Thread by @akoz33

It should by now be clear to anyone that all those who believed that Biden's election in place of Trump would be good for Ukraine or for the cause of freedom in Russia and Taiwan and everywhere else were utterly wrong.

Not only were they wrong but they were very predictably wrong, as I pointed out here on numerous occasions.

It is clearly too much to expect of these people to admit it, but key should now be discredited and however much "expertise" they claim to possess, their opinions should be treated with great scepticism.

The claim that Trump was some kind of "Russian asset" was improbable from the start but eventually
(especially offer new sanctions on Russia were imposed by the Trump administration and military aid started to be delivered) they became absurd.

Anyone who persisted with such claims after that point was either being dishonest and serving a hidden agenda on a political fool, who continues to deceive himself in order not to admit his misjudgements to others or even to himself.

The only major figure do got Trump entirely correct
was John Bolton.
There is no doubt that Trump never cared about Ukraine, or Taiwan or any country other than the USA. He was also entirely transactional in foreign policy and could have traded away almost any principle of ally

if he could get the right kind of deal. But Trump was severely restricted in what he could do in this respect. Any deal that he got would, of course, be fiercely attacked by Democrats and Never Trumpers and the media, but in addition,

unless he managed to get something really valuable, he would have met a strong opposition among many of be GOP mainstream who reluctantly chose to support him once it became clear he had the majority of their voter base behind him.

And Trump could not afford this, because it was always a lie that he had managed to turn the GOP in Congres into zombies. Soon after Trump's election I wrote here

https://twitter.com/akoz33/status/931802748592500736

that he would not be make the deals he wanted to make
(with Putin as well as Xi-Jinping and Kim Jong-un) because the kind of thing he would need to get they would not be willing or able to offer or deliver (and conversely).

Putin indeed wanted to trade Syria for Ukraine but for Trump, who publicly disparaged the value of Syria, that would not have provided enough to sell the the GOP, let alone the American public. Some "experts" here declared that a US-Russia alliance against China could be the

basis of such a deal but as I have pointed out many times, such a thing may be possible with Putin's successor but not as long as Putin is at the helm in Russia.

In any case, to make a deal Trump had to be offered something real and big, at least on the scale of the Abraham Accords (which was a genuinely impressive achievement however much Democrats and some Never Trumpers try not to see it).

Trump was quite capable of trading any principle and almost any ally (as Bolton feared) but at least for something real and substantial, and not for "joint struggle against climate change".

In fact to any thinking person it should be obvious that Kerry deserves far more to be suspected of being a Russian and Chinese asset than anyone on the Trump team, except, of course that in Kerry's case there is a better explanation: sheer stupidity of this most stupid senior

American politician in modern history. Trump is ignorant and unprincipled but compared with Kerry he is indeed a stable genius.
Anyway, although one could never be quite sure of anything with Trump, the chances of him allowing himself to be publicly made a fool of and humiliated

in the way that we are now seeing done to the current administration were small. And moreover, Putin and Xi could also never be sure how Trump would respond or even if he would actually keep any promise he might have made.

Which, of course, in these circumstances, was a good thing. The current administratio on the other hand, is entirely predictabl. And that is what Ukraine, Navalny and perhaps Taiwan and all of us may well end up paying a very high price.