Autocrats in Alaska

By James Moore

“Who can live with this consciousness and not wake frightened at sunrise?” (Allen Ginsberg, “The Fall of America: Poems of These States”).

The American negotiator in Alaska has quite a resume’. His crimes are humbled only by the Russian he tried, and failed, to convince to stop an unjust war and invasion of Ukraine. (Seriously, did he even try?) The level of absurdity about this meaningless summit cannot be fairly described. When the world reaches a point where two men of this nature are trying to construct peace, civilization breathes in a thin atmosphere. Trump welcomed a war criminal onto American soil, a man who is as amoral as the American president. What is there for them to negotiate? Who can trust their thinking? These two men, who in a very real way, may have the planet’s future within their power to make decisions, are close to being the most odious examples of bipeds our species has ever produced. Why should anyone believe them on any subject?

Start with Trump’s horrors, visited upon others. Records show he has been on pedophile Epstein’s plane 7 times. Multiple women have testified under oath and publicly to being raped by the sexual swine living in the White House. He has plead the 5th a total of 97 times when being questioned about his crimes. Regardless, he was convicted of 34 felonies. He has faced 91 criminal charges, which include 26 sexual assault allegations, supplemented by six bankruptcies. Add in five draft deferments, four indictments, and two impeachments, and you get close to a CV of the president. But remember there is also a fake university and faux charity in his name, both of which were shut down. He bankrupted a casino four times and agreed to a $25 million dollar fraud settlement. There is also his $400 million defamation and fraud judgment and $96 million sexual assault court rulings against him.

In a sane world, one not run by war-mongers, defense contractors, convicts, corporate media, and giant banking and investment firms, Putin and Trump would have been arrested and detained before their feet touched the red carpet strewn across the tarmac at Alaska’s Elmendorf Air Force Base. Who rolls out a red carpet for a mass murderer? Instead, Putin, who was bombing and killing Ukrainian civilians as he arrived on U.S. soil, was treated to an American flyover and was symbolically fellated by Trump with a ride in the presidential limousine. The man he characterized as his “great friend,” is one of history’s biggest war criminals, who would fit comfortably in a Hall of Ignominy with his photo hung next to Stalin’s, Hitler’s, Pol Pot’s, and the genocidal Netanyahu’s, another one of Trump’s “dear friends.” In exchange for debasing this country, Trump got nothing but embarrassment after earlier threatening Putin with “severe consequences” if he did not agree to a cease fire of his war in Ukraine.

Putin’s rap sheet is even worse than his American host’s. The International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant for him on March 17, 2023 after a UN Commission of Inquiry reported the kidnapping and deportation over 16,000 Ukrainian children. He is also accused of mass killings and civilian atrocities that include summary executions, rape, torture, mutilations, and looting by Russian troops. Twelve hundred civilian bodies were discovered when Russian troops withdrew from Bucha while in Mariupol, a theater sheltering children was bombed along with hospitals. In Sumy Oblast, civilians were murdered, mutilated, and the area was mined to prevent body recovery. Putin’s invasion has targeted civilian infrastructure by attacking schools, energy grids, and, according to the World Health Organization, 1442 assaults on medical facilities. These are acts of a soulless terrorist, not a military strategist targeting an opposing army’s assets. But let’s go ahead and invite him onto American soil and shake his hand.

The autocrat-meets-autocrat scene left Trump upstaged. The American president is desperately trying to convince the world their Brokeback Summit was not as it appeared. Putin, though, has been accused by the UN of 39,000 war crimes in Ukraine with a staggering 95 percent of Ukrainian prisoners of war being tortured. The UN’s Human Rights Office says it has documented pervasive torture that includes using electric shocks, beatings, sexual violence, rape, and degrading treatment of detainees and civilians. The systematic nature of torture, rape, indiscriminate attacks, and child abductions amount to what the UN’s mandated commission classified as crimes against humanity. All of this is why the ICC, for the first time in its history, issued a warrant for the arrest of a sitting leader from a permanent UN Security Council member nation. Putin was indicted for war crimes, and were this Baked Alaska dumb-off in any other country than this one or Russia, he would likely have been arrested.

