Trump Lays Out RIsks of US Involvement in Russia-Ukraine War: Media Respond with Silence

 

Judging by their silence, our media elite seem not to care about whether Americans lose their lives in war. During the debate, Trump was asked if he wanted Ukraine to win the war. His response:

I want the war to stop. I want to save lives that are being uselessly -- people being killed by the millions. It's the millions. It's so much worse than the numbers that you're getting, which are fake numbers. . . . If I win, when I'm President-Elect, and what I'll do is I'll speak to one, I'll speak to the other, I'll get them together. That war would have never happened. And in fact when I saw Putin after I left, unfortunately left because our country has gone to hell, but after I left when I saw him building up soldiers, he did it after I left, I said oh, he must be negotiating. It must be a good strong point of negotiation. Well, it wasn't because Biden had no idea how to talk to him. He had no idea how to stop it. And now you have millions of people dead and it's only getting worse and it could lead to World War 3. Don't kid yourself, David. We're playing with World War 3. 

Here is the follow-up interaction between David Muir and Trump:

DAVID MUIR: Your time is up. Just to clarify the question, do you believe it's in the U.S. best interests for Ukraine to win this war? Yes or no?

FORMER PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I think it's in the U.S. best interest to get this war finished and just get it done. All right. Negotiate a deal. Because we have to stop all of these human lives from being destroyed.

In contrast, Kamala Harris said:

I believe the reason that Donald Trump says that this war [Russia and Ukraine] would be over within 24 hours is because he would just give it up. And that's not who we are as Americans. Let's understand what happened here. I actually met with Zelenskyy a few days before Russia invaded, tried through force to change territorial boundaries to defy one of the most important international rules and norms, which is the importance of sovereignty and territorial integrity. And I met with President Zelenskyy. I shared with him American intelligence about how he could defend himself. Days later I went to NATO's eastern flank, to Poland and Romania. And through the work that I and others did we brought 50 countries together to support Ukraine in its righteous defense. And because of our support, because of the air defense, the ammunition, the artillery, the javelins, the Abrams tanks that we have provided, Ukraine stands as an independent and free country. If Donald Trump were president, Putin would be sitting in Kyiv right now. And understand what that would mean. Because Putin's agenda is not just about Ukraine. Understand why the European allies and our NATO allies are so thankful that you are no longer president and that we understand the importance of the greatest military alliance the world has ever known, which is NATO. And what we have done to preserve the ability of Zelenskyy and the Ukrainians to fight for their Independence. Otherwise, Putin would be sitting in Kyiv with his eyes on the rest of Europe. Starting with Poland. And why don't you tell the 800,000 Polish Americans right here in Pennsylvania how quickly you would give up for the sake of favor and what you think is a friendship with what is known to be a dictator who would eat you for lunch.

In politics, paying attention to what is not said can be just as important as paying attention to what is said. Harris got in a quotable line about Putin eating Trump for lunch, one that appeared in a top position in a CNBC article, but she said nothing about the risks that America has undertaken by intervening in a border war against a nuclear-armed power.  She said nothing about the loss of Ukrainian lives. 

The risk the American government has undertaken is not a trivial one. 

• The US government has spent well over 100 billion dollars in past aid and in commitments made for future aid. 
• We have allowed US weapons to be used on Russian soil
• Our policies have provoked a strong response from Russia. Seven days ago, Foreign Minister Lavrov warned the US not to cross Russia's "red lines.

An excerpt from a Reuters article on Lavrov's statements about the US policy toward Russia and Ukraine:

President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly warned the West since launching what he called his "special military operation" in Ukraine in 2022 not to try to thwart Russia, which has the world's biggest arsenal of nuclear weapons.

But Washington and its allies have increased military aid to Ukraine, including by providing tanks, advanced missiles and F-16 fighter jets.

That has prompted some Western politicians to suggest Putin's nuclear rhetoric is a bluff and that the U.S. and NATO should go all-out to help Ukraine win the war. Zelenskiy has said Ukraine's incursion into Russia, launched on Aug. 6, makes a mockery of Putin's red lines.

Lavrov said Washington knew where these limits lay but was wrong if it believed the consequences of any escalation of the war in Ukraine would be suffered mainly by Europe.

On this most important issue, our media elites have remained largely silent. NPR and CNN commentators on last night’s Trump/Harris debate, once again, have failed to address Donald Trump’s position on this issue.  The MSNBC 3-minute summary ignored the candidates’ exchanges about Ukraine. MSNBC did air an excerpt, though, on Harris praising “the late, great John McCain,” who, tragically, spent many years as a POW under difficult conditions but who was also a staunch proponent of, seemingly, any and all American wars since then.

Perhaps the reason for media silencing of antiwar voices—not just Trump but many others as well—involves their staunch support of the Democratic Party, which once contained many antiwar voices but now has few, perhaps because they depend on campaign contributions from the corporate elite, many of whom have defense contracts. Dennis Kucinich, former 8-term congressman, explains why:

:

But to me, what’s happened with the Democratic Party, I think as soon as the Democratic Party made a determination, could have been 35, 40 years ago, that they were going to take corporate contributions, that wiped out any distinction between the two parties. Because in Washington, he or she who pays the piper plays the tune, and that’s what’s happened. So, there isn’t that much of a difference in terms of the two parties when it comes to war.

A lot of these corporations Kucinich talks about have defense contracts. even though they have gone ballistic over the—in my view, false—tales about Haitian immigrants eating cats. [As an aside, I lived for 50 years in South Florida, which has a large Haitian community, and have never heard cat-eating stories although I did hear about roasted goats. Unless incontrovertible evidence arises later, such accounts should be regarded as urban legends.]

Notably, even when pundits had a chance to fact-check Trump’s possibly erroneous claims about millions of deaths, they failed to do so. Better not to raise that issue when the Democrats depend on defense contractors for campaign contributions. Even though Trump claimed that millions of people have died in this war, the combined casualty figures for both sides appear to be closer to 500,000 rather than millions. Of course, I have no way of knowing if Trump has claimed correctly that the real casualty figures have been underreported.

Either way, the silence of our media critics about the risk of war with a superpower is damning.