Putin Gives Trump Massive Middle Finger, Days After Warning on Ukraine

Less than a week after being elected to a second term, President-elect Donald Trump doesn’t appear to be the international strong-arm he claimed he’d be.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has already waltzed right past a pointed warning from the MAGA leader, sending tens of thousands of soldiers to the Ukrainian war front after Trump told him not to escalate the situation.

Ukraine’s top military commander, Oleksandr Syrskyi, told NBC News that Russian forces are “trying to dislodge our troops and advance deep into the territory we control” in Kursk, a city in southwestern Russia that borders Ukraine. Ukrainian forces “continue to hold back” a “nearly 50,000-strong enemy group” in the occupied region, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy wrote in a Telegram post Monday.

Ukraine has warned of a looming counteroffensive in the embattled region for weeks. Among Russia’s allies on the front line include more than 10,000 North Korean soldiers—confirmed by the Pentagon—who are engaging in “combat against Ukrainian militaries,” according to Zelenskiy.

“There are losses; this is a fact,” he said.

“The importance of this operational area cannot be underestimated given the number of enemy troops concentrated there,” Syrskyi wrote on Telegram. “If it were not for the steadfastness of our soldiers, these tens of thousands of enemies from the best Russian assault units would have stormed our positions.”

Trump had spoken with Putin over the phone on Thursday, reportedly advising the foreign leader not to escalate the war, reminding Putin of America’s military capabilities in Europe, according to The Washington Post.

Russia immediately turned its back on the discussion, claiming that the report was “pure fiction.”

One of Trump’s biggest and boldest campaign promises was that he would immediately end the Russian invasion of Ukraine—though his philosophy on how to achieve that was suspiciously scant of details and, at times, veered toward solutions that would invariably aid Russia.

In June, Trump said he would be open to an increase in U.S. weapons aid to Ukraine so long as it shows up for peace talks with Russia, reported Reuters.

Trump’s advisers envisioned that the peace talks—which Trump promised to facilitate upon winning in November—would also quietly include Ukraine seceding part of the country that is currently occupied by Russian forces. The concept was drawn up by retired Lieutenant General Keith Kellogg and Fred Fleitz, both former chiefs of staff in Trump’s National Security Council.

And Trump’s ardent opposition to NATO—the Western military and trade alliance—has also raised eyebrows, even sparking condemnation from some of his former allies. In February, Trump claimed he told a European leader that he’d allow Russia to “do whatever the hell they want” to NATO allies if they didn’t “pay” their “bills.” And while Trump’s former national security adviser John Bolton cast doubt on the incendiary story, he didn’t question the MAGA leader’s desire to nix the strategic alliance.

“Look, I was there when he almost withdrew, and he’s not negotiating,” Bolton said at the time. “His goal here is not to strengthen NATO, it’s to lay the groundwork to get out.”

Elise Stefanik is continuing her ascent through Trumpworld.

President-elect Donald Trump has reportedly tapped the House Republican Conference chair to serve as the next ambassador to the United Nations, a decision that could redefine America’s relationship with some of its longest allies.

“I am honored to nominate Chairwoman Elise Stefanik to serve in my Cabinet as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations,” Trump said in a statement obtained by CNN. “Elise is an incredibly strong, tough, and smart America First fighter.”

Stefanik, a longtime critic of the international organization, won reelection in New York’s 21st congressional district on Tuesday while campaigning as a staunch defender of Israel in its war on Gaza. That includes defending Israel’s decision to eliminate humanitarian aid from the region. In a statement last week, Stefanik heralded Israel’s decision to ban the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, or UNRWA, from operating in Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza, claiming that the 74-year-old aid program “instills antisemitic hate in Palestinians” and “houses weapons for terrorists.”

She also called on the United States to defund the refugee program, criticizing the Biden administration for issuing “$1 billion to UNRWA since 2021.” (The U.S. has received international condemnation for being the lone holdout on aid since Israel accused 19 UNRWA staff members of participating in the October 7, 2023, attack. An independent report published in April found no evidence and was supplied no evidence by the Israeli government supporting the allegations.)

Stefanik has called for a “complete reassessment of U.S. funding of the United Nations” after the Palestinian Authority attempted in October to expel Israel from the organization for alleged war crimes and human rights abuses.

