Hoist by their own petard much?

A German neo-Nazi will be allowed to start serving an 18-month sentence in a women’s prison after he used a new government policy to register a change in gender.

Sven Liebich, who has been photographed at far-Right rallies wearing a Nazi-style uniform, will be sent to the Chemnitz women’s prison in Saxony, according to FAZ, a German newspaper.

Because he’s obviously not taking the piss, right? Totally sincere?

Also of course there’s the issue of the safety of actual women in the prison, but meh, that doesn’t matter.

Dennis Cernota, a senior prosecutor in Saxony, said that Liebich would be interviewed upon arrival to check whether it was appropriate for him to be placed among female prisoners. If it is decided that Liebich poses a threat to other inmates, or to law and order inside the prison, he may be transferred, Mr Cernota added.

And they’ll be able to figure that out by interviewing him, because of course he won’t lie and manipulate, right?

Liebich was able to switch genders via reforms introduced last year by Olaf Scholz’s centrist coalition, which simplified the process of changing a person’s name and gender on official documents.

The reforms were supposed to support transgender, intersex and non-binary people in Germany, but their use by a neo-Nazi to avoid male prisoners has plunged them into controversy.

Bashes head against wall

How many billion times have we pointed out that any man can “use” such reforms to avoid male prisons and make female prisons extra-special dangerous for women? How many billion times have we pointed out that’s why there are separate prisons in the first place, and that if you make exceptions then you’re opening the door to men doing exactly what Herr Nazi is doing? How many more times do we have to explain it???

When Mr Scholz was in power, he justified the reforms on gender changes as a key step forward for German society and its respect towards minorities.

“We show respect to trans, intersex and non-binary people, without taking anything away from others. This is how we continue to drive the modernisation of our country. This includes recognising realities of life and making them possible by law,” he said.

You can’t, you absolute buffoon. You can’t do that because it is not possible. You can’t let men into women’s prisons without “taking away” women’s safety from men in prisons. You have to pick one.

Hot news from the Trans Legal Clinic –

[Does that mean self-identified Legal Clinic? So not a real legal clinic?]

The Trans Legal Clinic have launched our new Strategic litigation service in partnership with legal heavyweights at W Legal. Joitnly, we have today filed an application on behalf of Dr Victoria McCloud to the European Court of Human Rights, challenging the United Kingdom following the Supreme Court’s ruling in For Women Scotland Ltd v the Scottish Ministers [2025] UKSC 16.

They might want to hire a decent editor while they’re at it.

Anyway. Is it really the job of courts to force everyone to agree that this man here is actually a woman because she says so?

I hope not.

For the first time, a case will be taken to Strasbourg by a trans-led legal team. That fact is significant in itself: a case concerning the participation of trans people in legal and political life is being advanced by those directly affected.

Or to put it another way, a case will be taken to Strasbourg by people in thrall to a fiction that people can change sex and thus men can become women. It’s significant because some of the deluded people in question are the ones “advancing” this case.

Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which guarantees the right to a fair and public hearing within a reasonable time by an independent and impartial tribunal.

They really need that decent editor. One who knows how to finish sentences.

For the trans community, this principle speaks to a longstanding truth: there must be no more conversations about us, without us.

But you’re crazy. Or deluded. This “conversation” you mention is about a deranged ideology that has massive effects on other people, especially women. We have to have conversations about it, in order to make it go away. We want to do it without you because you are crazy or deluded. We have to do it without you for that reason.

Dr Victoria McCloud said:“This case is about ensuring that fairness is not an abstract principle, but something lived and real. Trans people deserve the same rights of participation as anyone else when decisions are made about our lives.”

But by “our lives” you mean your permanent fantasy of being women when you are in fact men. Men don’t have any “rights of participation” when women are resisting their attempts to usurp and silence and displace us.

