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Mar 12 8 tweets 7 min read Read on X
JD Vance’s Cousin Fought in Ukraine—Now He Says JD Betrayed His Brothers-in-Arms

🧵1/8: History is not destiny. It is the choices we make when history calls that define us.

Two men, bound by blood but divided by war, politics, and conviction, prove this truth with every step they take.

Nate Vance fought in Ukraine, where every inch of ground was paid for in blood. JD Vance, his first cousin, spoke of it from behind a polished lectern.

But words from power do more than shape policy. They decide who gets the weapons to fight—and who is left to die without them.

Nate gave three years of his life to Ukraine—two and a half in the trenches, where survival was measured in yards, and death came in waves of artillery fire.

He had seen men, barely out of their teens, stand their ground against Russian firepower with nothing but rifles and borrowed armor.

He had witnessed war in ways few ever would. He knew, with absolute certainty, what was at stake in Ukraine.

JD Vance did not.

Then came the moment that broke him. JD Vance—his first cousin—sat beside Donald Trump in the Oval Office, looking across at Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky—not as an ally, but as a skeptic.

As he dismissed Ukraine’s need for U.S. support, something inside Nate fractured.

He had defended his cousin for years. Told others JD was smart, thoughtful, principled. That he played politics because he had to. That deep down, he understood what really mattered.

He had been wrong.

When JD Vance spoke about Ukraine, he turned to pundits and reports—to men in suits, not men in trenches.

He never called the one person in his own family who had seen it with his own eyes, who could have told him, with absolute certainty, what was true—his own cousin.
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Before the War: Nate’s Journey to Ukraine

2/8: Before the war, Nate Vance lived a life of quiet stability. He was a lifelong Republican, a hunter, a man who had spent years working in Texas’s oil industry.

There was nothing in his past to suggest he would one day find himself deep in the trenches of eastern Ukraine.

But when Russia invaded in 2022, something inside him stirred.

At first, it was a desire to see history unfold, a curiosity mixed with a sense of duty. In March 2022, he traveled to Lviv, western Ukraine, intending to support the war effort through logistics or medical aid.

What he found instead was a nation fighting for survival.

A military so desperate for soldiers that bartenders, students, and schoolteachers were given a week of training before being sent to the front.

In a hotel lobby, a British volunteer recognized his military background and asked if he could help train new recruits. A few months later, training was not enough. Nate picked up a rifle and went to war.

By the summer of 2022, he had joined the Da Vinci Wolves, a battalion formed by Ukrainian defenders who had been fighting since the Maidan Revolution of 2014.

The people he fought beside had left behind careers as lawyers, professors, engineers.

They had given up their futures because they understood that without sacrifice, there would be no country left to fight for.

The battles that followed tested every limit of the human spirit:

Bakhmut – where entire blocks of buildings were reduced to twisted steel and ash under relentless shelling.

Kupiansk – a fight so brutal that soldiers engaged in hand-to-hand combat amid the ruins of their own defenses.

Avdiivka – where the sky never darkened without the glow of burning buildings, and Nate and his comrades held their ground, knowing that if the line broke, thousands would die.

Fifteen times, he believed he would not make it out alive. In Bakhmut, under an artillery barrage so relentless it seemed the sky itself had turned to fire, he and his commander sat in the mud, trapped, convinced they would never see another sunrise. They said their goodbyes. But somehow, morning came, and they were still breathing.

He had long since stopped questioning why.

“You don’t think about it,” he would later say. “You just do it.”

Leaving Ukraine: A Reluctant Farewell

When his service in Ukraine came to an end, it was not by choice. Nate Vance did not leave because he wanted to—he left because he had to.

When JD Vance became Vice President in January 2025, Nate understood that he was no longer just another foreign volunteer. His familial connection to the new Vice President complicated his situation—making him a potential political liability or, worse, a propaganda tool if captured by Russian forces.

Reluctantly, he left his brothers-in-arms behind.

Now, drifting across the roads of the American West in his camper van, he watches his cousin, the man he once defended as intelligent and principled, dismantle everything Ukraine has fought for.

