Politics & Stuff

[cosmicway 1,333]

5 hours ago, Sir Mikel OBE said:

I mean from what I saw Greece has the perfect mix of what could lower birthrate. Sexism, and just a bunch of broke dudes. If you are going to be broke, you have to at least play to a woman's emotions. I didnt get that in Greece. The men, many of whom seemed to sit around all day if they werent working in tourism,  tried to project a machismo attitude. Women, when giving a choice, wont go for that.

 

Japan ran into the same issue when their economy fell apart in the 90's, although their low birth rate can be pinpointed to a piece of media 20 years before that offended the women so deeply that it was a catalyst for it's shrinking population:

The fact Japanese men loved Shameless School eternally turned off most Japanese women. This set it in motion.

Children are expensive.
You have to send them to Eton, Sandhurst.

[Fulham Broadway 17,333]

2 hours ago, Thor said:

Nah mate - its all over. You don't get it. 

 

 

 

🤣

No i dont get it - what is all over ?

[Vesper 30,224]

2 hours ago, Thor said:

Lets face it whoever wins the US election , to most Americans it wont make the slightest difference to their lives

Tell that to 100 million plus American women if there is a nationwide ban on abortion enacted, or a ban on birth control, or a ban on no fault divorce, etc etc.

Tell that to potentially hundreds of thousands (millions?) of legit US residents who get swept up in Trump's all out deportation war (which he just said would be bloody).

Tell that to tens upon tens of millions of people of colour and queer folk who may well have the clock rolled back decades (the process has already been going on for years, starting with the RW SCOTUS's attacks on much of the post WWII civil rights/voting rights superstructures) to the days where they can legally be denied access to a myriad number of basic rights, up to and including education, housing, banking/credit, employment, and even risk incarceration simply for being and acting on who they are.

[cosmicway 1,333]

Does n't the dog speech of Donald Trump constitute libel ?
If you say racist things to me personally, like that I eat my neighbours pets it is libel.
If you say it to lots of people together is n't it libel again, collective libel if you like ?

[robsblubot 3,595]

5 hours ago, Thor said:

Lot of inference there and ad hominem. I assume you're emotionally impacted by someone questioning your political affiliation. 

Not once have I defended him - or the ownership - weird transition there, but cool. 

Guess you fall into the category I was talking about. You aren't your political affiliation. Its not that deep. 

If you actually care for my opinions on Trump - I think he is an asshat and its hilarious someone so polarising could even become president. Some of you just talk in here like an echo chamber and act like its good vs evil and won't be questioned on anything. 

You assume wrong. And I don’t really have a political affiliation neither am I registered with any group or party.

Either someone agrees with your view or they are “emotionally impacted”. It’s apparently impossible to think rationally and see danger with someone who did incite the attack on a the Capitol as the freaking president.

I guess we will have to agree to disagree on me being emotionally impacted or not. 😃

Once again, for someone so detached from politics you do come here quite a bit.

Edited September 17, 2024 by robsblubot

[Sir Mikel OBE 4,920]

31 minutes ago, cosmicway said:

Children are expensive.
You have to send them to Eton, Sandhurst.

I wouldnt send a kid to regular school in America, but we do have cheaper private school options.The best one in my state is ~ 40k a year which I think I'd be able to swing if/when the time came.

 

The most expensive parts for people is the fact that in many cases you lose an income for months/years if your partner was working. A lot of wives stop working when the kids are small because daycare is just so expensive that it makes their jobs a net negative on finances if the mother wasnt making a lot.

[Vesper 30,224]

Israel war on Gaza live: Nine killed, 2,750 hurt in Hezbollah pager blasts

• At least nine people, including a girl, have been killed and 2,750 wounded in simultaneous explosions of pagers used by Hezbollah members across Lebanon.
• The Lebanese group says it holds Israel “fully responsible” for the explosions.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/liveblog/2024/9/17/israels-war-on-gaza-live-38-killed-as-israel-risks-becoming-pariah

[Fulham Broadway 17,333]

They are determined to start WW3

[Vesper 30,224]

The staggering reach of Trump’s misinformation — not just on Haitian migrants

A new poll shows lots of Trump backers say they believe his pet-eating claim about Haitians, as well as plenty of other claims.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/09/16/staggering-reach-trumps-misinformation-not-just-haitian-migrants/

From Day One of his presidency to this day, Donald Trump has promoted an alternate reality that has caught on with a shocking proportion of his base. But we don’t often get good polling that shows just how much Trump’s misinformation has penetrated the country.

