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Drudge Retort: The Other Side of the News
Friday, December 12, 2025

Thom Hartmann: Many of us have long suspected or even predicted that Donald Trump would betray America, gut our democracy in favor of a police state, and align us with Russia.

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The convergence of pro-Kremlin policy, tech giveaways to rivals, and rising domestic repression is a five-alarm warning that we ignore at our own peril ... hartmannreport.com/p/is-trumps- ...

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-- Thom Hartmann (@hartmannreport.com) Dec 11, 2025 at 9:58 AM

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"It's the most under-reported story of the year, perhaps of the century: under Trump, the United States is abandoning advocacy of democracy (shutting down Voice of America, etc.), abandoning our democratic allies in Europe, and for the past year has abandoned Ukraine to the tender mercies of the Butcher of Moscow.

At the same time, Trump's building ties to Middle Eastern dictatorships, adopting Russia's explicit worldview, trashing civil and human rights at home, and now handing to China our most valuable military-potential technology.

In other words, we've been betrayed by Donald Trump and the people around him in ways that would have made Benedict Arnold blush."

;;

video version:

www.youtube.com

#1 | Posted by Corky at 2025-12-11 07:22 PM | Reply | Newsworthy 2

T-R-A-I-T-O-R

#2 | Posted by LegallyYourDead at 2025-12-11 07:28 PM | Reply | Newsworthy 2

This video w/transcript covers a paywalled article in Politico about Trump's New World Order:

;;

"Russia is praised for its strength. Also back on good terms is Chinese President Xi Jinping,
to whom Trump has just agreed to export some of the most high powered computer chips in the world,
potentially transforming the global AI arms race.

Trump and Xi plan to meet four times next year.

Whispers of a new diplomatic power group containing the US, Russia, China, India, and Japan
swirl around Washington. Traditional European allies would be out of the loop.

And here in the Western Hemisphere, a newly aggressive America is on the march. Foreign ships are being bombed in the Caribbean on the flimsiest legal pretext. A military buildup on a scale not seen since the Cuban missile crisis is underway." excerpt

more

www.youtube.com
Antichrist45

#3 | Posted by Corky at 2025-12-11 08:14 PM | Reply

Posted by Corky a

sorry lady,

every day....every word from media and dnc and drone worms like you and your DR

truth zombies during biden scam was and will forever be the biggest betrayal in

US history.....that and what the lying D-bag Barry Obama and his FBI did y

spying on a presidential candidate...something not even you can dispute at your

weekly women's luncheon,

#4 | Posted by shrimptacodan at 2025-12-11 08:59 PM | Reply | Funny: 1

The only people that still talk about Biden do so because they can't talk about the Fascist Traitor Donald Trump... well, without looking stupid as poop on a stick, which imitation #4 has perfected.

#5 | Posted by Corky at 2025-12-11 10:01 PM | Reply

"Bubba" = Putin. We know that Orange Adolf gave little Putin "mouth hugs" in Helsinki in 2018. Putin recorded the act, that's part of the Kompromat that Pooty Poot has on Benedict DonOLD.

#6 | Posted by a_monson at 2025-12-12 02:30 AM | Reply

"In other words, we've been betrayed by Donald Trump and the people around him in ways that would have made Benedict Arnold blush."

Arnold plotted to turn over the position at West Point and failed.
Trump is surrendering an entire nation and finding no shortage of enablers.

#7 | Posted by Doc_Sarvis at 2025-12-12 07:02 AM | Reply | Newsworthy 2

Trump is taking us back to the Monroe Doctrine.

"Trump's 'Monroe Doctrine 2.0' completely misreads Latin America

The president's new hemispheric strategy revives interventionist logic while ignoring the region's urgent need for infrastructure and economic diversification"

responsiblestatecraft.org

Not to mention 1930's Germany... and here we only thought Republicans wanted to live in the 1950's again. Who knew?

#8 | Posted by Corky at 2025-12-12 06:26 PM | Reply

@#4

So, your current alias has nothing but lame insult attempts to gainsay what has been posted?

Do try harder.

#9 | Posted by LampLighter at 2025-12-12 06:29 PM | Reply | Newsworthy 1

US history.....that and what the lying D-bag Barry Obama and his FBI did y

spying on a presidential candidate...something not even you can dispute at your

weekly women's luncheon,

#4 | Posted by shrimptacodan

If a presidential candidate chooses a russian asset as their campaign manager, do you expect the FBI to ignore it?

That would be a total dereliction of their duty.

#10 | Posted by SpeakSoftly at 2025-12-12 07:11 PM | Reply | Newsworthy 4

@#10 ... If a presidential candidate chooses a russian asset as their campaign manager ...

