As far back as May of 2023, at a CNN town hall, Donald Trump boasted:

“They’re dying, Russians and Ukrainians. I want them to stop dying. And I’ll have that done — I’ll have that done in 24 hours.” [Edith M. Lederer, AP, July 2, 2024.]

And we heard the same blustering assurances throughout the presidential-campaign-we-thought-would-never-end.

But by the time he shockingly won the election, those promises had faded into whispers. And there was no mention at all in his inaugural address of that little dust-up in Ukraine.

Now, we hear from the administration’s special representative for Ukraine and Russia, Keith Kellogg, that Donald Trump has a “solid” strategy to end the war in Ukraine “in months.” [RFE/RL’s Ukrainian Service, February 1, 2025.]

Months!! Not 24 hours. Not days. Not weeks. Months!!

More months of bombings, and missile attacks, and on-the-ground combat. More people wounded and dying. More children orphaned, parents grieving, homes and lives demolished. More soldiers — Ukrainian, Russian, even North Korean — maimed and killed.

Months.

We all knew what he was promising was an impossibility — that Vladimir Putin would never capitulate that easily (if at all). And it is surely not Donald Trump’s fault that both Putin and Ukraine’s President Zelensky have proved . . . shall we say . . . steadfast in their demands. That has been the case all along.

But knowing this, why make promises he knows he can’t conceivably keep? Why lie?

Because his loyal supporters are gullible enough to believe the lies, and to vote for him on the basis of those lies . . . that’s why. And it worked; the lies always work.

Promising to quickly lower prices on food and other essentials . . . then turning around and imposing tariffs that are guaranteed to increase, not decrease, those prices . . . is one thing.

But promising to stop the killing and devastation of a war that has already gone on far too long, while knowing full well you can’t do it . . . well, that’s simply unconscionable.

Just sayin’ . . .

Brendochka
2/2/25