After he was elected to his second non-consecutive term as president Donny promised to end the Russia/Ukraine mash-up within 24 hours….(damn that is the longest 24 hours I have spent)….he has issued another of his now famous ultimatums….how will Russia respond?

“I use trade for a lot of things,” President Trump said Monday. “But it’s great for settling wars.” During a meeting with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte in the Oval Office, Trump threatened to hit Russia with “very severe tariffs” if there was no deal to end the Ukraine war within 50 days, the AP reports. “We’re going to be doing secondary tariffs if we don’t have a deal in 50 days. It’s very simple,” Trump said. “And they’ll be at 100%. And that’s the way it is.” The Washington Post reports that with “secondary tariffs,” Trump was likely referring to tariffs on countries that buy Russian energy, not to Russian exports to the US. A bipartisan group of more than 80 senators has been urging Trump to hit buyers of Russian oil and uranium with 500% tariffs, the New York Times reports.

• Trump described Vladimir Putin as a “tough guy” who has “fooled a lot of people,” including previous presidents. “He fooled Clinton, Bush, Obama, Biden—he didn’t fool me,” Trump said. “I speak to him a lot about getting this thing done. And I always hang up and say, well, that was a nice phone call. And then missiles are launched into Kyiv or some other city, and (I say) strange,” Trump said, per Reuters. “And after that happens three or four times, you say the talk doesn’t mean anything.”
• Trump said a deal had been reached for other NATO members to buy billions of dollars in US-made weapons to send to Ukraine. “We make the best equipment, the best missiles, the best of everything, the European nations know that, and we made a deal today,” he said, per the Guardian. “We are going to be sending them weapons, and they’re going to be paying for them.”
• “I have to tell you, Europe has a lot of spirit for this war,” Trump said, per the Times. “When I first got involved, I didn’t think they did, but they do.” He said he wanted to stress that “this is not Trump’s war.”

How will this fiasco end?

Will Russia bow down and kiss Donny’s fat white ass?

In the first six months of his second term, President Donald Trump has demonstrated his love for three things: deals, tariffs, and ultimatums.

He got to combine these passions during his Oval Office meeting with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte on Monday. Only moments after the two leaders announced a new plan to get military aid to Ukraine, Trump issued an ominous 50-day deadline for Russian President Vladimir Putin to agree to a ceasefire. “We’re going to be doing secondary tariffs if we don’t have a deal within 50 days,” Trump told the assembled reporters.

The threat is unlikely to change Putin’s calculus, however, or bring the conflict to a near-term conclusion. Instead, Trump’s deadline is likely to make his own life more difficult, limiting his future flexibility, putting the settlement he craves farther out of reach, and forcing him to take steps that harm rather than advance U.S. interests.

Trump’s intention to impose “secondary tariffs” on Russia if Putin does not meet his deadline was not well-explained in his press conference with Rutte. Nor was it immediately clear if the planned punishment for Putin’s continued intransigence would include tariffs on Russian trade with the United States or “secondary sanctions” on Russia’s trading partners — or some combination of the two.

Whatever the details, however, looming economic consequences are unlikely to intimidate Putin or convince him to accept an early ceasefire. For starters, if Trump is indeed talking about tariffs on Russian trade with the United States, then his threat is an empty one. The United States imported only about $3 billion in goods from Russia in 2024, meaning that U.S. tariffs will impose little, if any, new costs on Moscow.

https://responsiblestatecraft.org/trump-50-day-deadline-russia/

I am sorry but this tariff thing is a cop-out to avoid doing the hard work of finding a good negotiated ceasefire.

We will see what Vlad the Invader has to say.

This is too good to ignore.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”