The very right-wing but not absolutely always wrong about everything American Enterprise Institute on that ridiculous chart about white culture in July 2020:

In the wake of the police killing of George Floyd and subsequent protests over police brutality, interest in “anti-racist” education has exploded among educators and advocates. The case that educators should seek to combat racism seems self-evident. What’s less clear is how the admirable cause of “anti-racism” is fueling, in some corners, the inclination to denounce universal virtues and useful skills as the product of “white culture.”

Witness last week’s contretemps at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture. The museum, which bills itself as “the only national museum devoted exclusively” to educating the public on these topics, recently debuted the online guide “Talking about Race.” The guide included a chart cataloguing the “aspects and assumptions” of “white culture” that “have been normalized over time and are now considered standard practices in the United States.”

What are these sinister aspects of “white culture,” you ask? Well, according to the Smithsonian, values like “hard work,” “self-reliance,” “be[ing] polite,” and timeliness are all a product of the “white dominant culture.” Indeed, it turns out that conventional grammar, Christianity, the notion that “intent counts” in courts of law, and the scientific method and its emphasis on “objective, rational linear thinking” are all proprietary to “white culture.”

The self-destructiveness just leaps off the page, doesn’t it. Really, Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture? You really want to make all those things the provenance of wypipo? Are you sure?

There are several things that might be said about all this. But the place to start may be by observing just how insidious it is to teach black children to reject intellectual and personal traits that promote personal and civic success — in the U.S. or anywhere else. After all, in what land are students well-served when they’re encouraged not to work hard, make decisions, think rationally, or be polite and on time?

And not even just success. You want those traits because they are good in themselves – intrinsically good as opposed to instrumentally. Being polite is better than being rude for the kinds of reasons that explain why being decent is better than being a shit.

After an online outcry, the Smithsonian removed the chart on Thursday night — but not with any denunciation of the chart’s content, only the bland understatement that the chart turned out to “not contribute to the productive discussion” they had wished for. Of course, the lack of “productive discussion” shouldn’t have surprised, given the shoddy scholarship it reflected. The original chart contained a single footnote linking to a one-page PDF asserting, sans evidence, that traits such as “hard work,” “self-reliance,” and politeness “are common characteristics of most U.S. White people most of the time.”

Somebody was taking a stab at comparing capitalist virtues to some other kind, which is far from a novel line of thought. One can generally see the outlines of a point – capitalist virtues help you get ahead yadda yadda but there’s more to life than getting ahead blah blah. True enough, but be careful what you argue for.

All you need is to idennify as.

It’s really very odd to word it that way. “Candidates must identify as” – well which is it? Must, or idennify as? The two are in opposition. Must=mandatory, while idennify as is as optional as it gets.

These days of course it’s easy to get away with idennifying as female, but the postdoctoral level researcher is not quite so simple. Or do they just take people’s word for it on that subject too? If so they might as well just let all of us be candidates.

Fox News runs everything.

Several of Fox News’s most prominent on-air news personalities made clear their desire to help Mr. Trump shortly before and after the 2020 presidential election, according to a tranche of court documents released on Tuesday in a $2.7 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox Corporation filed by Smartmatic, a voting technology company.

In one text message, Mr. Watters, who now hosts “Jesse Watters Primetime” on Fox News, said to his colleague Greg Gutfeld: “Think about how incredible our ratings would be if Fox went ALL in on STOP THE STEAL,” a reference to the movement trying to overturn the results of the election.

Apart from anything else, isn’t it thrilling that the drive for commercial success plays such a large role in the governance of the US and thus the future of the planet.

The hundreds of pages of documents — largely newly unredacted versions of previously released ones — were filed on Tuesday in New York State Supreme Court. Smartmatic has accused Fox News of knowingly implicating the company in false claims of vote-rigging in the 2020 election.

Smartmatic filed its lawsuit against Fox in February 2021, and the documents are the fullest picture yet of the evidence it says it has compiled against the network. Smartmatic is arguing that Fox, facing a growing backlash after calling Arizona for Joseph R. Biden Jr., pivoted to a narrative about election fraud to placate its viewers despite knowing it was not true.