Today, we have such polling. And it’s sobering, if unsurprising.

As Trump has launched a series of claims and suggestions that are bizarre even by his standards, new data shows large swaths of his supporters believe them.

But the most drastic among them — most notably the claim about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, stealing and eating pets — have not caught on with more middle-of-the-road voters. That suggests there is real potential downside for Trump in pushing these fantasies.

The new data comes from YouGov, which has occasionally tested Trump’s false claims. After last week’s debate, YouGov asked voters about a battery of them.

The major findings on what Trump supporters believe:

• A majority (52 percent) of Trump supporters say they believe the claim about Haitian migrants “abducting and eating pet dogs and cats.” Excluding those who are “not sure,” twice as many say it’s at least “probably true” as say it’s at least “probably false.” (There remains no real evidence for this claim. Officials have debunked it and linked it to threats, and Republican Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine on Sunday called it “a piece of garbage that was simply not true.”)
• 43 percent of Trump supporters say they believe that “in some states it is legal to kill a baby after birth” — another claim Trump referenced at last week’s debate. In fact, slightly more said they believed this was true than disbelieved it. (It is false.)
• 28 percent of Trump supporters say they believe that “public schools are providing students with sex-change operations,” something Trump has recently suggested is happening but for which there is no evidence.
• 81 percent of Trump supporters say they believe Venezuela is “deliberately sending people from prisons and mental institutions” to the United States. (There is no evidence that Venezuela or any other country is doing this, and Trump has used bad data to support his claim.)

The claims about Haitian migrants, post-birth executions and sex changes at school are actually some of the least pervasive. But the other claims that Trump supporters believe are more about statistics than ridiculous assertions.

For example, 77 percent say they believe the United States has given more aid to Ukraine than all of Europe combined (false), 70 percent say they believe millions of undocumented immigrants are arriving every month (false), and 70 percent say they believe inflation is at its highest rate ever (not true today or at any point in recent years).

Americans of all political stripes have a long history of getting such data points wrong and exaggerating perceived problems, especially on the economy. So what’s really striking about the new numbers is how much Trump’s conspiracy theories have caught on.

The numbers on those counts aren’t terribly surprising in context, given the many false things Trump supporters have convinced themselves of in recent years. For example, most Republicans have told pollsters that Trump didn’t try to overturn the 2020 election, that Trump didn’t have classified documents at Mar-a-Lago and that Trump’s offices were wiretapped during the 2016 election. And of course there is the 2020 stolen-election claim that as many as two-thirds of Republicans have believed.

But these things have also generally only caught on to an extent, and that’s a key point with the new data.

For instance, independents disbelieve the Haitian migrants claim more than 2-to-1, and five times as many say it’s “definitely false” (35 percent) as say it’s “definitely true” (7 percent).

The gaps are even wider on executing babies and sex changes in schools. More than 6 in 10 independents dispute both, and relatively few independents — less than one-quarter — embrace them. Many independents are actually reliable voters for one side or another, and the data suggest these are probably Republican-leaning ones.

All of which indicates that Trump is largely preaching to a credulous choir here, while the potentially decisive voters generally see his conspiracy theories for what they are.

Whether they will punish him for that is an open question. Voters have long viewed Trump as an unreliable narrator, with a survey last week showing that 57 percent of Americans say his campaign messages are “rarely” or “never” based on facts.

But in the meantime, we have apparently tens of millions of Americans embracing a truly bizarre version of reality based on little more than one man’s say-so.

Edited September 17, 2024 by Vesper

[cosmicway 1,333]

18 hours ago, Vesper said:

The staggering reach of Trump’s misinformation — not just on Haitian migrants

A new poll shows lots of Trump backers say they believe his pet-eating claim about Haitians, as well as plenty of other claims.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/09/16/staggering-reach-trumps-misinformation-not-just-haitian-migrants/

From Day One of his presidency to this day, Donald Trump has promoted an alternate reality that has caught on with a shocking proportion of his base. But we don’t often get good polling that shows just how much Trump’s misinformation has penetrated the country.

Today, we have such polling. And it’s sobering, if unsurprising.

As Trump has launched a series of claims and suggestions that are bizarre even by his standards, new data shows large swaths of his supporters believe them.

But the most drastic among them — most notably the claim about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, stealing and eating pets — have not caught on with more middle-of-the-road voters. That suggests there is real potential downside for Trump in pushing these fantasies.