JD Vance, sitting beside Donald Trump, advocating for negotiations with Putin, as if diplomacy had ever stopped a dictator before he was forced to his knees.
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The Final Betrayal

3/8: Nate left messages at JD’s office, hoping—perhaps foolishly—that his cousin might want to know the truth.

JD never responded.

The man who once built his brand on the idea of personal struggle refused to hear from the one person in his family who had lived through something far worse.

Nate knows his cousin is wrong—Putin doesn’t negotiate. He waits. Every ceasefire is just a pause before the next invasion.

“We are Vladimir Putin’s useful idiots,” Nate says.

Still Fighting

While Nate is no longer a soldier, he is still fighting.

He is writing his war memoirs now, hoping that his story will wake people up before it is too late.

Nate understands now that this is not just a battle between nations.

It is a battle between those who believe in something and those who stand for nothing at all.

For Nate, the choice was simple.

For JD, history won’t ask.

It will remember.

This essay is based on original reporting by Le Figaro, authored by Stanislas Poyet.The article, titled Le Figaro Speaks with Nate, JD Vance’s First Cousin and a Volunteer Fighter in Ukraine, provides firsthand insight into Nate Vance’s experiences on the front lines and his growing disillusionment with his cousin, U.S. Vice President JD Vance.
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JD Vance's Cousin, a Ukraine War Veteran, Calls VP 'Putin's Useful Idiot'

4/8: In this video, we review the story of Nate Vance, a US Marine veteran who spent three years fighting in Ukraine—only to feel betrayed by his own cousin, the VP of the U.S.
5/8: Please subscribe to The Intellectualist's new YouTube channel, where we present insightful videos analyzing the current events shaping the world.

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6/8: IN this essay, we review the story of Nate Vance, a US Marine veteran who spent three years fighting in Ukraine—only to feel betrayed by his own cousin, the VP of the United States.
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7/8: If you are not following us, please do. We would appreciate it. Thank you.🧵 Image
8/8: Le Figaro Speaks with Nate, JD Vance’s First Cousin and a Volunteer Fighter in Ukraine
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More from @highbrow_nobrow

Mar 13
From Global Leader to Rogue Nation: How Trump’s Policies Are Destroying U.S. Influence

🧵1/9: There was a time when the world could count on the United States.

That time is over.

Not because we were conquered.

Not because we were outmatched.

But because we let it slip away. Because we turned on each other.

Because we have allowed one man to turn our institutions into weapons of vengeance, our laws into tools of self-preservation, and our global leadership into a sideshow of pettiness and destruction.

For most of the post-World War II era, the United States was the pillar of global stability.

We were the axis upon which the modern world turned.

We led in defending democracy, upholding international law, ensuring economic security.

The Pax Americana—however flawed—kept the world in relative balance.

But today, the U.S. is no longer a stabilizer. It is a destabilizer.

The country that once defended order now manufactures chaos.

And no single person is more responsible for this shift than Donald Trump.

For the past ten years, even when he wasn’t in office, Trump dictated the direction of U.S. foreign policy, economic strategy, and domestic governance.

He has been the single most destabilizing force in modern American history. This is not just about a second Trump presidency.

This is about a decade-long transformation of America from a superpower into a source of global instability.

The collapse of global order didn’t begin with Trump.

But he accelerated it in ways once thought unimaginable.

When the Cold War ended, the U.S. stood uncontested as the world’s superpower.

The American Century was supposed to endure.

But instead of fortifying our institutions, we let them rot.
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Newt Gingrich, the Tea Party, and Donald Trump

2/9: The Republican Party, once a champion of American strength abroad, turned its gaze inward—away from foreign adversaries, toward its own countrymen.

Newt Gingrich redefined politics as war.

The Tea Party turned governance into siege.

By the time Trump arrived, the GOP had already abandoned policy for grievance, and he gave them what they had been waiting for: a demagogue who didn’t just hate Democrats, but democracy itself.

This shift created a party that no longer seeks to govern—it seeks only to rule.

Some argue that Trump’s nationalism was a necessary correction after decades of globalization.

