Rubio melts down on air over accusation U.S. is ‘placating Putin’

The only person to talk about backing out of NATO since its creation has been Putin/Xi and Trump/Musk. So why wouldn't everyone think it?

NATO is Russia/China's greatest deterrent. It's literally devastating to our national security to pull out--so clearly only a bad actor would want that.... It's pretty goddamn obvious.

Don forget ending all US cyber operations against Russia
- Trump backs Putin. Trump was told to pull out of NATO. Trump has talked about it. That helps Putin.
- Some people have thoughts that lead to other thoughts. Then they apply those new thoughts to the original problem.
The only person to talk about backing out of NATO since its creation has been Putin/Xi and Trump/Musk.
That's not true. Ron/Rand Paul, Ross Perot, Pat Buchanan, and a number of other paleocons have been championing this for decades.
Trump's just the first guy to make it all the way to the White House with the view. But it isn't unique to Trump, nor is it particularly unpopular. Lots of Americans, particularly poorer and more rural ones, see these foreign alliances as an unnecessary extravagance.
They don't like it any more than they liked NAFTA or the WTO or the UN.
NATO is Russia/China’s greatest deterrent.
What is The North Atlantic Treaty Organization detering China from doing, exactly?
- That’s not true.
  I was being facetious.
  What is The North Atlantic Treaty Organization detering China from doing, exactly?
  Anything in the South China Sea or the Indo-Pacific that they shouldn't be doing. China literally just says sometimes "Hey, nice land you got there. Would be a fuckin' shame if we took it..." and then just pretends like that land has always been a part of China. They literally do it all the time. They're attempting to expand their empire and without the presence of NATO, there would be no one to stop them... Especially from capturing strategic or necessary assets that are critical to the US, like Taiwan. If we lose Taiwan we're pretty much omega-fucked and I don't think people appreciate that fact enough.
  NATO is the largest nuclear deterrent in the world and if we pull out, it's like taking all the ammo out of our really big guns. It's such an astonishingly stupid move I cannot even believe that anyone with a pulse would or even could support it. It leaves me fuckin' bewildered.
- Fyi, UK, NL, FR, ES etc all went with you on your "right of passage" sail throughs, against the chinese. Thats NATO.
  Guess who can do that all on its own from now on.
  Guess which countries also put sanctions on china? Your NATO partners.
  Guess where the machines most chips are made with... Are being made? (NL says hi.)
  If you stop scratching our back.. Why should we still scratch yours? The chinese market is double yours. We can make more euros there then in your tariff hellscape.
  Have fun having the biggest military for the time being. In a few years china has eclipsed yours.
  Trump's tantrums have made it very clear we should buy our military gear locally. So we will. Same will happen with cloud and tech. You can't be trusted. One day everything is ok, next day everything is +25%
  If this continues for a few more months it will mean the end of US hegemony. You will be left with nothing.
  In the end we will make peace with Russia, simply because we must. The oil will flow west again in a few years leaving you with all the problems of fracking and zero gains.
  Same will happen with china.
  We will be allright, bud.
  From an EU standpoint it doesn't matter if the US, china or even Russia is our partner. It mattered because of history. But trump's US chooses to flush it all down the drain. So we will check if the turd really went down.
- @Xanza probably doesn’t know anything past what CNN and Facebook has told them about things.

Why can't we have a woman president? They're too emotional for politics?

Also: the emotional melt down is a tactic. This is populism trump style, none of this is unintentional

Just to be fair: Only women can be elected president for the next 47 presidents.
- Can we write s sanity test into the Constitution?
We currently have a woman president. Trump signed an EO saying that all Americans are female so he's the first woman president.
- Just to add: Since sex is specified "at conception", there are only a couple cells, and thus aren't capable of producing either sex cell. The EO says that everyone is non-binary!
It's all unintentional. Their based will accept anything their king and his court declare as the truth.
From their perspective it is all intentional, don't let their blind loyalty sway you to their view.
- I saw a lot of hemming and hawing, stalling, spewing bullshit, and talking over Stephanopoulos.
  Not the behavior of someone "keeping his cool."
- The headline says meltdown!! Just like a headline about my response would be ''insignificant man SLAMS Rubio for Top 10 Epic Anime Showdown interview''
Would having MTG as president help?