Paul Manafort?

Russian charged with Trump's ex-campaign chief was key figure in pro-Russia strategy (2018)
www.cnbc.com

... Kilimnik -- who special counsel Robert Mueller believes is currently in Russia and has ties to Russian intelligence -- helped formulate Manafort's pitches to clients in Russia and Ukraine, according to the records. Among Manafort's clients were Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska and other mega-wealthy Russians with close ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin. ...

Deripaska has denied hiring Manafort for any pro-Russian political work, and unsuccessfully sued the AP last year over reporting that he had paid Manafort more than $10 million to influence political decisions and news coverage in Eastern Europe and Western capitals. Manafort also denied to the AP last year that he had performed political work for Deripaska.

A new filing by the U.S. government in Manafort's court cases showed that Manafort acknowledged that work in a 2014 FBI interview, and files seized by the FBI showed that Deripaska was the source of a $10 million loan to a Manafort-controlled company in 2010. ...



#14 | Posted by LampLighter at 2025-12-12 09:57 PM | Reply

... and ...

Paul Manafort Was Deep in Debt. He Saw an Opportunity in Trump. (2018)
www.nytimes.com

... Paul Manafort's services did not come cheap. His consulting work helped prop up foreign strongmen, who in turn kept him in $12,000 bespoke suits from Beverly Hills.

But by 2016, Mr. Manafort was broke. His longtime cash cow, the Ukrainian president Viktor F. Yanukovych, was out of office, living in exile. Mr. Manafort had $1 million in clothing debt alone, his business was hemorrhaging money and he was angling for bank loans to stay afloat.

He was in such bad shape that one of his accountants, Cynthia Laporta, who testified on Friday at Mr. Manafort's fraud trial, said she had agreed in 2015 to fraudulently lower his reported income on a tax return because she had been told he was unable to pay what he owed. She saved him about a half-million dollars in taxes.

The problems did not go away by 2016, so it was a peculiar time to volunteer his services to the Trump campaign. "I am not looking for a paid job," Mr. Manafort wrote in a memo proposing he help Donald J. Trump secure the Republican nomination for president. ...

Mr. Manafort's lawyers say he almost certainly would not have faced charges if not for his brief, unpaid stint with the Trump campaign. ...



#15 | Posted by LampLighter at 2025-12-12 10:10 PM | Reply

@#15 ... Mr. Manafort's lawyers say he almost certainly would not have faced charges if not for his brief, unpaid stint with the Trump campaign ...

Who might have been paying the indebted Mr Manafort for his work in the Trump campaign, if the campaign was not paying him?


#16 | Posted by LampLighter at 2025-12-12 10:12 PM | Reply

Sock-puppets afoot

#17 | Posted by hamburglar at 2025-12-12 11:34 PM | Reply

If Putin ever was going to directly challenge NATO and take over part of Poland, the time would be now since one really, really distrusts Trump to order American troops into battle in Europe.

#20 | Posted by Hughmass at 2025-12-13 08:10 AM | Reply

Corky you are such a drama queen!

#13 | POSTED BY NOTMYMONKEY

THEY ARE EATING THE PETS!!

But notmymonkey.

#21 | Posted by donnerboy at 2025-12-13 09:03 AM | Reply

Well, Trump is in strong competition. I remember when Nixon and Kissinger deliberately destroyed the 1968 Vietnam War Peace Talks, so they could strut into the White House blaming the Dems for the chaos of the war. Many American military people died in that war before Peace was attainable again, and of course, hundreds of thousands of fellow humans, Vietnamese and Cambodian, died just so the traitors Nixon and Kissinger could be in charge.

#22 | Posted by Hughmass at 2025-12-14 07:42 AM | Reply | Newsworthy 1

#22

NW.... that's exactly what happened.

Then there was Reagan and Missiles for Hostages, breaking his promise not to negotiate with terrorists.

www.google.com

Then there was GW and Fake Iraqi Uranium.

Republicans have a long history of being duped by their gangster leaders, now they've given us DJT.

#23 | Posted by Corky at 2025-12-14 11:16 AM | Reply | Newsworthy 1

I blame Biden. He was so very weak with Putin, which is effectively the same as cooperating with him. Biden made Ukraine fight with one arm tied while the orcs reduced Ukrainian cities to rubble.

Blaming Trump is like blaming crap for stink. Biden knew Trump would cater Putin. He knew Trump could become POTUS.

Yet he continued with his impotent policy anyway.

#24 | Posted by horstngraben at 2025-12-14 05:32 PM | Reply

#24 Oh, great, another internecine warrior in our midst.