But economic nationalism does not have to be isolationist or erratic. Trump’s reckless trade wars, unilateral tariffs, and deliberate antagonism toward U.S. allies weren’t about strengthening America—they were about punishment.

While past administrations leveraged economic power to build alliances, deter adversaries, and reinforce global stability, Trump wields it as a weapon of sabotage, turning America’s economic influence against its own allies.
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The Threat Multiplier

3/9: It is often said that being an ally of Trump’s United States is more perilous than being its adversary—and the evidence overwhelmingly supports this claim.

From his first term to his current tenure, Trump has systematically undermined, alienated, and even punished traditional allies, all while extending deference and admiration to authoritarian regimes that seek to weaken U.S. influence.

Most world leaders—even deeply flawed ones—possess some level of strategic thinking, intellectual curiosity, or adaptability.

Trump has none of these qualities.

He does not study or understand history, governance, or diplomacy.

He acts purely on personal vendetta, making policy decisions based on who flatters him and who offends him.

And because of this, Trump is a global threat multiplier. Under his leadership, every crisis escalates. A trade imbalance becomes an economic war.

A foreign policy dispute spirals into reckless provocation. A public health emergency is worsened by denial, misinformation, and negligence.

His tariffs on China led to $316 billion in lost U.S. GDP, but benefited Beijing, which strengthened its trade alliances elsewhere.

The European Union responded with counter-tariffs, hitting American manufacturers and farmers hardest. Trump’s economic nationalism did not protect America. It isolated it.

But it is not just his incompetence that is dangerous.

It is his vindictiveness. His ability to turn personal grudges into state policy, to weaponize the full machinery of government against his enemies.

We saw this when he withheld intelligence from Ukraine, weakening their strategic defenses and emboldening Russia.

We saw it when he sabotaged pandemic mitigation for political gain, leading to hundreds of thousands of preventable American deaths.

We saw it when he incited a mob to storm the Capitol, then sat back and watched as his followers hunted down lawmakers.

Trump does not lead. He reacts. And he reacts poorly.

Before Trump, presidential transitions followed an unwritten rule: past leaders stepped aside.

Bush did not undermine Obama.

Clinton did not interfere with Bush.

But Trump defied this norm, behaving as a shadow leader.

Even after leaving office, he held private meetings with world leaders, contradicting official U.S. policy.

He praised Putin while attacking NATO. He signaled to allies that America was no longer reliable.
And the damage is not theoretical.

Since Trump took office, the U.S. has suffered its worst diplomatic retreat since the Vietnam era. NATO allies now hedge their bets.

Europe has increased defense spending—not just in response to Russian aggression, but out of uncertainty over whether America itself has become a risk factor.

In Asia, China’s influence has grown as regional leaders no longer trust the U.S. to be a stabilizing force. Even America’s own military leaders have warned of Trump’s erratic decision-making. Former Secretary of Defense James Mattis put it bluntly:

“Trump does not even pretend to try to unite the country.”
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Read 9 tweets
Mar 9
Trump Justifies Russian War Crimes: “Putin is Just Doing What Anybody Else Would Do.”

🧵1/10: The Trump administration hasn’t just abandoned Ukraine—it’s actively working to hand Putin the victory Russia’s military couldn’t secure through force.

More than mere appeasement, the U.S. President is an active enabler of Moscow’s war effort.

His administration’s decision to block critical battlefield intelligence—data that has saved countless lives—wasn’t just a policy shift. It was deliberate sabotage.
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2/10: As Russian bombs rain down on Ukrainian cities, Trump shrugs off the horror, declaring in the Oval Office:

“Putin is just doing what anybody else would do.”

An excuse as chilling as history’s worst rationalizations of atrocity.

This is the same moral void that once justified the leveling of Grozny, the razing of Aleppo, the destruction of Mariupol.

The message is clear: In Trump’s world, the strong have the right to exterminate the weak.
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3/10: Trump knows exactly what he is doing. His intelligence freeze isn’t a miscalculation—it’s a deliberate act of cruelty.

As Ukraine’s leaders plead for aid, he smirks and shrugs.

“They have to get on the ball and get a job done,” he scoffs.