At the time of her first win in 2014, she was the youngest woman ever elected to Congress. She’s since proved to be one of Trump’s staunchest defenders, making a name for herself in 2019 for her impassioned defenses of the MAGA leader during his first impeachment trial and later refusing to certify the 2020 election results, elevating lies that the Biden-Trump race had been stolen.

But she hasn’t always sided with the MAGA leader. In 2017, Stefanik voted against Trump’s tax plan, one of his signature legislative victories.

Donald Trump named his new border czar in the middle of the night to carry out his dreadful mass deportation plans.

“I am pleased to announce that the Former ICE Director, and stalwart on Border Control, Tom Homan, will be joining the Trump Administration, in charge of our Nation’s Borders (‘The Border Czar’), including, but not limited to, the Southern Border, the Northern Border, all Maritime, and Aviation Security,” Trump said on his Truth Social platform late Sunday night. “I’ve known Tom for a long time, and there is nobody better at policing and controlling our Borders.”

Homan is best known for crafting and then overseeing Trump’s ruthless 2017 “zero tolerance” family separation policy that resulted in almost 2,000 children being ripped from their families after being detained at the southern border. This policy resulted in traumatic, inhumane mistreatment of migrants and their children. It was widely criticized and put on hold in 2018, around the time that Homan stepped down as ICE director.

Homan has been bullish about his role in the process, telling the Republican National Convention crowd this summer that he had a message for the millions of migrants coming to this country for a better opportunity for themselves and their children: “You better start packing now. You’re damn right. Cause you’re going home.”

Homan doubled down on his hard-line stance on 60 Minutes last month. When asked by Cecilia Vega if there was a way to carry out Trump’s mass deportation dreams without separating families, Homan responded, “Of course there is. Families can be deported together.”

The Harris campaign’s tent may have indeed been too big.

Rolling Stone has reported that several Democratic aides warned Vice President Harris against campaigning so closely with former Representative Liz Cheney. Cheney may have voted to impeach Trump, but she’s also still the daughter of notoriously hawkish Iraq War orchestrator Dick Cheney, which most of America is far more familiar with.

“People don’t want to be in a coalition with the devil,” one anonymous campaign source told Rolling Stone in regard to Dick Cheney. But their warnings went unheeded, as a Harris staffer told them it’s not their place to question the campaign’s decisions.

The Harris campaign ran hard with Cheney in the last days of the campaign, appearing with her at rallies and on television appearances, as they urged women to vote in “secret” from the conservative men in their lives.

One Democratic strategist noted that campaigning with Cheney—and reaching out toward Republicans so enthusiastically in general—risked alienating the liberal base and wouldn’t even convince that many swing voters, if any. Donors and state party chairs also tried to convey this message to the Harris campaign, but to no avail. “We were told, basically, to get lost, no thank you,” they told Rolling Stone.

Campaigning with Cheney is just one of Harris’s many strategies that Democrats everywhere are questioning as the shock wears off.

Now that Kamala Harris lost an election by larger numbers than polls indicated, some liberals are questioning the election results and alleging fraud.

While nearly every Democrat and liberal was shocked by the election results coming on Tuesday and Wednesday, on social media, some people went overboard and sounded like upset Trump supporters in 2020. Mueller, She Wrote emerged as one of the more prominent liberal X (formerly Twitter) accounts critical of Trump during his first term, and initially expressed doubt over the results.

Other users on X saw potential nefarious activity in the vote count.

At one point, the hashtag #DoNotConcedeKamala trended on X.

One person who wanted Harris to contest the results referenced previous Democratic losses.

Many of these conspiracies are still continuing days later. Much of the objection appears to have to do with what Harris supporters perceived as less voter turnout, although this is somewhat unfounded, as turnout was up in the battleground states of Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania that were the deciding factors in both 2020 and 2024. In all, 12 states exceeded previous records of turnout.

The next four years may go by very slowly if Harris supporters spend it contesting election results like many right-wingers did after Trump’s loss in 2020. Many of the right’s objections culminated in half-baked schemes and even vote tampering. And then there’s the January 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection, where Trump’s MAGA diehards stormed the Capitol and attempted to halt the certification of the 2020 election.

Ultimately, that effort failed, resulting in more than 1,500 criminal charges and the deaths of some of the rioters. Hopefully, liberals and Harris supporters will come to their senses before any similar attempt. Besides, it will probably end up looking like this.