This title is misleading. I watched the whole 9min and he was calm and collected in his delivery. Was he frustrated at the leading questions? Yes. Was he melting down? Ya no, not even close.

The summary is reasonable though. Again we are cutting trump and his underlings a ton of slack about his campaign claims of fixing the war in 24 hours, and 6 weeks into his presidency. No, we should not accept political hyperbole just because it comes from trump, and Stephanopoulos was rightly asking how does calling Zelenskyy a dictator (and undercutting Ukraine-supporting allies) but sucking up to putin move peace talks forward?
As I said before, the way trump makes these deals is like putting duct tape on your passenger door, calling yourself a master mechanic, and then blame next mechanic when the car falls apart.
- seems like trumps 1 day special diplomatic operation failed weeks ago
The Daily Beast with a bullshit, misleading, clickbait headline? Surprising.
I'm sure I downvote Daily Beast articles more than any other site. I wish people would find other sources - although the stories might not sound as exciting.
SLAMMMED! BLASTED! CCCCOMBO BREAKER!

Hey hey hey don’t forget you’ve got to allow for all the time trump spends with putins dick up inside his arsehole - gotta be at least a 50/50 split imo

Biden’s approach to Israel

seems absolutely sane by comparison to your boss, there, buddy.

and if you were going to 'biden' your support for ukraine, there'd be a non-stop airlift going on with equipment and armaments.

Oh Mr Rubio, only difference is Israel aipac is funding all of you congreswith bribes do their bidding
seems absolutely sane by comparison to your boss, there, buddy.
Coming at the Israeli genocide in Gaza and calling it "sane" is one hell of a take.
- He called it "sane by comparison". He didn't say it was sane. Words mean things.

No, TRUmp is placating Putin. He’s got to be a Russian asset.

Stopping any cyber offense/defense towards russia is just straight up treasonous at this point.
- Obviously, the US should hack the Kremlin, but if Russia hacks the Pentagon, I will be very mad!!
  I am very smart.
Its treason, and US own citizen are cheering him on for it. Russia actually won the cold war. Props to Putin for that.

Rubio also compared Trump’s handling of Ukraine to Biden’s approach to Israel, further escalating tensions.

Well... that's not too far off

So Trump's going to give Ukraine all the weapons that they want?
- His handling of Ukraine is like his handling of Gaza, so he'll be giving Russia all the weapons they want.
- Make Vladivostok into a Ukrainian beach resort
- Hahahahahahaha. Try again

I'm beginning to feel there's a fundamental disconnect between the vocabulary of everyday people and the words journalists use. I can only imagine how the dialogue goes around a journalist's house.

"Honey, have you heard about the Winstons?"
"No, why?"
"Fred from accounting SLAMMED they're planning to move to Wisconsin."
"Oh, I see. Did you GRILL him about where exactly they'd be going?"
"Yeah, I HAMMERED him with questions until he MELTED down. IN TEARS, he SCREAMED at me, 'Yeah, somewhere near Madison.'"
"...screamed?"
"You know... politely."

"We had fun at this amazing diner. The food was out of this world!! Literally the best night of my life."
"So you had fun and ate good food?"
Feels like you gotta reach for top shelf words to keep up.

having the intelligence to realize, but not have the balls to speak out to the fact that the Russian Mafia just regulatory captured your country is something to melt down over.

As a European, only the complete collapse of the Russian federation in an acceptable outcome.

