CSotD: The Cult of the Chameleon
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I’m going to be watching to see if the GOP continues to call Democratic candidates “communists,” now that Dear Leader has openly declared his support of Vladimir Putin. Boris notes that the Russian flag is also red, white and blue, but the question is less about the MAGA crowd accepting Trump’s loyalty to Moscow so much as it is about their even noticing it.
It’s easy to throw the terms “communism” and “socialism” around in a crowd that can’t define either. Half a century ago, Vietnam hawks were throwing red paint at antiwar protesters and telling them to go back to Russia while their leaders were insisting that the protesters were being paid by Moscow or, occasionally, Beijing.
The words still work, the definitions still don’t matter. Asked to define socialism, Vance explained
“I don’t know what the term means anymore. I think in reality, what it actually means in the American context is that you want to replace American workers with foreign workers, and you want boys to play in girls’ sports.”
That’s not what it means, and that’s not what’s happening. The jobs report shows that putting immigrants into concentration camps or sending them off to foreign prisons apparently hasn’t opened up many jobs that born-here-Americans want, while Dear Leader continues to hawk the breathtakingly idiotic lie that children are undergoing sex-change surgeries in school.
There seems to be chaos in the Trump administration, including Dear Leader having appointed a comically unqualified press secretary without consulting his staff, and having to invite her to leave five days later, and, as Leahy notes, Hegseth promising a public execution which was withdrawn after massive pushback from both sides of the aisle.
As Leahy also notes, there seems to be an atmosphere of panic in the White House as the midterms approach, with good reason. Polls may not always predict outcome, but they’d have to be completely upside down for the Republicans to hold the House, and the Senate is not looking good for them, either.
Trump has promised we’ll each get $5,000 if the GOP holds both houses, but he might as well make it $5,000,000 for all the likelihood of his having to pay up.
However, not everyone seems to have noticed the “if …” portion of that offer, which could boost his only hope: Massive loyalist turnout.
But they certainly should notice his open embrace of Putin, which Branch compares to Neville Chamberlain’s famous trip to visit Hitler and his return waving the agreement in the air that promised “peace for our time.”
Then again, Chamberlain’s folly became more evident a year later when Poland was invaded, so maybe the MAGA crowd can be forgiven for not panicking yet.
But I don’t think any British politicians asked Poland to just give up, while, as Boris points out, there has been nothing subtle in both Musk and Trump calling for Zelensky to surrender. That, and Trump’s demand that Zelensky resign, and his lies about the Ukrainian people rejecting their leadership, are as clear, and as clearly false, as the claims of in-school surgeries.
And with the Russian bot farms still apparently down, you can more readily see how both loyalists and Trump’s congressional allies are boosting these outrageous positions at Xitter. The comforting part is that, with Russian bots temporarily absent from the conversation, intelligent opposition is also more apparent in the comments.
Rowe accuses Musk and Putin of manipulating Trump, and it may be hard for Dear Leader to oppose an oligarch who is committing some $350 million to GOP campaigning, while we have seen his fealty to Moscow from the opening days of his first administration when he betrayed Israel by revealing their intelligence reports to Russia.
Nor is it simply a matter of shifting diplomacy. As Adams notes, the StarShield system that has warned Ukraine of incoming Russian missiles and allowed them to direct their breathtaking drone warfare has been alternately shut down or slowed down, with the only controversy being whether it is at the direction of the president or if Musk has assumed the powers of the Commander in Chief.
It is plain, however, that Trump himself announced that he is overriding the sanctions placed on Russia by the “Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act of 2026,” named for the late senator and now equally dead.
Among things an intelligent observer would recognize is that, while the amount of diesel Trump is purchasing from Russia won’t make a dent in prices here, the money he’s paying will allow Putin to both maintain his assault upon Ukraine and continue to supply Iran with the information they need to target American troops in that conflict.
Ramirez has the chopper crew note the violation of the law, but, in fact, it contains a convenient clause allowing Dear Leader to cancel the sanctions if he determines it would be in the national interest.
Which makes you wonder why they bothered passing it in the first place, or perhaps explains it.
Juxtaposition of the Day
Trump’s open betrayal of Ukraine should be stunning, and Rogers reminds us how, as the war began, we pictured Ukraine as a plucky little underdog, but now Trump shows how little that matters to him.
Luckovich taps a familiar Biblical story to make much the same point: You have to be an extremely devout member of the cult of personality to accept Trump’s absurd claim that Ukraine started the war, given that we all watched as Russia seized Crimea and nobody was fooled when the invasion of Ukraine began with the “little green men” everyone knew were Russian soldiers with their insignia removed.
We’ll let Luckovich sum things up, because although Trump’s obvious betrayal is currently killing civilians half a world away, it is part of a deeper betrayal, a desertion of our post-WWII role as a guardian of the western world, proven by not only our willingness to allow the slaughter of Ukrainians and the extinguishing of their nation, but as an extension of Trump’s denunciations of foreign aid and of our membership in NATO and in the United Nations.
Are you honestly still wondering how this was possible?
Mike Peterson has posted his "Comic Strip of the Day" column every day since 2010. His opinions are his own, but we welcome comments either agreeing or in opposition.
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