Donald Trump has taken a series of actions this week that, even by his standards, go beyond erratic and bizarre and cross the border into corrupt, obscene and dangerous – both to America and the world
Trump’s cosying up to Putin has reached treasonous levels(Image: AP)
OK, it may be time to start panicking.
Donald Trump has taken a series of actions this week that, even by his standards, go beyond erratic and bizarre and cross the border into corrupt, obscene and dangerous – both to America and the world. He’s cosying up to Putin to a frankly shocking extent, announcing live-streamed public executions and inviting the most scurrilous election deniers to give him advice in the Oval Office. And he keeps teasing a “surprise”, which is making people extremely nervous. Here’s everything that’s happened in Trumpworld this week that you need to know about.
Trump just bought a boatload of diesel from Putin
Donald Trump appears to have relaxed sanctions on Russia in order to buy hundreds of thousands of tons of diesel – and release hundreds of thousands more into the global market. The truly flabbergasting turn of events will see the United States directly funding Putin’s war machine by an undisclosed sum – as well as undermining years of pressure on the Russian tyrant from the international community over his war in Ukraine. Trump had already made several moves to “normalise” Putin’s behaviour – meeting with him on American soil last year and inviting him to December’s G20 summit in Miami. But handing him cash in the hope that Russia will help him reduce American diesel prices in time for the midterms is shocking, even by Trump’s standards. Especially given the high price of diesel is, at this point, almost entirely Trump’s fault.
Announcing the “deal”, Trump wrote on Truth Social: “I have just concluded a highly successful discussion with President Vladimir Putin, of Russia, wherein it was agreed that Russia will immediately supply over 300,000 Tons of Diesel Fuel to the American and Global Marketplace, another 500,000 Tons during the month of November, and 1,000,000 Tons immediately thereafter. Additionally, based on the condition of their Diesel Refineries, Russia will then deliver, within a short period of time, 3,000,000 Tons of Diesel Fuel. Between our TOTAL CONTROL of the Strait of Hormuz, and this great announcement on Russian Energy, Diesel Prices for Americans and, indeed, the World, will be COMING DOWN, IN RECORD NUMBERS, AND FAST! Lower prices for Americans, especially our Great Farmers, Ranchers, and Truckers, is my Greatest Priority. This is a very big and important announcement. Additionally, it must be understood, that Iran will not have a Nuclear Weapon! Thank you for your attention to this matter. President DONALD J. TRUMP”
The deal has already been branded ‘disgusting’ and ‘treasonous’. See, the difference in Trump’s second term is that Russia’s meddling in American elections is just being done out in the open this time.
No marks for execution
Pete Hegseth gleefully announced on Thursday that that America is going to hold its first public execution in about 90 years. In fact, it’s probably the first public military execution since the Civil War.
The condemned man is Nidal Hasan, a former US Army psychologist who was convicted of killing 13 people at the Fort Hood military base in 2009. He said the attack was an attempt at sparking a jihad in retaliation for US wars in the Middle East. Hasan is on the US Military’s death row now, and the Pentagon announced yesterday that his execution has been scheduled for December 3rd. But that didn’t seem to be enough for Pete Hegseth, Donald Trump’s Secretary of War – who confirmed in an interview last night that the execution will be by firing squad – the first time the military have used that method since 1945. It will take place at Fort Hood, the base where he committed his crime, and soldiers – presumably stationed at the base – will perform it.
The last public execution in the United States was in 1936 – it’s 90 years since that particular barbaric ritual was done away with. And despite the United States still being in the grip of a scandal over a bungled execution – Pete Hegseth thinks now is the right time to bring it back. His justification was that: “People need to understand that there’s serious consequences for these types of things.” And as with a lot of things that tumble out of Hegseth’s mouth, this is the most crushingly basic take.
The evidence for capital punishment being a deterrent against crime is sketchy at best. The most recent study, published this year, found that it didn’t reduce homicides by any more than long prison sentences do. Leading criminologists agree – with 88% responding to a survey in 2009 saying it was not effective as a deterrent. Another thing is that Capital Punishment is quite popular in the states. About 66% of Americans support it as a punishment for murder. But if you want to see that approval number go down, the quickest way would probably be to broadcast it, so people can see how it’s done in all its grimness. Also, if you think people like Nidal Hasan are going to be put off by the death penalty, I don’t think you’ve understood the concept of jihad.
Meanwhile, the UN have suggested holding a public execution “would breach the absolute prohibition of torture”.
So was it just Hegseth freelancing? It was not. During an event to mark Columbus Day, Trump mentioned that America was about to have someone executed by firing squad, adding: “He deserves it.” JD Vance, on the other hand, has been far more cowardly – telling reporters that he didn’t know if it’d actually go ahead, and even if it did: “I won’t be watching.” There’s a fair argument that the only people who should be forced to watch a public execution in America are the President, the Vice President and the Cabinet.