What would be the best way for that to happen? More specifically, how can we pull this off safely?
We have very little historical precedent to go on. The USSR collapsed in 1991. There was some nervousness around what was going to happen with all their nukes. Ultimately, we ended up with Russia, led by Putin.
How would we stop Putin from triggering nuclear retaliation?
If we stop that, how do we make sure some other oligarch doesn't immediately take his place?
If Russia were to completely collapse, what would happen to Russia? Would we be willing to let China take over? If not would we be willing to maintain an indefinite occupation of Russia?
There may be good answers to all of these questions. It seems the more practical solution is to contain Russia. Do you think the EU would be ready to adopt a constitution if it came up again?
- Russian federal subjects would semi-autonomously be their own countries. Falling under supervision of the UN and neighbouring countries
  But that is on the US and China agreeing to it when currently both are against that
  It does give China potentially direct control over some resources they would want but they already can get those without weakening their position
Suppose there's a cockroach colony in a residential building. Separating it into few parts is not going to do much good. If you mean that by collapse - same elites retaining power - then it's just not good enough.
And if you mean removing them, rich natural resources have proven to be good for those who have them and bad for those who don't, so no.
Turning it into a real federation or even confederation - yes. Like Germany.
- I mean the russian people doing to Putin and the oligarchs what the Libyans did to Gaddafi.

The problem is that most people handling this current situation through the lens of classic geopolitics

This is not classic geopolitics. This is the ultra wealthy enacting their plan to create a global plutocracy. A ruling class of only the most wealthy in the world.

They believe that their plans are more easily achieved with a Russian empire than with a free Ukraine.

Ask people like Rubio questions using that as the basis, not classic geopolitics.

Yes, yes, a billion times yes.
To me, the fundamental problem - the primary reason that it seems so difficult to deal with Trump - is that so many politicians and analysts and commentators are still spproaching issues as if the old rules are still in place, and they quite simply aren't.
Every time that another analysis or editorial appears that discusses the "failures" of the Trump administration, since their policies will undermine the original goals of the agency/programs in question, it's ultimately just meaningless noise, since it starts with the patently false presumption that the original goals still count. They don't.
The Trump administration isn't failing to achieve traditional goals - it's succeeding in achieving an entirely new and different set of goals. And there isn't going to be any meaningful commentary until it focuses on those new goals.
- Just because Trump has different motivations doesn't mean that's the correct framing for questions. Questions and accusations are more for the audience than trying to get Trump to reconsider why he's doing something, and at least currently that bias toward "how things were supposed to work" still exists in the general public.
Agree, the paradigm has changed and needs fresh eyes.
This is exactly correct, and the Rubios and Grahams currently participating will be discarded like fish and chips paper before the sun sets.
Putin wrote the book on this and it’s playing out page by page.
- Putin is one of the most wealthy people on the planet

Rubio also compared Trump’s handling of Ukraine to Biden’s approach to Israel, further escalating tensions.

Distracting from Trump's servile position towards the fascists in control of present day Russia by using the favorite logical fallacy of the USSR, whataboutism, is either highly ironic or very on the nose depending on which axis of the political compass you choose to focus on..

Yeah Biden placated netanyahu. It was bad, but for the lowest of bars, he at least was placating an ally instead of giving a hostile power everything they want and yelling at the ally they invaded

And placating Netanyahu and is better than finishing off that genocide with a nice ethnic cleansing
- Yeah, but holy fuck I'm exhausted at the bar being that fucking low

While the title is the usual nonsense, the interview is the usual nonsense delivery that the master of deals is going to save the day, when he couldn't deal his way out of a wet paper bag.

The U.S. isn't placating Putin. The Republican party is. Because they're traitors.

Placating? More like deep throating. The US is gluckglucking Russia and liking it.

the administration didn’t know Russia’s demands.

Liar

Listening to this guy reminded me of Thank You for Smoking, which is a dark comedy of a tobacco industry spokes person trying to make smoking cool and acceptable again. So much bullshit, so little substance. Marco, we've all seen your face during the meeting, bullshitting like this won't save it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3eeTjK0qZY

Rubio also compared Trump’s handling of Ukraine to Biden’s approach to Israel, further escalating tensions.