The new data comes from YouGov, which has occasionally tested Trump’s false claims. After last week’s debate, YouGov asked voters about a battery of them.

The major findings on what Trump supporters believe:

• A majority (52 percent) of Trump supporters say they believe the claim about Haitian migrants “abducting and eating pet dogs and cats.” Excluding those who are “not sure,” twice as many say it’s at least “probably true” as say it’s at least “probably false.” (There remains no real evidence for this claim. Officials have debunked it and linked it to threats, and Republican Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine on Sunday called it “a piece of garbage that was simply not true.”)
• 43 percent of Trump supporters say they believe that “in some states it is legal to kill a baby after birth” — another claim Trump referenced at last week’s debate. In fact, slightly more said they believed this was true than disbelieved it. (It is false.)
• 28 percent of Trump supporters say they believe that “public schools are providing students with sex-change operations,” something Trump has recently suggested is happening but for which there is no evidence.
• 81 percent of Trump supporters say they believe Venezuela is “deliberately sending people from prisons and mental institutions” to the United States. (There is no evidence that Venezuela or any other country is doing this, and Trump has used bad data to support his claim.)

The claims about Haitian migrants, post-birth executions and sex changes at school are actually some of the least pervasive. But the other claims that Trump supporters believe are more about statistics than ridiculous assertions.

For example, 77 percent say they believe the United States has given more aid to Ukraine than all of Europe combined (false), 70 percent say they believe millions of undocumented immigrants are arriving every month (false), and 70 percent say they believe inflation is at its highest rate ever (not true today or at any point in recent years).

Americans of all political stripes have a long history of getting such data points wrong and exaggerating perceived problems, especially on the economy. So what’s really striking about the new numbers is how much Trump’s conspiracy theories have caught on.

The numbers on those counts aren’t terribly surprising in context, given the many false things Trump supporters have convinced themselves of in recent years. For example, most Republicans have told pollsters that Trump didn’t try to overturn the 2020 election, that Trump didn’t have classified documents at Mar-a-Lago and that Trump’s offices were wiretapped during the 2016 election. And of course there is the 2020 stolen-election claim that as many as two-thirds of Republicans have believed.

But these things have also generally only caught on to an extent, and that’s a key point with the new data.

For instance, independents disbelieve the Haitian migrants claim more than 2-to-1, and five times as many say it’s “definitely false” (35 percent) as say it’s “definitely true” (7 percent).

The gaps are even wider on executing babies and sex changes in schools. More than 6 in 10 independents dispute both, and relatively few independents — less than one-quarter — embrace them. Many independents are actually reliable voters for one side or another, and the data suggest these are probably Republican-leaning ones.

All of which indicates that Trump is largely preaching to a credulous choir here, while the potentially decisive voters generally see his conspiracy theories for what they are.

Whether they will punish him for that is an open question. Voters have long viewed Trump as an unreliable narrator, with a survey last week showing that 57 percent of Americans say his campaign messages are “rarely” or “never” based on facts.

But in the meantime, we have apparently tens of millions of Americans embracing a truly bizarre version of reality based on little more than one man’s say-so.

From 1948, legend Greek actor Vassilis Logothetidis in the film "the Germans return".
The entire plot is a dream of Logothetidis in which the Germans are returning.
Below is the dog (flox) eating scene:

Tzitzifrigos mentioned at the end of the clip is a bird they 're going to eat next.

Edited September 18, 2024 by cosmicway

[Fernando 6,585]

22 hours ago, Vesper said:

Tell that to 100 million plus American women if there is a nationwide ban on abortion enacted, or a ban on birth control, or a ban on no fault divorce, etc etc.

Tell that to potentially hundreds of thousands (millions?) of legit US residents who get swept up in Trump's all out deportation war (which he just said would be bloody).

Tell that to tens upon tens of millions of people of colour and queer folk who may well have the clock rolled back decades (the process has already been going on for years, starting with the RW SCOTUS's attacks on much of the post WWII civil rights/voting rights superstructures) to the days where they can legally be denied access to a myriad number of basic rights, up to and including education, housing, banking/credit, employment, and even risk incarceration simply for being and acting on who they are.

I mentioned before and I still believe it could happen with the way the past has been going. 

I mentioned that I believe he would get president but he would not finish it because he would get killed half way. 

And with the recent attempt that is not far fetch from happening in the future. 