Stop trying to make SI happen
Trump posts alarming messages on Truth Social almost every day – but one he posted this week was of a different order. As we know, Trump is desperate to make ‘fetch’ happen…sorry, desperate to make ‘Super Intelligence’ happen. That’s his new name for AI – which henceforth shall be know by absolutely nobody as “SI”. So determined is he to make this stick, that he decreed that the White House will consider anyone who continues to call it AI to be “the enemy”. And considering everyone I know still calls it “Twitter” and has no intention of updating that part of their brain, I think he’s on a hiding to nothing on that one.
That said, he could be planning something more nefarious – In the first months of his presidency, he used the Associated Press’ refusal to change its stylebook to call the Gulf of Mexico ‘the Gulf of America’ as an excuse to boot them out of key events at the White House. And given absolutely nobody is going to call it SI, there’s every chance he’s going to use this new designation as an excuse to get rid of more of the critical media he hates so much.
Medal machine music
Trump held an event on Wednesday to mark the ‘dawn of a new golden age’, or something. These things kind of roll into one. It was a bash to celebrate some of the worst people who have given Trump the most money and sucked up to him to the most excruciating degree – tech billionaires.
And during the ceremony he handed the Presidential Medial for Science to his on-again-off-again bromantic partner, Elon Musk. Perhaps sensing that Trump wasn’t in line for the Nobel Prize this time around, given all the extrajudicial killings, illegal invasions and wars of choice, whoever organised the event arranged to have the science medal awarded to his uncle, John G Trump – whom he rarely shuts up about – framed and handed to the President before the medals were handed out. You know, so he wouldn’t feel left out. If this were an episode of Bluey, Lucky’s Dad would be complaining about a ‘White House of squibs”.
Trump met with election meddling felon
Remember Tina Peters? She’s the former elections official from Colorado – former because she participated in a plot to undermine the result of the presidential election. She was convicted in 2024 and sentenced to 9 years in prison for helping to breach the election computer systems in Mesa County, Colorado and ordering security cameras disabled to allow a former pro-surfer (not relevant, but funny) affiliated with Mike Lindell, the pillow magnate, election denier and serial conspiracy theorist, to access them. Her sentence was commuted earlier this year after Trump put Colorado’s governor under months of sustained public pressure and threats. She served less than a quarter of her sentence.
And according to reports, on Monday she was in the Oval Office, talking to Donald Trump about “the plans” for the midterms.
The plan, it’s been reported, involves a convoluted and probably nonsense legal loophole that election deniers are convinced grants Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick to seize control of ballot counting machines if it’s believed there is a risk of foreign interference. The fantastic Democracy Docket website did a deep dive on this and came to the conclusion that the law doesn’t do what they’ve convinced themselves it does. But that’s really beside the point. If they’ve convinced Trump he’s got that power, that’s the ballgame.
He keeps teasing a ‘surprise’ from the architect of Project 2025
On Tuesday, Trump gave a speech at a shipyard in Baltimore, during which he shouted out a guy called Russel Vought – and ominously telling the crowd that he and Russ had cooked up a “surprise” for in a couple of weeks time. He went on to say Vought would be remembered as one of the most important people in American history. He teased this a second time at the Columbus Day event on Friday, saying Vought was “going to be making a tremendous announcement soon. He’ll be even more important than Chris [Columbus] if he pulls this off. He’s working on something that’s going to be so good for our country.”
Now, Russ Vought’s government job is Director of the United States Office of Management and Budget. But that’s not what people know him for. He’s best known as the architect of Project 2025, the conservative Heritage Foundation’s blueprint for a second Trump term. It was a sweeping, shock-and-awe plan to reshape the US government, push right-wing policies, consolidate power and centralise presidential control and dismantle much of America’s apolitical civil service, replacing them with people loyal only to Trump. Critics have called it authoritarian, Christian nationalist and autocratic and warned it risked undermining the rule of law.
And if you’re wondering how that’s going, about two thirds of Trump’s executive orders are aligned with the plans set out in Project 2025. So he’s got professional election meddlers in his ear, he’s giving taxpayer’s cash to Putin and he’s teasing a “surprise” from a guy whose job it is to consolidate power around Donald Trump. Anything else?
Trump shut out international observers from midterms
Oh totally. In another deeply troubling move, for the first time in 20 years, the US has not invited election monitors from the OSCE – an international body that monitors elections around the world – to scrutinise the midterms. Every US national election since 2002 has allowed OSCE monitors to observe – and if you’re wondering why then, look up the 2000 presidential election on wikipedia. In the UK we’ve had them around every election bar one since 2005 – the exception being the 2019 snap election and they did a cursory check ahead of time. The idea of letting them in to nominally free and secure countries is that it encourages …less secure countries to follow suit. And now the only countries that don’t are America…Russia and Belarus.
Instead, the Department of Justice will be sending its own poll monitors to polls and counts in many states – which is prompting concerns of voter intimidation.
And finally…
Trump announced the new White House Press Secretary will be MAGA-talking head Katie Zacharia.
If that name sounds familiar, it’s because she was (briefly) Kristi Noem’s spokesperson while she was at Homeland Security. You know, the department that keeps posting white nationalist-coded memes on Twitter.
Whether she lies with as much zeal and enthusiasm as Karoline Leavitt remains to be seen.