This is what I’m saying. The petty personal concerns of people at a sleazy commercial entertainment network —> the entire planet is at the mercy of a greedy ruthless crook. It’s not The Iliad or Macbeth, it’s The Simpsons.

Both sides.

The UK’s first transgender judge has launched a case against the UK in the European court of human rights challenging the process that led to the supreme court’s ruling on biological sex.

The retired judge Victoria McCloud, who is now a litigation strategist at W-Legal, is seeking a rehearing of the case, arguing that the supreme court undermined her article 6 rights to a fair trial when it refused to hear representation from her and did not hear evidence from any other trans individuals or groups.

Ok so suppose a group of people declare themselves judges, and the supreme court rules that trans judges are not judges. Would the court be expected to include trans judges before it can rule that trans judges are not judges?

In other words is this a general rule? People who declare themselves Xs have to be included in any court case that rules on whether self-declaration is magic or not?

It seems like an infinite regress. “You can’t rule that we are not included in this category because you didn’t include us – the frauds – in the decision-making.”

Don’t forget the museums. Gotta micromanage the museums. They have to show how grate America is.

President Donald Trump said Tuesday that he has ordered his attorneys to conduct a review of Smithsonian museums, calling their portrayal of U.S. history too negative and focused too much on “how bad Slavery was.”

Trump said he would subject the museums to “the exact same process” his administration has conducted of universities, with the goal of making the Smithsonian less “woke.”

Because without woke, nobody would think slavery was a bad thing.

Trump wrote on Truth Social: “The Smithsonian is OUT OF CONTROL, where everything discussed is how horrible our Country is, how bad Slavery was, and how unaccomplished the downtrodden have been — Nothing about Success, nothing about Brightness, nothing about the Future.”

But what was that success based on?

A lot of it was based on the unpaid labor of people kidnapped out of Africa and their children and grandchildren for generations. Cotton made some people very rich, and it entrenched a system of enslavement that lasted for way too many years. Those facts were tactfully veiled for generations but then finally the lid blew off. The facts in question may not be important to Trump, but then his grandparents didn’t grow up chopping cotton in the Mississippi Delta.

The Trump administration last week began conducting an unprecedented review of exhibits at the Smithsonian ahead of the country’s 250th anniversary in an effort to make sure they comply with Trump’s vision of history.

But Trump’s “vision of history” is the cartoonish dream of pale people from Germany and Scotland moving to Ahmericah to make tons and tons of money so that a little boy called Donald would one day put his great big fist through everything and laugh like a drain.

Peak Comerford.

Women are telling him we don’t talk about bras, actually, but he knows better.

Do what?

UK culture secretary Lisa Nandy is coming under fire for wearing a black t-shirt emblazoned with the words ‘Protect the Dolls’ at Wigan Pride on Sunday.

If you keep up with trans-activist trends, the ‘Protect the Dolls’ slogan might sound familiar. Celebrities such as Pedro Pascal, Tilda Swinton, Alan Cumming and Madonna have all worn t-shirts bearing the phrase. According to the t-shirt’s creator, a New York-born fashion-school grad now living in London, ‘the dolls’ supposedly in need of protection are transwomen. In other words, blokes.

So men need protection and women don’t?

‘In queer communities, “doll” is a term of affection, pride and belonging – a coded word that speaks volumes without explanation’, claimed a piece in Forbes when the t-shirt first appeared at London Fashion Week earlier this year. Apparently, the term is ’emotional, not clinical, protective, not patronising’.

If it’s coded how can it speak volumes without explanation? That makes zero sense.

And I still want to know why men and not women.

Nandy’s fashion statement is merely the latest proof that when it comes to trans ideology, Labour really hasn’t learned a thing. Last year, Jess Phillips, ironically the women’s safeguarding minister, said that she would be ‘happy to refer to transwomen as women’. Work and pensions minister Andrew Western responded to the UK Supreme Court ruling on gender by raising ‘the fear and distress’ that men might suffer if they are barred from using women’s loos.

Carefully not mentioning the far more realistic fear and distress of half the population if men are not barred from women’s loos. On and on it goes.