[Vesper 30,224]

JD Vance got a former professor to delete a blog post Vance wrote in 2012 attacking GOP over anti-immigrant rhetoric

https://edition.cnn.com/2024/09/17/politics/jd-vance-delete-2012-blog-post-attacking-gop-anti-immigrant-rhetoric/index.html

A week after President Barack Obama won reelection in November 2012, JD Vance, then a law student at Yale, wrote a scathing rebuke of the Republican Party’s stance on migrants and minorities, criticizing it for being “openly hostile to non-whites” and for alienating “Blacks, Latinos, [and] the youth.”

Four years later, as Vance considered a career in GOP politics, he asked a former college professor to delete the article. That professor, Brad Nelson, taught Vance at Ohio State University while Vance was an undergraduate student. After Vance graduated, Nelson asked him to contribute to a blog he ran for the non-partisan Center for World Conflict and Peace.

Nelson told CNN that during the 2016 Republican primary he agreed to delete the article at Vance’s request, so that Vance might have an easier time getting a job in Republican politics. However, the article, titled “A Blueprint for the GOP,” remains viewable on the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine.

“A significant part of Republican immigration policy centers on the possibility of deporting 12 million people (or ‘self-deporting’ them),” Vance wrote. “Think about it: we conservatives (rightly) mistrust the government to efficiently administer business loans and regulate our food supply, yet we allegedly believe that it can deport millions of unregistered aliens. The notion fails to pass the laugh test. The same can be said for too much of the party’s platform.”

Twelve years later, as former President Donald Trump’s running mate, Vance espouses many of the same anti-immigrant postures that he criticized back in 2012 as a 28-year-old law school student. In recent days, Vance has amplified baseless claims against Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio.

But asked on Sunday about his previous criticism of Trump’s immigration posture, Vance argued Trump’s immigration rhetoric was actually the reason he changed from a Trump critic to supporter.

“The reason that I changed my mind on Donald Trump is actually perfectly highlighted by what’s going on in Springfield,” Vance said. “Because the media and the Kamala Harris campaign, they’ve been calling the residents of Springfield racist, they’ve been lying about them. They’ve been saying that they make up these reports of migrants eating geese, and they completely ignore the public health disaster that is unfolding in Springfield at this very minute. You know who hasn’t ignored it? Donald Trump.”

Will Martin, a spokesman for Vance, told CNN that Vance has long supported strong border security measures, including deportations, and now holds one of the most conservative voting records in the Senate. He said his views on deportations had changed since the time of the blog post.

“There is nothing noteworthy about the fact that, like millions of Americans, Senator Vance’s views on certain issues have changed from when he was in his twenties,” Martin told CNN in an email.

Vance’s past anti-Trump rhetoric is well-known, as he was a vocal critic of the former president during much of Trump’s first year in office. And though Vance defended many of his supporters, he wrote on Facebook in 2016, “There are, undoubtedly, vile racists at the core of Trump’s movement.”

Nelson, who spoke highly of Vance in messages with CNN, calling him one of the brightest students he’s taught, said Vance’s post had “ruffled some feathers in some campaigns” that Vance was thinking of working for.

“I was a bit surprised at the blowback he apparently received from the GOP, as I thought his post was fairly innocuous,” Nelson told CNN. “Anyway, I liked JD and wanted to help him out, and so I went ahead and deleted his post.”

“He didn’t suggest that his thinking on the topics he wrote about in his post had changed,” Nelson added in messages to CNN.

CNN found the article through X, where it was mentioned by the think tank in 2012.

Two other blog posts Vance wrote for the website are still active, but CNN noticed the “Blueprint” article had been removed from the website. The Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine, where the post was saved, shows it was deleted sometime between March 2014 and February 2016.

‘Appealing only to White people’

Vance began his article by launching into a blistering critique of the GOP’s strategies and candidates, which he blamed for the party’s failures in the 2008 and 2012 presidential elections.

“When the 2008 election was called for Obama, I remember thinking: maybe this will teach my party some very important lessons,” Vance wrote. “You can’t nominate people, like Sarah Palin, who scare away swing voters. You can’t actively alienate every growing bloc of the American electorate—Blacks, Latinos, the youth—and you can’t depend solely on the single shrinking bloc of the electorate—Whites. And yet, four years later, I am again forced to reflect on a party that nominated the worst kind of people, like Richard Mourdock, and tried to win an election by appealing only to White people.”

Mourdock’s Senate campaign imploded that year after he said that pregnancies resulting from rape were “something God intended.” During his own Senate run in 2022, Vance made his own controversial comments about rape and pregnancy, which have resurfaced after he secured the Republican nomination for vice president.