The slaughter of civilians isn’t a crisis—it’s a bargaining chip for him.
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Read 10 tweets
Mar 8
Trump’s Intel Cutoff Costs Hundreds of Ukrainian Lives as Russia Advances

1/9: 🧵Donald Trump’s decision to cut off intelligence-sharing has left Ukrainian soldiers blind—and hundreds are already dead. Smoke rises over Kursk, where Russia advances unchallenged, its path cleared by Washington’s betrayal.

According to Simon Shuster’s TIME report, “Hundreds of Dead: Inside the Fallout from Trump’s Ukraine Intel Pause”, published on March 8, 2025, Trump’s administration severed military intelligence-sharing with Ukraine in the days following a contentious February 28 Oval Office meeting with President Volodymyr Zelensky.

During that exchange, Zelensky pleaded for continued U.S. support, warning that Russia could not be trusted in ceasefire negotiations.

Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance publicly dismissed him, with Trump rejecting Ukraine’s position outright. “You don’t have the cards,” Trump said, dismissing Zelensky’s concerns. “You’re gambling with World War III.”

In the days that followed, the U.S. cut off critical intelligence-sharing and military aid. The decision came swiftly after the meeting, with U.S. officials openly blaming Ukraine for the fallout.
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2/9: The impact has been immediate and devastating. “As a result of this pause, there are hundreds of dead Ukrainians,” a senior Ukrainian military officer told TIME.

The officer, speaking anonymously, described a morale collapse among troops now forced to fight without access to key intelligence that previously helped them anticipate Russian attacks. “The biggest problem is morale,” he explained. “It’s really causing an advantage for the enemy on the front line.”

One of the hardest-hit areas is Kursk, where Ukrainian forces launched a surprise offensive last August, marking the first invasion of Russian territory since World War II.

That operation embarrassed the Kremlin and prompted Moscow to escalate its war effort, bringing in North Korean troops to reinforce Russian forces.

Zelensky had intended to use Kursk as a bargaining chip in future negotiations, hoping to trade parts of the region for Ukrainian land currently under Russian occupation.

However, with the loss of U.S. intelligence, Russia has exploited Ukraine’s growing vulnerabilities and made rapid gains in Kursk. “If we do nothing, there will be huge consequences,” warned Roman Pogorily, co-founder of Deep State, an open-source intelligence organization monitoring battlefield developments. “It is impossible to move normally along [the main supply line],” he added.

Beyond Kursk, the intelligence blackout has significantly weakened Ukrainian operations inside Russian-held territory.

A Ukrainian government source told TIME that the loss of U.S. intelligence has left Ukraine exposed to Russian bomber and missile launches, dramatically reducing the time available to warn civilians and military personnel of incoming attacks.

“Not only Kursk, in all Russian territory there are problems now,” the source confirmed. “It’s very dangerous for our people.”
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3/9: The suspension of U.S. intelligence has also weakened Ukraine’s ability to carry out precision strikes against Russian military targets.

Since 2022, Ukraine has relied on American-supplied High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS) in combination with satellite intelligence to hit high-value Russian command centers deep behind enemy lines.

However, with the withdrawal of U.S. data, these long-range strikes have become far less effective.

Even Maxar Technologies, a private satellite imaging company based in Colorado, has cut off services to Ukraine under orders from the U.S. government.

In an emailed statement to TIME, Maxar confirmed that “the U.S. government has decided to temporarily suspend Ukrainian accounts” in the system used to provide commercial satellite imagery. This has further weakened Ukraine’s ability to track Russian troop movements.

Despite the severity of the situation, Trump’s special envoy to Ukraine, General Keith Kellogg, dismissed concerns with callous indifference.

Defending the administration’s decision, Kellogg stated that Ukraine had “brought it on themselves” and compared the intelligence suspension to physically striking an animal to force compliance, saying it was like hitting a mule with a two-by-four. “Got their attention,” he added.

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Read 9 tweets
Mar 5
Loyalty or Ruin: How Trump Brought America's Oligarchs to Submission

🧵1/8: The transformation of the United States into a personalist, autocratic, and kleptocratic regime is no longer a possibility—it is happening.