Yosemite Biologist Who Hung Trans Pride Flag From El Capitan Is Fired

Real biologist or self-idennified?

The National Park Service has fired a wildlife biologist at Yosemite National Park who helped drape a large transgender pride flag from El Capitan in May, saying that the demonstration had taken place in a prohibited area and lacked the required permits.

The former employee, Shannon Joslin, 35, who studies bats and has a Ph.D. in genetics, received a termination letter from the Park Service on Aug. 12.

A PhD in genetics but thinks people can change sex.

In the letter, the park’s acting deputy superintendent, Danika Globokar, wrote that Dr. Joslin, who is gay and identifies as nonbinary, had “failed to demonstrate acceptable conduct” by taking part in the May 20 demonstration.

Wait what? How can you be gay and nonbinary? If you’re nonbinary what can “gay” even mean? You’re either both sexes or neither, so you can’t be a lesbian or a gay man.

Is this just greedy grabbing everything you can reach before somebody smacks your hand? The ice cream and the pie and the cake and the chocolates?

On May 21, the park’s acting superintendent signed a new rule outlawing the display of large flags, banners and signs at El Capitan — the park’s iconic cliff — and most of the California park altogether. The move coincided with a broader push by the federal government to limit political demonstrations on public lands, especially those critical of the policies of the Trump administration.

Frankly I’m surprised this hasn’t always been a rule. Who the hell wants to see banners in national parks in the first place? It seems like draping advertising over all the paintings in the Rijksmuseum.

The spokeswoman, Rachel Pawlitz, said that the Park Service would not comment about personnel actions or criminal investigations.

“Several unauthorized demonstrations involving El Capitan generated numerous complaints from visitors,” Ms. Pawlitz said. “Yosemite National Park was designated by Congress to highlight the beautiful natural and cultural features of the area. No matter the cause, displaying signs, banners, and flags outside of designated First-Amendment areas detracts from the visitor experience and the protection of the park.”

Even if this is Trump-approved or Trump admin-approved, I agree with it. Don’t be sticking personal tat on natural beauty or human works of art. Leave them alone.

In February, before the rule took effect, a small group of protesters hung an inverted American flag — a signal of distress that began with sailors — off the side of El Capitan to protest the Trump administration’s cuts to the Park Service.

Plenty of eyes were already fixated on El Capitan for the annual phenomenon known as firefall, when the light from the setting sun causes a seasonal waterfall to glow orange.

The display occurred shortly after at least 1,000 Park Service employees were abruptly dismissed from their jobs, part of a sweeping federal work force downsizing initiative that was once overseen by President Trump’s now-estranged ally Elon Musk.

Welllll that’s a little different. The flag was at the side, which I take to mean it didn’t obscure what people go there to see, and it was about an issue that does affect Yosemite and national parks in general.

But in general? Don’t stick your tacky posters on the sunset.

Another man takes steps to cancel women’s rights.

The UK’s first transgender judge has launched a case against the UK in the European court of human rights challenging the process that led to the supreme court’s ruling on biological sex.

The retired judge Victoria McCloud, who is now a litigation strategist at W-Legal, is seeking a rehearing of the case, arguing that the supreme court undermined her article 6 rights to a fair trial when it refused to hear representation from her and did not hear evidence from any other trans individuals or groups.

Why should people who are wrong about what sex they are be singled out for “inclusion” on a supreme court ruling?

The move comes as For Women Scotland, the gender-critical campaign group that brought the supreme court case, announced it was suing the Scottish government, accusing it of refusing to abide by April’s judgment, in particular around schools and prison policy.

The UK supreme court ruled in April that the legal definition of a woman in the Equality Act 2010 did not include transgender women who hold gender recognition certificates (GRCs). Subsequent guidance from the equality watchdog amounted to a blanket ban on trans people using toilets and other services of the gender they identify as.

As it has to. It’s either let men use women’s toilets and other services, or don’t. The first option is unfair to women. Women are half. Men who claim to be women are a handful.

