The Daily Populous Friday February 21st, 2025 night edition
Authored by newrepublic.com and submitted by Quirkie

Unsurprisingly, several of Trump’s claims aren’t true. The U.S. has actually allocated a total of $183 billion to Ukraine since Russia’s 2022 invasion, with about $86.7 billion of it spent already. European commitments amount to $174 billion in addition to $50 billion in loans backed by revenue from frozen Russian assets. Hours before Trump’s post Wednesday, Zelenskiy warned that Trump needed to “be more truthful” and said that the president “lives in a disinformation space” fed by Russia.

Trump’s language and attitude towards Ukraine and Zelenskiy plays right into the hands of Russia and its autocratic leader Vladimir Putin. Putin has long been criticized for his anti-democratic path holding sham elections, so to pin the dictator label on Zelenskiy surely has him rejoicing. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has already praised Trump for putting the onus of the war on the U.S., NATO, and Ukraine.

“He is the first, and so far, in my opinion, the only Western leader who has publicly and loudly said that one of the root causes of the Ukrainian situation was the impudent line of the previous administration to draw Ukraine into NATO,” Lavrov said Wednesday. “No Western leaders had ever said that, but he had said it several times. This is already a signal that he understands our position.”

sumonetalking on February 20th, 2025 at 18:17 UTC »

I hope people realize what the game is that they're playing. By having Elon not be a real government employee Trump has found a loophole that basically makes Elon immune to any kind of oversight by the government. No president has tried anything this obviously illegal before so the system doesn't know how to handle it. The only real recourse would be to impeach Trump, but as long as sycophant Republicans have his back that will never happen.

PeepholeRodeo on February 20th, 2025 at 17:49 UTC »

The Trump administration filed a court declaration Monday asserting that Musk’s official title is “senior adviser to the president,” a position that holds “no actual or formal authority to make government decisions himself.”

If Musk has no formal authority, then why is he able to fire people, cut funding, and have access to our data?

insuproble on February 20th, 2025 at 17:42 UTC »

One thing is for sure. Both Trump and Musk have done nothing but lie since they were inaugurated.