By John Helmer, Moscow
@bears_with
No one in their right mind fights four wars on four separate fronts at the same time, three of them against nuclear-armed adversaries. But President Donald Trump doesn’t have a right mind.
He has delegated that to an under secretary of Defense named Elbridge Colby and his business partner, Wess Mitchell. They have repeatedly written decision memoranda for the President on sequencing his wars, one war, one front at a time, and transferring the risks, casualties, and costs of the warfighting to his allies – the Anglo-Europeans on the Ukraine battlefield, and the Israelis on the battlefield against Iran. But Trump doesn’t read before he makes up his mind.
Instead, Trump has decided he can compel his allies to pay the price of his warfighting in their money and their blood, so he can afford to skip the sequencing, fight all his wars at once, and multiply the profits for himself. In Trump’s new declarations of war this week against Russia, India, and China, and the introduction of his new warfighting alliance with Pakistan against India, China and Iran simultaneously, this is what Trump thinks he is doing.
Calling it peacemaking, he has told the Norwegian government to make sure he wins this year’s Nobel Peace Prize.
Colby and Mitchell don’t have enough of a business to make themselves targets in this new war. But the billionaire asset raiders and speculators who have been bailing out Trump’s insolvencies, financing his election campaigns, and serving as his negotiators for the capitulation terms he aims at forcing, are now military targets – their companies, funds, trusts, homes, and cash balances, that is. They are Steven Witkoff, the special negotiator for Gaza, Iran and Russia; Howard Lutnick, Secretary of Commerce; Steven Feinberg, Pentagon Deputy Secretary; Scott Bessent, Treasury Secretary; and Warren Stephens, US Ambassador to the UK. This is a turn-up for the books, their books, which they haven’t been anticipating. But then no one who isn’t in their right mind anticipates they will be defeated in warfighting by the likes of Russians, Indians, Chinese, or Iranians.
In this new podcast with Nima Alkhorshid, we discuss the warfighting thresholds which have been crossed this week, starting with the reported operational deployment of the Russian S-400 air defence missile system in Iran, targeting Israeli and US aircraft.
“We get a lot of bullshit thrown at us by Putin, if you want to know the truth,” Trump told the press at the White House on July 8. “He’s very nice all the time, but it turns out to be meaningless.” – Minute 5:26.
“I’m not so interested in talking anymore,” Trump declared at his golf club in Scotland on Monday. About Putin, “he’s a — he talks. We have such nice conversations, such respectful and nice conversations, and then people die the following night in a — with a missile going into a town and hitting — I mean, recently I guess the nursing home, but they hit other things. Whatever they hit people die. So, I don’t — we’ll see what happens.”
Trump wasn’t waiting; he had already decided. On the next day he issued his new ultimatum for Putin to capitulate or face the scheme of “secondary sanctions” to cut off Russia’s oil sales to India and China, the largest source of Russia’s trading income.
THE NEW TRUMP ULTIMATUM
Source: https://rollcall.com/factbase/trump/transcript/donald-trump-press-gaggle-air-force-one-july-29-2025/
Trump wasn’t negotiating. “We’re going to put on tariffs and stuff, and I don’t know if it’s going to affect Russia because he wants to obviously probably keep the war going. But we’re going to put on tariffs and the various things that you put on. It may or may not affect them, but it could…”
“Question: Back to Russia, sir. Since you made the announcement of the 10 to 12 days, have you gotten any feedback or any officials gotten any feedback that had a response that Russia is going to do something —
Donald Trump: No, I haven’t gotten — I haven’t had any response. It’s a shame. So I used to say to you, 5,000 people die a week, now it’s 7,000 people are dying a week, mostly Ukrainian and Russian soldiers, but people also from having bombs dropped on their head. It’s a disgusting war.
Question: How worried are you on the oil markets if you were to put sanctions on Russia?
Donald Trump: I don’t worry about it. We have so much oil in our country. We’ll just step it up even further. I mean, oil is down pretty low right now. We’ll step it up even further.”
A Moscow source in a position to know had been reporting that “the combination of sweet nothings Putin has been giving Trump and the drone and missile raids is a good policy. It is already bringing Ukraine to collapse.” That was before Trump’s ultimatum from Scotland. The source has responded: “This has produced great relief in Moscow. Those of us who have been arguing there was no possibility of negotiating end-of-war terms with Trump are proved to be right. The advocates of the policy of sweet-nothings have proved to be wishful thinking, or worse. Now there is a single line – war to victory.”
“As Trump demonstrates, it is his war now. He is pursuing the same capitulation, no-negotiations war as Biden did. [Trump] is showing that Russia has no alternative, and now Russia has no alternative, the Indian side has no alternative, the Chinese side has no alternative but to fight.” -- Min 23:47.
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