In the article he asked Nelson to delete, Vance argued the Republican Party would have problems if it did not adjust for the country’s changing demographics. He criticized the GOP’s adherence to supply-side economics, comparing it to supporting outdated policies like Soviet containment. He said during the Bush years this economic approach led to wage stagnation and concentrated growth, which alienated minority voters who found Democratic policies more relevant and appealing.

“Republicans lose minority voters for simple and obvious reasons: their policy proposals are tired, unoriginal, or openly hostile to non-whites,” Vance wrote.

[Vesper 30,224]

Vance warns calling a candidate a ‘fascist’ can lead to violence but doesn’t mention that’s what Trump calls Harris

https://edition.cnn.com/2024/09/17/politics/jd-vance-kamala-harris-fascist/index.html?iid=cnn_buildContentRecirc_end_recirc

In the wake of the apparent assassination attempt against former President Donald Trump on Sunday, Trump’s running mate, Sen. JD Vance, argued in a speech in Georgia on Monday that the two recent attempts to kill Trump are evidence that “the left needs to tone down the rhetoric and needs to cut this crap out; somebody’s going to get hurt by it.”

Moments prior, Vance had criticized a Democratic congressman for saying last year that Trump must be “eliminated.” (The congressman apologized for a “poor choice of words,” saying he had been trying to talk about how Trump must be defeated in the election.) And Vance said: “Look, we can disagree with one another, we can debate one another, but we cannot tell the American people that one candidate is a fascist and if he’s elected it is going to be the end of American democracy.”

What Vance didn’t mention was that Trump has repeatedly told the American people that his opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, is a fascist whose election would mean the end of the country itself.

In fact, Trump called Harris a fascist at least twice last week alone.

“She’s a Marxist, communist, fascist, socialist,” Trump said at an Arizona rally on Thursday.

“This is a radical-left, Marxist, communist, fascist,” Trump said while attacking Harris at a news conference on Friday.

This wasn’t new rhetoric. “We have a fascist person running who’s incompetent,” Trump told Virginia residents during a campaign stop in August; at an Arizona rally in August, Trump said the true divide in American politics is between patriots with traditional values and “these far-left fascists led by Harris and her group.”

And Trump has gone beyond saying that electing Harris would mean an end to American democracy. He has said this summer that electing Harris would mean “you’re not going to have a country anymore” and that “we’re not going to have a country left.”

A Vance spokesperson did not immediately respond to CNN’s request on Tuesday to explain whether Vance is calling on Trump to tone down his language, and, if not, what Vance sees as the difference between Trump’s words and the words from “the left” he was denouncing.

Vance argued in his Monday speech that there is not a “both-sides problem.” He said that while he acknowledges conservatives do not “always get things exactly right,” he said that the fact that “no one has tried to kill Kamala Harris in the last couple of months” demonstrates that the issue of incendiary rhetoric about presidential candidates is a one-side-only concern.

But Harris has faced violent threats for years, including in recent months. In August alone, a Virginia man and a Tennessee man were separately charged with making death threats against her.

[Fulham Broadway 17,333]

Israel blowing up laptops and walkie talkies now in Lebanon and Syria - children maimed and murdered. 

The Israeli regime is a danger to its own people - only time before Israeli civilians will be killed in return

[Fulham Broadway 17,333]

Russian intelligence agencies are contacting criminals directly to target the West amid "the most intense" sabotage campaign since the Second World War, ministers have been warned.

It is using a "gig-economy" style of recruiting people on short contracts to meet "the rapidly increasing demand for sabotage operations".

Hundreds of people mainly criminals have been arrested and detained all across Europe Sweden, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Belgium, Poland and Czech Republic who had intentions to set fires, sabotage railways and infrastructures. 

At least 24 people have been arrested so far this year in the UK after allegedly being recruited by Russian spy chiefs, according to academics published in the Royal United Services Institute's Journal.

AP News

[Vesper 30,224]

39 minutes ago, Fulham Broadway said:

gig-economy

crim gig

smdh

all part of asymmetrical, non-linear warfare and stochastic (ie having a random probability distribution) terrorism

[Fulham Broadway 17,333]

Just now, Vesper said:

crim gig

smdh

all part of asymmetrical, non-linear warfare and stochastic (ie having a random probability distribution) terrorism

Most people will do anything for right amount of money. From 'influencing' to sabotage. Mercenary fuckers

[Fulham Broadway 17,333]

Israeli Ministers say they want to 'turn Lebanon into a second Gaza'

[Vesper 30,224]

Just now, Fulham Broadway said:

Most people will do anything for right amount of money. From 'influencing' to sabotage. Mercenary fuckers

https://www.files.ethz.ch/isn/195099/rp_121.pdf

 

https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1538&context=jss

[Vesper 30,224]

JD Vance says US could drop support for NATO if Europe tries to regulate Elon Musk’s platforms

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/jd-vance-elon-musk-x-twitter-donald-trump-b2614525.html

JD Vance has suggested that American support for NATO should be predicated on the European Union not regulating Elon Musk and his X social media platform, formerly known as Twitter.