For decades, America’s billionaires bought politicians. Now, they pay tribute out of fear. The system is shifting from influence to submission, where economic power exists at the mercy of Donald Trump.

“Today, an oligarchy is taking shape in America—one of extreme wealth, power, and influence that threatens our democracy, basic rights, and the fair opportunity for everyone to get ahead.”

That was President Joe Biden’s final address to the nation on January 15, 2025—a warning that, in retrospect, carries the same weight as Dwight D. Eisenhower’s 1961 farewell speech, where he cautioned that the unchecked power of the military-industrial complex would corrupt democracy.

Eisenhower’s fear was corporate dominance.
Biden’s fear was something darker.

This is not just oligarchy—it is subjugation.

This is something new in America. But familiar to those who have studied the rise of Vladimir Putin.

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2/8: In 1990s Russia, oligarchs bought elections.

A handful of billionaires rescued Boris Yeltsin’s failing 1996 campaign, flooding it with cash despite his unpopularity. In return, they seized control of Russia’s wealth—oil, gas, metals, and media.

They believed they had mastered the system.

Then, Vladimir Putin came to power.

He made it clear: your wealth is not your own—it exists at my discretion.

Some oligarchs resisted. Mikhail Khodorkovsky, once Russia’s richest man, tried to challenge Putin.

He was arrested in 2003, his assets seized, his name erased. The others got the message. They could keep their fortunes—but only if they played along. They had to pay up—or be destroyed.

Trump is actively creating the same system in the United States.

For decades, America’s billionaires shaped policy through campaign donations, lobbying, and influence networks. It was corrupt, but predictable.

You paid for access, and you got something in return—lower taxes, deregulation, government contracts.

That world is gone.
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3/8: Now, the price of admission is not just money. It is obedience, servility, and fear.

The billionaire class has taken notice. They are not only funding Trump to advance their interests.

They are funding him because they fear what happens if they don’t.

This is “plata o plomo”—silver or lead.

If you pay up, you thrive. Your business secures government contracts. Your wealth remains untouched. You receive regulatory exemptions.

You stand at Trump’s side, permitted to exist as a “trusted” oligarch.

If you refuse, the full weight of the state crashes down. Your company faces endless investigations.

Your competitors mysteriously receive lucrative government deals.

The DOJ, now stacked with Trump loyalists, probes you for corruption. Regulations that once did not apply are suddenly enforced, and contracts that once seemed guaranteed are revoked.

Trump does not need new laws to punish disobedience. He has the power of selective enforcement.

The rules exist—but they only apply to those who have fallen out of favor.

The Washington Post, owned by Jeff Bezos, suddenly refrained from endorsing Kamala Harris in the 2024 election.

There was no official order from Trump. No explicit demand. Just the quiet understanding that to remain in favor—to keep his government contracts intact—Bezos had to comply.

Then came the tribute.

Bezos funneled $40 million into a book-to-film deal for Melania Trump. Not technically a campaign contribution—but protection money.

Elon Musk donated at least $260 million to Trump’s campaign.

In return, Trump created a new federal agency, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), giving Musk veto power over congressionally approved spending.

The rules are simple.

Obey, and you keep your wealth. Resist, or you may be crushed.

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Read 8 tweets
Mar 3
The Great Disconnect: Why Americans Enable The Policies That Harm Them

1/10: 🧵Carl Sagan once warned of a world where people, unable to discern reality from illusion, would slide back into superstition and darkness.

He spoke of a time when truth itself would erode, when those in power would operate unseen, and when the people—adrift in confusion—would mistake their own cages for freedom.

That world is not a distant nightmare. It is here.

There is something deeply wrong. Everyone can feel it, like a slow decay beneath their feet. Bank accounts empty faster than they fill. Rent rises while wages freeze in place. Grocery bills climb, medical costs spiral, stability dissolves.

And yet, in a cruel inversion of progress, those at the top grow wealthier, more powerful, untouchable. The American Dream, once a promise, has become a taunt.

For the first time in modern history, Americans believe their children will have it worse than they did.

