Paul Craig Roberts

During the Biden regime, Trump criticized the Democrats for dropping bombs on Yemen. You don’t have to do that, Trump said, you can talk through problems over the telephone. Now it is Trump who is bombing Yemen.

Those few who think about foreign affairs chalk it up to another Trump favor to Israel. Even so, it makes no sense. It doesn’t help to stop the killing in Ukraine to start the killing in Yemen and to continue the killing in Gaza and the small remnant of the West Bank. Is Trump for peace or just partly for peace depending on location?

Trump’s bombing of Yemen could turn into something bigger. Trump’s national security advisor said that Washington might begin bombing Iranian warships. He didn’t explain the point of it or address the consequences. The bellicosity emitting from the Trump regime calls into question Trump’s sincerity about peace in Ukraine.

Indeed, the way Trump took up the Ukraine negotiations struck me as either thoughtless or calculated to inflame the situation. The Ukraine conflict is Washington’s proxy war with Russia, and this is the way Russia understands it. A successful negotiation has to take place between Trump and Putin. Instead, Trump negotiated with Zelensky a temporary cease fire and then threatened Putin if he failed to agree. By so doing, Trump presented Putin with a fait accompli, hardly a way to build trust. As Putin surely knows, it is not an agreement if one side is coerced into it.

Elsewhere on the Trump front I see what look to me to be puzzling mistakes. Before issuing all those shutdown and firing orders, Trump should have first let DOGE uncover and publicize the fantastic uses of the federal budget for unwarranted purposes. Then with the case made, it becomes difficult for federal judges to try to overturn the remedy.

Yesterday a Senate vote underlined the danger of acting in advance of persuasion. 26 Republicans, including the Senate Majority Leader, voted with Democrats not to include in the spending cuts those Trump ordered for USAID. When nearly half of the Republican Senate prefer to continue funding transgender comic books in Peru and DEI training sessions in Serbia despite their concern with the budget deficit, proper groundwork is missing. In domestic fights assaults must be as carefully prepared as military assaults.

The sound and fury emitted from the Oval Office provides the presstitutes with much to misrepresent and use as weapons against Trump. Hopefully, the presstitutes will further discredit themselves rather than Trump.

In the meantime Trump should take a break from talk and action and figure out how to get his war for America’s renewal better organized.

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Are Things Going Amiss?
https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2025/03/18/are-things-going-amiss/