McCloud, who is supported by Trans Legal Clinic and W-Legal, said the application was brought under articles 6, 8 and 14 of the European convention on human rights, “essentially the rights to respect for who I am, my family, my human existence, my right to a fair trial in matters determining my own freedoms and obligations without discrimination.”

But that’s a lie. He’s talking about a “right” to respect for who he IS NOT. That’s not a thing. His human existence is one thing and his pretense of being a woman is quite another.

So apparently Trump is mad at us because we’re not impressed by his diplomatic chops.

“I am totally convinced that if Russia raised their hands and said, ‘We give up, we concede, we surrender, we will GIVE Ukraine and the great United States of America, the most revered, respected, and powerful of all countries, EVER, Moscow and St. Petersburg, and everything surrounding them for a thousand miles,’ the Fake News Media and their Democrat Partners would say that this was a bad and humiliating day for Donald J. Trump, one of the worst days in the history of our Country,” he wrote on Truth Social Monday.

So his point is that Russia is the injured party here? Meaning, Ukraine invaded Russia, not the other way around? Has no one told him the facts?

“But that’s why they are the FAKE NEWS, and the badly failing Radical Left Democrats. Thank you for your attention to this matter!!!”

Erm. I knew he was abusing that “thank you for your attention” catchphrase but I didn’t realize he doesn’t even get that it’s the punchline to an order or demand that somebody do something. It’s the punchline to “Pay up!” or “Get out!” or “Give it back!” or “Go fuck yourself!” It’s not the punchline to “Here’s what they’re doing!” or “I hate them!!!” It’s a passive-aggressive emphasis that accompanies a “Do this or else.”

How it went:

Before meeting with Zelensky, or any other world leaders in town for the event, Trump was already telling reporters that peace could come “almost immediately” if Zelensky ditched NATO and gifted Putin Crimea – the diplomatic equivalent of telling someone to end a mugging by handing over their wallet and the deed to their house.

Jeezus, of course the war would be over if Zelensky surrendered; everybody knows that.

And then it went on. And on, and on, and on. Asked directly about what was happening in Ukraine, Trump would wheel out an irritated, detail-free “We’re going to have lasting peace,” before going right back to his own agenda.

“I used to get great publicity. Now I get the worst publicity that anyone’s ever had in office,” he said, after an unconnected question. Moments later, apropos nothing: “Joe Biden’s a very corrupt politician — not a smart man, by the way. Go back 40 years and he wasn’t smart then, either.”

Says the stupidest adult on the planet.

This tirade continued for a while, took a left turn into how the 2020 election was supposedly stolen from him, and ended with a Biden jab: “He was a horrible, corrupt president!” Zelensky had only minutes before been talking about a one-and-a-half-year-old child who had just been killed in Kharkiv by Russian missiles.

And Trump continued on. He was going to end “corrupt” mail-in ballots and “the machines” (never mind the defamation lawsuits already lost by right-wing media spreading conspiracy theories about voting machines giving inaccurate results.) Mail-in voting is “a fraud” and “the Democrats want it because it’s the only way they get elected.” By the way, they also want “transgender for everybody.” And “they love crime”.

Sir sir sir sir sir we’re here to discuss Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, sir.

And so, somehow, Biden — who isn’t even in the room, who hasn’t been for months — became the central villain of the narrative, eclipsing both Putin and the ongoing missile strikes killing civilians. It’s a remarkable inversion: the man praising the aggressor, lecturing the victim and saving his deepest rage for his domestic rival. If you want to know what obsessions animate Trump’s foreign policy, don’t look to maps of Ukraine; look to the 2020 election.

I’ll admit to believing that it couldn’t get worse than the school bully-style treatment of Zelensky last time he visited Washington, but this was worse. To listen to this press conference, you’d think Biden really was the one rolling tanks into Donetsk. A grievance recital that used the background of war for the foreground of Trump’s hurt feelings is so much less than what the world deserves.