And yet—ask why this is happening, and the answers scatter into confusion. Some say immigrants. Some say laziness. Some say woke policies, or global elites, or government incompetence.

A thousand explanations, all carefully placed to conceal the truth.

The suffering is real, but its cause?

Deliberately obscured.
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2/10: Those who rule over us do not fear anger—they fear understanding. So they construct a world where people are too exhausted, too distracted, and too misled to see cause and effect.

When more than half of Americans read at a sixth-grade level or lower, the consequences are profound.

A public that cannot read deeply cannot think deeply. They are left with emotional shortcuts—gut instincts, scapegoats, and simplistic villains. They do not process complexity; they react. And reaction is controllable. It can be redirected.

A functioning democracy requires an electorate that can critically examine who benefits from their suffering.

But an informed public is the last thing the powerful want. Instead, they need a population too overwhelmed to ask questions, too bombarded with noise to see the connections hiding in plain sight.

Once, there were institutions that exposed these connections.

Journalism existed not to entertain, but to investigate, to reveal, to hold power accountable.

Local newspapers covered local corruption. Regional outlets kept state governments in check. National publications conducted investigations that could bring down presidents.

That era is over.

In its place, we have infotainment, outrage-bait, algorithmic hysteria. Local papers have been gutted, their voices silenced.

Investigative teams have been replaced by repackaged press releases. What remains is not journalism, but entertainment disguised as news—a machine that does not seek to inform, but to enrage, distract, and distort.

Truth has been monetized, manipulated, and buried beneath a flood of manufactured outrage. And in its place?

Echo chambers designed not to challenge your beliefs, but to weaponize them.

A handful of corporations control nearly everything Americans see, read, and hear. Six conglomerates own the vast majority of media.

Tech giants determine which stories are amplified and which are buried.

And the billionaires who own these platforms are not neutral actors—they are power brokers, shaping reality itself.
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3/10: Jeff Bezos, whose empire relies on government contracts, is careful about how his Washington Post covers those in power.

Mark Zuckerberg, threatened with legal retaliation, has dismantled fact-checking on Facebook, allowing lies to metastasize unchecked.

And then there is Elon Musk—who once styled himself as a renegade but has transformed his social media empire into a state-controlled propaganda machine.

These men do not just control wealth. They control the narrative. They control perception itself.

For millions, news no longer comes from careful reporting.

It comes from networks that have perfected mass psychological manipulation. Fox News, OAN, Newsmax—these are not journalistic institutions. They are weapons of war, designed to keep their viewers in a state of constant fear, constant outrage, and constant blindness.

And they are spectacularly effective.

The formula is simple:

Take economic despair and redirect it.

Turn anger downward, never upward.

Create an enemy, real or imagined, and make them the villain.

It is not the billionaires who shipped jobs overseas—it’s immigrants. It is not the corporations hoarding wealth—it’s welfare recipients. It is not the tax cuts for the ultra-rich that drained the treasury—it’s the “deep state.”

And just like that, the public is trapped in a hall of mirrors, fighting ghosts while the true architects of their suffering continue looting unchecked.

Nowhere is this strategy more devastating than in the greatest economic heist in modern history: the long con of supply-side economics.
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Read 10 tweets
Mar 2
The Offensive Absurdity of Suggesting That Ukraine Should Just Forgive Russia and ‘Move On’

🧵1/7: Some questions aren’t just offensive.

They expose something deeper—something rotten at the core of the person asking them.

What if, just three years after 9/11, the President of France—a country that is an ally of the United States—stood in front of the world and said to President George W. Bush:

“Do you think you can forgive al-Qaeda?”

“Why don’t you forgive Osama bin Laden?”

“This whole thing could end if you would just find a way to make peace with him.”

Imagine the outrage. Imagine the reaction of the American people.

The sheer indignation at the idea that the burden of peace should fall on the victims, rather than the terrorists who had just murdered 3,000 innocent people.
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2/7: Now, imagine the United States itself—a country that until very recently under Trump was considered an ally of Ukraine—saying the exact same thing.

Because that is precisely what Donald Trump is doing to Ukraine.

He isn’t asking Russia, the invader, the aggressor, the one committing war crimes, to stop.

