forced to leave the area under attack...
The major oil city in the region is Manjib, and Russians took it over as the Americans left. They now hold it (it was from there they produced their videos of soldiers taking over former US positions)...
It is a hub for the transport of oil, and Russians, especially those connected to the Russian oil giant Rosneft, have wanted for years. And now they have it, and the nearby oil fields....
So why did Trump say "We've taken control of the oil?" Pundits have expressed confusion about Trump's statement and have assumed he misspoke...
They have also assumed that when he said "We" he meant the US. But did he? I have spent hours today researching the oil industry in the region and can come up with no scenario in which the US has gained control of oil in the course of the past ten days....
The country that has gained control of oil fields is Russia! ...
Trump exploded at House Speaker Nancy Pelosi the other day when she said "All roads with you lead to Putin." But this seems to me something we simply must get to the bottom of...
The Mueller Report and the Report of the Senate Intelligence Committee both written by Republicans, concluded that Putin wanted Trump elected in 2016 and worked to make that happen...
And since he took office, the only person who has consistently benefited from Trump's actions is Putin!..
Trump is infamous for blurting out whatever is uppermost in his mind, and that "we" seemed to me an unguarded window into how he sees the world...
In this case, "we" sure looks like he means the Russians, rather than us....
We cannot believe our president is actively working for a foreign country because it seems outlandish, but as I tried all afternoon to make the case that he was not,...
I could think of nothing that told against such a scenario except my own belief that no president would do such a thing....
Two days ago, the Russian news outlet Tass said that the US and Russia would start working together on cybersecurity...
With another election in just over a year, it seems to me we cannot assume Trump misspoke today, and we'd better get to the bottom of just who our president meant when he said the word "We."
Heather Cox Richardson
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Heather Cox Richardson
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