This is insane. I don’t know why this hasn’t got wider news coverage.

I were not able to find a better news article, but this news article somehow failed to mention the central fact that anybody demanding tolls, whether Iran or USA or both, is unambiguously illegal under international law. It is an international strait, and there is right of navigation for ships. Legal Eagle describes why the tolls are illegal: Trump’s Illegalist War Gets Illegaler.

Ukraine literally has a land border with the EU, where the US has large equipment stockpiles and perfect logistics. Logistically it is likely much easier for the US to send stuff to Ukraine.

Yup - and Trump can un-undermine those sanctions.

Like what? Putin needs his missiles himself.

And remember that the US, is way, way more militarily powerful than Russia. The US has tons of spare military capacity, unlike Russia. Russia would lose an escalation war, and Russia knows it.

The US is already sending a large amount of military material to Ukraine

No it isn’t. Trump stopped all new aid.

Only what Europe paid for is being sent.

what could anyone do to prevent it?

Just send a few hundred tomahawk missiles as military aid to Ukraine. Then tell Russia that if Russia does not stop, the US will send more.

Trump could absolutely stop it, if he wanted to. Just send a few hundred tomahawk missiles as military aid to Ukraine. Then tell Russia that if Russia does not stop, the US will send more.

Even if acknowledged, the US is not going to go to war with Russia. The US could sanction Russia, though.

Or kinetic sanctions - resume aid to Ukraine. Just give more stuff for Ukraine to shoot into Russia. Let Russia learn its lesson real fast.

The US would never agree to paying reparations. […] The US government pays

Why would Trump care about the US government paying Iran money? It is not Trump’s money.

As long as the billionaire-owned Trump supporting media in the US doesn’t make a big deal out of it, why would it have negative consequences for Trump? While not completely analogous, Trump seems to have gotten away just fine with giving Argentina $billions.

LLMs don’t have any intentions.

Eh. The output from LLMs is usually pretty goal-oriented, so it arguably has intentions.

The LLM is not designed to deceive though, so in that sense it is correct that it is not lies.

Orban already won the previous N elections using fuckery. The test has already shown that this kind of managed democracy can “work” for fascists.

In Orban’s own mouse-lion fable analogy, the lion(=Russia) has done a great favor for the mouse(=Orban) earlier.

Sooooo - what exactly is it Putin has done for Orban, to put Orban in debt to Putin? And with Orban being a selfish fascist bastard, why does Orban feel so stridently obligated to pay Putin back?

It sure would be nice if Hungary was “at the service” of its nominal allies in the EU and the democratic West. Instead of being at the service of Putin, who sees us as his enemy.

Never have to worry about the fact that US probably already sold the gold

People keep saying stuff like this. But I have never seen even a shred of evidence that it is true. A good tinfoil hat conspiracy theory should at least have some hint of its reality.

They are fascists. They have quite clearly stated that the same rules should not apply to them, as they apply to others. That is literally what “America First” mean, as they have clearly stated. You can scream “hypocrisy” at them until you are blue in the face, and they will snigger and think you are stupid.

Looking in from the outside, it seems to me that large parts of the US population have no moral compass. Putin is comic book evil, and yet large parts of Republican voters think Putin is a great guy. In non-Soviet Russia, of all shithole places.

America First as defined by Trump explicitly means “We can fuck with you, you can’t fuck with us”. They are not hiding it or packaging it in moral terms of universal ethics or the golden rule.

So there is no “gocha” moment here. Trump explicitly doesn’t think EU countries are his equal, so appealing to hypocrisy is meaningless. Trump is doing exactly what he said he would do.

So fuck Vance, but it seems to be perfectly consistent with America First?

For Trump “America First” means exploiting other countries. If Vance can get an exploitable government elected in Hungary, then why wouldn’t it be good for “America First”?

It is a stated goal for Trump to break up the EU. To be able to force one-sided trade deals with weaker isolated countries instead. Victor Orban is the person doing most to sabotage the EU. Hence it is in “America First”'s interest for Orban to be reelected.

Hungary is Putin’s lapdog, effectively supports Russia in Ukraine and sabotages the EU from within. As well as Victor Orban being the enemy of basic democratic norms.

The Trump administration literally sees the EU as their enemy. Trump wants to break up the EU because the EU is strong enough to protect EU members against Trump. Trump wants Europe to be a weaker group of small countries, that Trump can individually exploit in one-sided trade deals. The Trump administration hates Democracy, and hates us.

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