By John Helmer, Moscow
@bears_with
With the Oreshnik Moment on pause, who will say what is to be gained, what risked, what lost when President Vladimir Putin decides to play Molotov (lead image, lower right) to these two Ribbentrops (lead image, top left and right)?
“We have so much in common”, President Donald Trump was told yesterday by Friedrich Merz, Chancellor of Germany with a 25.5% vote. “With your German provenance, I think this is a very good basis for close cooperation.”
Trump replied apologetically: “I’m the one that ended Nord Stream 2, uhh, going to a place called Germany, come to think of it. I’m sorry I did that, uhhh [smiling at Merz]. But I ended Nord Stream 2. Nobody else did”.
Reminding Trump that the next day, June 6, is the 80th anniversary of the landings in Normandy to open the western front against German forces, Merz said: “This is the D-Day anniversary when the Americans once ended the war in Europe.”
The Chancellor was repeating Adolf Hitler’s version of the war. Trump agreed. “That was not a pleasant day for you? Turning to the cameras, he repeated: “this was not a great day.” Merz replied: “Well, in the long run, Mr. President, this was the liberation of my country from Nazi dictatorship. We know that we owe you. But this is the reason why I’m saying that America is again in a very strong position to do something on this war and ending this war. So, let’s talk about what we can do jointly.”
Their joint plan, Merz and Trump agreed, means rearming Germany again, with US troops to remain where they are in Europe. This is war against Russia again.
Asked by a German reporter “if Germany is doing enough on defence”, Trump replied: “Well, I don’t know, I haven’t discussed it very much. I know that you are spending more money on defence now, and errr, quite a bit more money, and that’s a positive thing… I’m not sure General MacArthur [from 1945 to 1951 Supreme Allied Commander] would have said it’s positive. You know, he wouldn’t like it, but I sort of think it’s good. You [turning to Merz smiling] understand what I mean by that. He made a statement, ‘Never let Germany rearm’. And I always think about that… at least up to a certain point. There will be a point when I’ll say, please don’t arm any more if you don’t mind — [patting Merz on the leg] – we’ll be watching them.” – Min 9:26.
Twenty hours after Trump’s Oval Office press session with Merz, Rollcall.com has not yet published the full video record and verbatim transcript. This is an exceptional delay. As a result, the excerpts of the Trump-Merz session now in print come for the most part from the media supporting both Trump and Merz against Russia. Read these excerpts as I have transcribed them.
General Douglas MacArthur did not say “never rearm Germany”. There is no record of MacArthur saying it. That was what Soviet leader Joseph Stalin told the western allies.
The historical record reveals that the US, UK and France were uncertain among themselves the extent of German rearmamemt which might be triggered if the West pressed for reciprocal withdrawals of Soviet and western troops from occupied Germany.
MacArthur, however, did intend that the US should threaten Stalin with the prospect that Germany would be rearmed to fight Russia again. This plan of MacArthur’s was sent in writing in 1952 to incoming President Dwight Eisenhower and the new Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles. MacArthur was confident, he told them, that Stalin was ailing physically and militarily too weak to resist effective US pressure.
Stalin making his last public speech on October 14, 1952. MacArthur’s plan to escalate military pressure on Stalin was prepared in November 1952. Stalin died on March 5, 1953.
“The plan suggested by MacArthur to President‐elect Eisenhower and John Foster Dulles,” the New York Times has reported from US state archives, “was to threaten Russia with a complete rearmament of Germany and Japan, possibly including nuclear power, unless Stalin agreed to live up to his promise of the self‐determination of the peoples of Poland, East Germany and Central Europe. ‘MacArthur believed and suggested to the President‐elect that Stalin had no alternative but to accept. On the other hand, if Eisenhower waited six months, the lustre of his prestige would wear away in political strife and allied suspicions and his opportunity would be lost forever.”
In Washington yesterday Merz revived the MacArthur plan; Trump is signalling that he has agreed.
Asked whether he plans to withdraw US troops from Germany, Trump said they will stay: “The answer is yes, we will. Yes, we’ll talk about this. But if they’d like to have them there, you know, yeah, we, we’ll be doing that. No problem.”
Asked by a German reporter “what kind of a play is he [Putin] playing”, Trump replied: “Well look, he’s, he got hit. He’s been doing hitting, so I understand it, but he got hit hard. And he, I don’t think he’s playing games. I’ve always said he wanted the whole thing. I thought he wanted the entire, uh, everything having to with Ukraine. That’s something that would never have happened if I were president. The election was rigged…I used to talk with him about Ukraine a lot. I was the apple of his eye. But he would not have done what he did.”
When Merz repeated Hitler’s version of the end of the war in Europe, Trump was apologetic again, and agreed.
Merz: “This is the D-Day anniversary when the Americans once ended the war in Europe, and I think it’s in your hand, specifically, and in ours –.” Trump: “That was not a pleasant day for you –.” Merz: “No, it was not pleasant. Well, in the long run, it was the liberation of my country from the Nazi dictatorship.” Trump: “yeah, it’s true.” Merz: “and we owe you. This is the reason why I am saying that America is again in a very strong position to do something on this war and ending this war. So let’s talk about what we can do jointly…and we are looking for more pressure on Russia, the European Union did, and we should talk about that…” Trump: “We will talk about it, and it’s good timing.”