Well good thing he got that far. Now we just need to teach him that Apartheid is ba—

I think I see the problem now.

I don't think Rubio's analogy is in any way adopting the idea that Biden's extremely limited pushback on Netanyahu was because Israel did anything wrong, but instead just trying to legitimize Trump's attempts at coercion as normal. Somehow that's the thing he thinks people have a problem with, not the target.

This guy sucking putin's asshole says what?

Compare the way he talks about Putin with the way he talks about Zelenskyy.

With Putin, we have to see what he wants, we have to try to work with him and understand his position, we can't do anything that might make him uncomfortable so he doesn't decide he doesn't want to talk to us, and his broken agreements are in the past while we need to be moving forward.

On the other hand, he repeatedly states that they've "explained this" to Ukraine, that we can't discuss what they want or what their concerns are, we need to focus on getting peace first, and Zelenskyy is at fault because was disrespectful which apparently we can't ignore for the sake of peace the way we can ignore a history of Putin violating peace deals.

If they actually meant what they are saying and this was all about diplomacy and achieving peace, they wouldn't be picking a fight with Ukraine, they wouldn't be publicly undermining them and trying to coerce them, and they wouldn't be refusing to acknowledge any of their concerns. These motherfuckers think that it's a good look for them to be throwing a tantrum about the way Zelenskyy dresses and getting pissy about him not being thankful enough for the way they are so generously pursuing a peace that carves up Ukraine and comes without security of any kind. That's the way they want to spin this. Because apparently they think acting like thrid grade bullies who try to pick on the smaller kids is admirable, that people will see it and think they look smart and tough.

The only thing I even find remotely believable in this interview is Rubio's mantra of "I don't understand." Just in general I think it's pretty clear that there's a hell of a lot he doesn't understand. Things like human decency, geopolitics, basic negotiation tactics, and parables about riding tigers and giving rides to scorpions. But I think he probably does understand that his position is pure bullshit and that his only job here is to try and tow the line while defending the indefensible. That's why he got so panicked when a tweet from a fellow republican came up, because his strategy was to avoid details and try to frame the backlash as partisan politics, so he can't really respond to Republican criticism.

Well said. Username also checks out

The Republicans are making a real effort to convince themselves that we're now at war with Eastasia. But it doesn't seem to work too good: however much they're trying to integrate the newthink, their brains are working against decades of anti-Soviet and anti-Russian indoctrination.

It's really painful and embarassing to watch them try to reprogram their own brains to please their cult leader...

Screaming on air won’t hide the fact that appeasement never stops aggressors.

🐱🐱

"What is wrong with being a peacemaker?" When the bully punches you dont ask him what he wants just punch him back you pussy.

We're not placating Putin, we're actively realigning ourselves with him. He is our ally in the Moscow-Maralago Axis of Evil.

Article without paywall:

https://archive.is/PEiOq

Trump is being blackmailed

That's certainly possible, but it's by no means necessary, and not even particularly likely.
Trump is a spoiled, petulant, childish narcissist. He wouldn't react well to blackmail – his ego would lead him to be at least situationally passive/aggressive about it.
And in fact, that's why I do think he's being blackmailed by Israel (and specifically via information, evidence, video clips and so on that they got from Epstein). His sort of lukewarm, on-again/off-again support for them is just what I'd expect in that situation - he'll go along, but he's at least going to drag his feet.
With Russia though, I really think the primary motivator is that he idolizes Putin. You can see it in his face in any images from any of their meetings - he lights up like a schoolgirl with a crush. And that would explain why he's so enthusiastic and even reckless about allying with Russia - because he thinks he can only gain from it, since he'll get to be a trusted ally to his idol.
Which also illustrates the fact that he's sort of stupid and short-sighted, because if he was smarter and more circumspect, he'd know that, given the chance, Putin is going to play him like a fiddle.
- Putin is going to play him like a fiddle
  already is, and has been for quite some time.
  and the reason lord diaper is so fucking easy to control is because the fucktard thinks he is the one in charge.