Let us all bow down in gratitude to the latest iteration of George Wallace, Ross Perot, Ralph Nader, and Jill Green.

"You're doing a heck of a job, brownie" *

* a semi-quote from the beneficiary of Ralph Nader, and the POTUS who gifted America with John Roberts, Chief Justice, and Samuel Alito, sycophant Associate Justice.

LORD, please deliver us from those who treasure the perfect over the practical.

The perfect over the good.

Amen.

#25 | Posted by A_Friend at 2025-12-14 05:46 PM | Reply

__________
#3 | Posted by Corky at 2025-12-11 08:14 PM
Whispers of a new diplomatic power group containing the US, Russia, China, India, and Japan swirl around Washington.

It's tentatively called Core-5 (C-5), as Trump's "answer" to "outdated" G-7 (after he tried but failed to revert back to G-8 by reinstating Russia) - more of a demented, scatter-brained thinking of Trump - if you look closer, Trump essentially wants US to join BRICS and drag Japan along as trophy.

Not that it could last, if it ever happens, though I am sure Russia and China will be happy to welcome subordinate Trump to humiliating "summit(s)" which he will only be happy to attend, to have a photo op and feel "equal" next to the "world leaders."

Trump was never known for long-term strategy, his "3-D chess" was just moving from scam to scam, from con to con.

He recently complained that "we lost India and Russia to... China" - not in the least understanding how this happened. Hint: "he didn't have the cards" he tried to play and his bluff was called.

Teddy R.'s "Bully pulpit" was never meant for actual bullies. He also said "Speak softly and carry a big stick." Trump's MO is TACO - bark out loud but wobble with limp d**k.

So weak Trump's choice of 'remedy' is "if you can't beat them, join them."

.

"Russia is praised for its strength. Also back on good terms is Chinese President Xi Jinping...

Worse than that - they know Trump is weak and a coward, who can only threaten and intimidate militarily weak and/or economically semi-dependent allies ("losers") who keep hoping it will be possible to maintain good, non-adversarial relations with the sane, post-Trump US.

|------- "Days after Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi outraged China by suggesting a Chinese attack on Taiwan could mobilize a Tokyo military ... Xi called Trump and spent half an hour... [to read him the riot act] ... after which Trump called Japanese PM and told him to 'soften his stance' and dial down the rhetoric'..." -------|

.

Not understanding the times have drastically changed, mentally he lives in the past worlds / eras of 100 ("America First"), 200 ("Monroe Doctrine") and 300 years ago ("mercantilism"), and tries to fit / position the US somehow in this jumble of "policies," with Putin (and now Xi, after slapping down Don on trade) being "Trump's whisperers."

Obviously, none of these "policies" are workable today for a significant length of time; they not only conflict with each other but will inevitably lead to more and greater conflicts than we've seen since dissolution of Soviet Union. **

In the meantime he is abusing the power, that he himself never earned, downgrading the US leadership position in the world, both economically and militarily, and making its footprint smaller and weaker, due to isolationism because of his fantasy of trilateral "Trump world order" - trying to make himself "consequential" in history, same as inserting himself and putting his imprint - face and name - everywhere he can.

.

The Art of the Deal (1987):

"The final key to the way I promote is bravado. I play to people's fantasies. People may not always think big themselves, but they can still get very excited by those who do. That's why a little hyperbole never hurts. People want to believe that something is the biggest and the greatest and the most spectacular. I call it truthful hyperbole. It's ... a very effective form of promotion. ... I do it to do it. ... I like making deals, preferably big deals. That's how I get my kicks."
________

#26 | Posted by CutiePie at 2025-12-15 04:57 AM | Reply

________
**

saltypolitics.substack.com - Part 1 analysis of Trump administration NSS: Breaking: Welcome to Trumpistan

saltypolitics.substack.com - Part 2 analysis of Trump administration NSS: The Trump Doctrine: the Terrifying World View Endangering Us All

saltypolitics.substack.com - Part 3 analysis of Trump administration NSS: What Really Makes America Great

.

And of course, there is this: "Not Russia, Russia, Russia!" and "I am not a puppet!":

saltypolitics.substack.com - Chapter 18 - Active Measures: The Trump Tower Meeting

saltypolitics.substack.com - Chapter 19 - Active Measures: What Russian Election Interference Really Means

saltypolitics.substack.com - Chapter 20 - Active Measures: Epilogue: Russia's Return on Investment for Interfering in the 2016 Election

Chapters 1-8 at drudge.com

Chapters 9-17 at drudge.com
________

#27 | Posted by CutiePie at 2025-12-15 05:00 AM | Reply

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