Trump then cued a German reporter to ask: “Would you consider putting more sanctions on Russia”, adding that the negotiations have been going on “for months and nothing happens.” Trump replied: “When I see the moment when we are not going to make a deal, when this thing won’t stop, yeah, it’s in my brain that deadline, if we’re not – when I see the moment, uh, where it’s not going to stop, and I’m sure you’re [turning to Merz] going to do the same thing, uh, we’ll be very very very very tough.”
Referring to his June 4 telephone call with Putin, Trump claimed: “I had a two-hour fifteen minute call [one hour 15 minutes, Trump said earlier] with him. Sometimes, and this is me speaking, maybe in a negative sense… sometimes you’re better off letting them fight for a while, and then pulling them apart. And I gave that analogy [of children fighting] to Putin yesterday. I said, uh, President, maybe you’re gonna have to keep fighting, and suffering a lot…before you pull them apart, before you are able to pull them apart. But it’s a pretty known analogy. You have two kids – they fight fight fight. Sometimes you let ‘em fight for a little while. You see it in hockey. You see it sports. The referee lets them go for a few seconds…I said it [to Putin], and maybe that’s a negative because we’re saying go…There’s some additional fighting that’s going to go on. You know he was, he attacked, and they attacked, attacked pretty harshly. They went deep into Russia…He said, we have no choice but to attack based on that. And it’s probably not going to be pretty. I said I don’t like it. Don’t do it. I don’t like it. You should stop it.” Min 31:57.
“You know I’m very proud of the fact that with India and Pakistan I was able to stop
that. And those are nuclear powers…That was close to being out of hand… I said
we’re not going to deal with you in trade if you’re going to go shooting each other.
And whipping out nuclear weapons that maybe affect us…If you do that, we’re not
going to do any trade deals. And you know what? I got that war stopped… And they
stopped that war. Now am I going to get credit? I’ll never get credit for anything. They don’t give me credit for anything. But nobody else coulda done it. I stopped it. I was very proud of that. I wish we could do the same thing with Ukraine and Russia.”
For the evidence of what the Indian military strategy achieved – before Trump acted — to halt Pakistan’s attempt to move its nuclear weapons out of storage, and force Pakistan to ask for US intervention for ceasefire, click to read.
Trump was falsifying. The Indian attack on Pakistan’s air bases, its air defence batteries, and command-and-control also struck at the nuclear storage bunkers at the Mushaf airbase at Sargodha on May 10. At that point, following the operational intelligence of what was happening from Indian and US sources, it has been reported the US activated the “kill switch” to prevent the arming of the Pakistan Air Force F-16s with nuclear missiles. This has not been corroborated.
Trump began threatening to attack Russia.
“If I see somebody’s out of line, if Russia is out of line uh, will be, uh, you’ll be amazed…I’m the one that stopped the pipeline. It’s called Nord Stream 2. Until I came along, nobody ever heard, not one person in this room ever heard of Nord Stream 2. You [Merz] probably did because it went to Germany.” Merz laughed, adding: “this [pipeline] was a mistake”. Trump: “But I stopped, I stopped it. Yeah, you’ve said that openly. It was a mistake because – and I used to go with Angela [Merkel, Chancellor 2005-21] and I say, well, wait a minute we’re spending all this money to defend you against Russia, and then you’re giving Russia billions of dollars a month. What kind of a deal is that? You know you [Merz] said it better than anyone else, uh, I appreciate it. But I’m the one that stopped it….I stopped it, it was dead. And then they say I’m friends with Putin.” Min 34:24.
Reporting what Putin told him in their telephone call on June 4, Trump claimed: “Putin said to me, you know, you’re not tough on Russia. You stopped the biggest most important job we’ve ever done. You stopped it. Then Biden came in and he let it be built.”
Trump went on to blame Russia for attacking Orthodox churches in the Ukraine. “You know, [Ukraine] had the most beautiful turrets, they call them turrets, little towers, beautiful towers, the most beautiful in the world. They are all now laying on their side, blown to smithereens. It’ll never happen again. They’ve taken away the culture of a country. They’ve [Russia] taken away the heritage of a country. It’s a terrible thing.”
Another German was cued to ask Trump whether he supports imposing the Lindsey Graham sanctions bill in the US Senate to prevent India and China buying Russian oil and gas. “I haven’t looked at it…I’m a very quick study. At the right time I’ll do what I wanna do….They are waiting for me to decide what to do. And I’ll, I’ll know, maybe very soon. It’s a harsh bill. Yeah, very harsh.”
Merz was then asked whether he agrees with Trump’s children’s-fight analogy of the war in the Ukraine. He sidestepped. “I told the president before we came in that he is the key person in the world who can really do that by putting pressure on Russia, and we will have this debate later on…we are on the side of Ukraine and we are trying to get them stronger and stronger just to make Putin stop this war.”
When Trump spoke of seeing satellite pictures of the “war field…real bodies, arms, legs all over the place”, Merz interrupted to say: “This is only by Russian weapons against Ukraine.”
Trump: “Yup.”
Merz: “This had never happened with Ukraine weapons against Russia.”
Trump: [nods head in agreement]
Merz: “Never. Ukraine has only targeted military targets, not civilians, not private, not energy infrastructure.”
Trump: [nods head in agreement.]
Merz: “This is the difference.”
Trump: “Yeah.”
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