Putin made Trump look like a bigger fool than he already is by speaking first on the host country’s soil, an intentional insult by violating protocol. Not that he said anything other than the pandering statement that he would not have invaded Ukraine had Trump been the president, a fatuous bit of nonsense often repeated by the man who lies about things even as inconsequential as his pathetic golf game. Trump’s not even an accomplished criminal when compared to his hero Putin. After Putin was on his plane and back in the air, Trump claimed the Russian dictator had told him Trump won the 2020 election by a wide margin but it was stolen from him, another bit of suction by Putin that makes the American autocrat get all tingly down yonder. Transitioning from “severe consequences” to “making progress” was a tough spin to sell, even to the FOX News reporter who claimed Trump was “steamrolled” by Putin. The morning after spin from the failure Trump was that a cease fire was no longer necessary and Zelensky will be in Washington to begin peace negotiations. The Russian, however, can be expected to release accelerated hell on Ukraine in the coming week.

In the midst of turning the U.S. into an even bigger punchline than its present reputation under Trump, he further debased American diplomacy by sending out fundraising emails shortly after he landed in Anchorage. Sure, people are dying in Ukraine, the U.S. is being made to look the fool by allowing an international war criminal onto our sovereign land and treating him as a diplomatic equal to our president, (and, in this case, he is), but, hey, read this email and donate $10 to Trump because he’s not stealing enough billions via crypto bribes and gifted planes and gold awards from multi-national corporations that want his favor. History will almost certainly record that billions from his tariffs are being siphoned away into Trump family accounts. Hell, a guy who can fundraise off America’s military vets and steal $5 million from them probably isn’t bothered much by generating grift on his meeting with a fellow criminal. Trump long ago turned the White House into a whorehouse.

The Anchorage charade was as empty as the Russian vodka bottles on Putin’s plane as they flew back to Moscow celebrating Trump’s global disgrace and the U.S.’ humiliation. The war won’t stop. It will become more deadly. Russia will advance and more innocents will die as victims of Putin’s geopolitical greed. Trump, who said he could end the war 24-hours after taking office, has only caused more suffering by his inability to handle the Russian madman. Death seems the overriding theme of Trump’s administration. He can stop neither Putin nor Israel’s Netanyahu, who is determined to eliminate the Palestinian people from the face of the Earth and is using American bombs and weaponry paid for by our tax dollars. Trump, diplomatically, is an embarrassment wherever he goes, and the ugliness of this latest specter was compounded when Putin joined him.

The only thing that was not diminished by their combined presence was the natural glory and epic vastness of Alaska.

This article was originally published on Texas to the world.

 

James Moore is the New York Times bestselling author of “Bush’s Brain: How Karl Rove Made George W. Bush Presidential,” three other books on Bush and former Texas Governor Rick Perry, as well as two novels, and a biography entitled, “Give Back the Light,” on a famed eye surgeon and inventor. Mr. Moore has been honored with an Emmy from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences for his documentary work and is a former TV news correspondent who has traveled extensively on every presidential campaign since 1976.

He has been a retained on-air political analyst for MSNBC and has appeared on Morning Edition on National Public Radio, NBC Nightly News, Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell, CBS Evening News, CNN, Real Time with Bill Maher, and Hardball with Chris Matthews, among numerous other programs. Mr. Moore’s written political and media analyses have been published at CNN, Boston Globe, L.A. Times, Guardian of London, Sunday Independent of London, Salon, Financial Times of London, Huffington Post, and numerous other outlets. He also appeared as an expert on presidential politics in the highest-grossing documentary film of all time, Fahrenheit 911, (not related to the film’s producer Michael Moore).

His other honors include the Dartmouth College National Media Award for Economic Understanding, the Edward R. Murrow Award from the Radio Television News Directors’ Association, the Individual Broadcast Achievement Award from the Texas Headliners Foundation, and a Gold Medal for Script Writing from the Houston International Film Festival. He was frequently named best reporter in Texas by the AP, UPI, and the Houston Press Club. The film produced from his book “Bush’s Brain” premiered at The Cannes Film Festival prior to a successful 30-city theater run in the U.S.

Mr. Moore has reported on the major stories and historical events of our time, which have ranged from Iran-Contra to the Waco standoff, the Oklahoma City bombing, the border immigration crisis, and other headlining events. His journalism has put him in Cuba, Central America, Mexico, Australia, Canada, the UK, and most of Europe, interviewing figures as diverse as Fidel Castro and Willie Nelson. He has been writing about Texas politics, culture, and history since 1975, and continues with political opinion pieces for CNN and regularly at his Substack newsletter: “Texas to the World.”