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Trump kept in place the Magnitsky Act, which targeted high-ranking Russians with sanctions. His administration also put new sanctions on five Russians and Chech

Trump kept in place the Magnitsky Act, which targeted high-ranking Russians with sanctions. His administration also put new sanctions on five Russians and Chechens over human rights abuses, and it approved lethal arms sales to Ukraine. Trump also signed a bill in August 2017 that targeted Russia’s energy and defense sectors with sanctions, and put into place sanctions that affected the Nord Stream 2 pipeline. Yet somehow people accuse Trump of being Putin's puppet. Doesn't add up to me.

TMWNN 4y ago
>Trump kept in place the Magnitsky Act, which targeted high-ranking Russians with sanctions. His administration also put new sanctions on five Russians and Chechens over human rights abuses, and it approved lethal arms sales to Ukraine. Trump also signed a bill in August 2017 that targeted Russia’s energy and defense sectors with sanctions, and put into place sanctions that affected the Nord Stream 2 pipeline. Don't forget incessantly pleading with European NATO members (in the unique Trump manner of "pleading") to raise their defense spending to the sky-high level of ... 2% of GDP that all NATO powers have been supposed to be spending all along. I got a good laugh from a video I saw from a European aviation YouTube content creator, discussing countries falling over themselves boosting their spending after the current war started, in which he went out of his way to chastise viewers who had the foolish notion that Trump might have been in any way right. Also, keeping up and accelerating the training/arming of Ukraine that began under Obama after Russia took Crimea/eastern Ukraine in 2014. There's been tons of media coverage of how Ukraine totally remade its tactics and training on Western models post-2014, and how much of a difference that has made in the current war, but curiously little analysis of the common-sense observation that having all of this happen post-January 2021 is impossible. >Yet somehow people accuse Trump of being Putin's puppet. Doesn't add up to me. One might even conclude that the allegations of Putin's insidious influence on US politics/media are correct ... but that the message said influence backs has always been misdescribed. Might.

TMWNN 4y ago

>Trump kept in place the Magnitsky Act, which targeted high-ranking Russians with sanctions. His administration also put new sanctions on five Russians and Chechens over human rights abuses, and it approved lethal arms sales to Ukraine. Trump also signed a bill in August 2017 that targeted Russia’s energy and defense sectors with sanctions, and put into place sanctions that affected the Nord Stream 2 pipeline. Don't forget incessantly pleading with European NATO members (in the unique Trump manner of "pleading") to raise their defense spending to the sky-high level of ... 2% of GDP that all NATO powers have been supposed to be spending all along. I got a good laugh from a video I saw from a European aviation YouTube content creator, discussing countries falling over themselves boosting their spending after the current war started, in which he went out of his way to chastise viewers who had the foolish notion that Trump might have been in any way right. Also, keeping up and accelerating the training/arming of Ukraine that began under Obama after Russia took Crimea/eastern Ukraine in 2014. There's been tons of media coverage of how Ukraine totally remade its tactics and training on Western models post-2014, and how much of a difference that has made in the current war, but curiously little analysis of the common-sense observation that having all of this happen post-January 2021 is impossible. >Yet somehow people accuse Trump of being Putin's puppet. Doesn't add up to me. One might even conclude that the allegations of Putin's insidious influence on US politics/media are correct ... but that the message said influence backs has always been misdescribed. Might.