The Republican vice presidential nominee and Ohio senator claimed in an interview with YouTuber Shawn Ryan that a top EU official had threatened to arrest the billionaire if he allowed former President Donald Trump back on X.

“The leader, I forget exactly which official it was within the European Union, but sent Elon this threatening letter that basically said, ‘We’re going to arrest you if you platform Donald Trump,’ who, by the way, is the likely next president of the United States,” Vance said in the interview published last week.

Trump’s running mate then suggested that US support for NATO should be used as a cudgel to get the Europeans in line.

“So what America should be saying is, if NATO wants us to continue supporting them and NATO wants us to continue to be a good participant in this military alliance, why don’t you respect American values and respect free speech?” Vance asked. “It’s insane that we would support a military alliance if that military alliance isn’t going to be pro-free speech. I think we can do both. But we’ve got to say American power comes with certain strings attached. One of those is respect free speech, especially in our European allies.”

Musk has been accused of banning several journalists since taking over Twitter, now X.

“I’m not going to go to some backwoods country and tell them how to live their lives,” Vance added. “But European countries should theoretically share American values, especially about some very basic things like free speech.”

The US ranked 26th in the world when it comes to free speech, with several members of the European Union higher up the list, according to the 2024 Global Expression Report.

Internal market EU Commissioner Thierry Breton wrote on X in July that the platform’s verification system of users using blue checks is deceiving.

“Now X has the right of defence —but if our view is confirmed we will impose fines & require significant changes,” he added.

Musk who responded at the time, saying: “We look forward to a very public battle in court, so that the people of Europe can know the truth.”

“The European Commission offered X an illegal secret deal: if we quietly censored speech without telling anyone, they would not fine us. The other platforms accepted that deal. X did not,” he added in another post.

X could face disciplinary action under the EU Digital Services Act that was put in place in 2022. The legislation includes a number of regulations stating that platforms have to take responsibility for protecting European users from illegal content and disinformation.

Vance has faced criticism for putting forward, in the same interview, a peace plan for the war in Ukraine that would appear to benefit Russian President Vladimir Putin, who views NATO as a top adversary.

Ryan asked Vance what Trump’s plan was to end the war in Ukraine.

The senator said Trump would have a discussion with the Russians, Ukrainians, and Europeans and tell them that they “need to figure out what a peaceful settlement looks like.”

Vance also told Ryan that a possible peace agreement could mean that Russia would hold onto the land they have seized and that a demilitarized zone would be implemented along the current frontlines. Vance added that Ukraine would also give Russia a “guarantee of neutrality.”

“What it probably looks like is something like the current line of demarcation between Russia and Ukraine becomes like a demilitarized zone, heavily fortified [so] the Russians don’t invade again,” he said.

Trump’s running mate also suggested that Europe, specifically Germany, and not Russia, would have to fund the rebuilding of Ukraine.

“Ukraine remains an independent sovereignty. Russia gets the guarantee of neutrality from Ukraine. It does not join NATO and some other allied institutions. Germans and other nations have to fund Ukraine’s reconstruction,” Vance added.

Ukraine has been trying to join NATO and the European Union for years. Already in 2008, then-NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said Ukraine would eventually become a member of the military alliance.

Trump has long shared his disdain for NATO – during his first term, he reportedly privately discussed pulling out of the alliance completely.

The former president has also repeatedly indicated that he would refuse to adhere to NATO’s Article 5 collective defense clause, which states that an attack on one member is an attack on all. Earlier this year, he said he had told a foreign leader that he would urge Russia to do “whatever the hell they want” to NATO members who were not spending enough on defense.

Trump has also made a habit of praising dictators and authoritarian leaders, showing a particular affinity for Putin, whom he called “genius” and “savvy” after the 2022 invasion of Ukraine. The then-president also sided with Putin over the US intelligence community when asked about Russian interference in the 2016 election during a 2018 press conference with the Russian leader in Helsinki, Finland.