He isn’t telling Putin to withdraw his forces, to stop bombing cities, to stop executing civilians, to stop abducting children.

Instead, he’s telling Ukraine—the invaded, the victim—to lay down its arms and “move on.”

It’s an obscene question.

A betrayal.

And it completely flips reality on its head.

But let’s go even further.

What if, just three years after 9/11, someone walked up to President George W. Bush and asked:

“Do you think you can forgive al-Qaeda?”

“Why don’t you forgive Osama bin Laden?”

“Why can’t you just get along with him?”

The absurdity of the question would be immediate.

The shock on Bush’s face would have said it all.

It would have been a scandal.

An outrage.

Just the suggestion of forgiveness for the masterminds of 9/11 would have been met with fury, disbelief, and moral condemnation.

Now, imagine 9/11 wasn’t a single event.

Imagine if, instead of one horrific terrorist attack, the attacks never stopped.

Imagine if, every single day, across the entire country, bombings, executions, and mass kidnappings were taking place.

Imagine if, instead of 3,000 deaths, the body count reached hundreds of thousands.

Imagine if entire cities were reduced to rubble.

Imagine if millions of Americans were forced to flee their homes—not just for weeks, but forever.

And then, three years in, someone asked the president:

“Why don’t you just forgive them?”

That is exactly what Donald Trump is asking Ukraine to do.

When Trump says, “Why can’t Zelensky just forgive Putin?” he’s not making a call for peace.

He’s demanding submission.

It’s a grotesque question.

It flips victim and aggressor.

It erases the scale of Ukraine’s suffering.

And it absolves the perpetrator of the crime while blaming the victim for resisting it.

Let’s put the scale of this suffering into perspective.

Ukraine’s pre-war population was about 40 million—roughly one-eighth the size of the United States.

Since Russia’s full-scale invasion, over 43,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed.

That’s the equivalent of 344,000 American troops dead.

More than 12,340 Ukrainian civilians have been murdered.

Proportionally, that’s like losing 98,720 American civilians to enemy attacks.

And the suffering doesn’t end there.

Over 14 million Ukrainians—one-third of the entire population—have been displaced from their homes.

In U.S. terms, that’s as if over 100 million Americans were suddenly made refugees.

And nearly 20,000 Ukrainian children—not soldiers, not politicians, but children—have been abducted by Russia.

Taken from their families.

Erased from their homeland.

This is what Trump is asking Ukraine to forgive.

But let’s go deeper.

If this question is so obviously ridiculous when asked about 9/11, why is it being asked about Ukraine?

It’s not being asked in good faith.

It’s a deliberate inversion of reality, designed to justify Russian war crimes while shifting the blame onto Ukraine for refusing to be conquered.

Because if the invader can be the victim, and the victim can be the problem, then truth itself no longer matters.

MAGA propagandists push the idea that Ukraine somehow provoked the war—because Ukraine dared to seek NATO membership, because Ukraine wanted to move toward the West.

But let’s be absolutely clear:

Ukraine didn’t invade Russia. Russia invaded Ukraine.

If Russia withdrew tomorrow, the war would end.

If Ukraine stopped fighting tomorrow, Ukraine would cease to exist.

Asking Ukraine to “forgive” Russia while Russian forces are still bombing their cities, murdering civilians, and occupying their land isn’t just offensive.

It’s obscene.
theintellectualist.com/trump-ukraine-…Image
3/7: It’s like telling a kidnapped woman to forgive her captor while she’s still locked in the basement.

It’s like telling a man being beaten in the street to stop making a fuss and just let his attacker finish the job.

It’s a bad-faith distortion of reality, designed to make it easier to blame Ukraine for its own destruction while letting Russia off the hook.

The burden of peace is on Russia, the aggressor—not Ukraine, the victim.

So when Trump asks, “Why can’t Zelensky just forgive Putin?”

He isn’t asking for peace.

He’s asking Ukraine to surrender.

To die silently.

To stop fighting back.

And that is why this question isn’t just absurd.

It’s an insult.
theintellectualist.com/trump-ukraine-…Image
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