We all saw the red carpet on Friday, the festival-style “ALASKA 2026” and the photo-ops. We all saw the apathy today. Civilians die in Kharkiv, Europe flies in en masse to prop up Ukraine and Trump still finds a way to make the story about his ratings, his stolen thunder, his petty personal rants. If Friday was Broadway-style theater, today was a tragicomedy. And somehow, in the midst of war and mourning, the only thing that got center stage was Trump’s ego.

Well, it does blot out the sky, so…

Daniel Sanderson in The Sunday Times (UK):

Scotland’s national librarian is facing mounting pressure to reinstate a gender-critical book which she banned from a major exhibition, after a key donor joined a revolt against the move.

Alex Graham, who has given around £300,000 to the library, said he had been “shocked and angry” to learn that The Women Who Wouldn’t Wheesht had been excluded from an exhibit that he personally supported with a donation of about £20,000.

Graham, the creator of the television show Who Do You Think You Are, urged Amina Shah, Scotland’s chief librarian and the chief executive of the National Library of Scotland, to reverse her decision.

He said that if she did not, he would have to consider whether or not to continue to provide lucrative donations to the library, as he has done for the past 12 years.

…

The Times revealed on Wednesday that it was pulled after a backlash by the library’s internal LGBT staff network, which claimed it contained “hate speech” and that displaying it would cause “severe harm” to workers.

They threatened to “notify LGBT+ partners of the library’s endorsement of the book” if management did not cave in.

This concept of “severe harm” could do with some inspection. Is it true that displaying a book that rejects trans ideology would necessarily cause severe harm to anyone? How do they know? What’s the chain of causality?

We know they don’t like being told that men are not women, but is not liking something “severe harm”? That seems to be the assumption, but I wonder if they’ve poked at it hard enough.

“I think this was a fundamental mistake and the correct thing for the library to do would be to put up their hands, admit that and reinstate the book,” Graham said. “Instead, there have been weaselly responses.

“The library is not saying they have taken it out because it contains hate speech, because it does not. They’ve taken it out because of some ill-conceived notion that someone might be upset by its presence. That’s not a good enough reason for me.”

“Someone might be upset by this” is not a very powerful argument, because it applies to everything and anything. People can have hissy fits for very flimsy reasons, and for no reasons at all.

An insider within the cultural sector in Scotland said the decision was symptomatic of a wider trend of managers being seen to cave in to demands of young, activist staff members who have little resilience or tolerance of views different to their own.

And who have learned that they can get their way by driveling about harm and upset and severe harm.

It’s time to put them back in the box.

Ostensible v real:

European leaders may have rushed to Washington ostensibly to throw a protective arm around President Zelensky and head off any repeat of February’s Oval Office bust-up.

But their real aim is to stop US President Donald Trump threatening long-term European security after his abrupt change of course over how best to end the war in Ukraine.

They’re much the same thing though. They don’t want to link arms with Zelensky because he’s their poppet, they want to do it because Putin is a massive threat. It’s not personal, it’s geopolitical.

Not only did Trump drop calls for a ceasefire as a prerequisite for talks about long-term peace, he also – diplomats say – made clear he had no intention of imposing further economic sanctions on Russia.

In short, the travelling European heads of government – plus EU and Nato leaders – want to avoid not just confrontation, but also capitulation.

Exactly, so maybe don’t frame it as a matter of cuddling Zelensky.

Meanwhile – hey it’s August. Everybody is at the beach. When they all abandon the beach to go spend time with His Majesty The Baby you know it’s serious.

The French leader was enjoying water sports on the Riviera. The Italian leader, Georgia Meloni, had been in Greece.

But such was the scale of President Trump’s change of strategy after meeting President Putin – and the consequent potential threat to Europe – that the European leaders changed their plans fast.

Trump of course is hugging himself like Tweedledum because of how important he must be to get all these people to quit the beach.

The risk for the Europeans today is that they push Trump too hard, that he thinks he is being bullied, and that the meetings go badly.

Or to put it less tactfully, the risk is that Trump pitches a fit and then makes even more generous offers to Volodya.

Lugosi?

More from CNN:

President Donald Trump called today a “big day at the White House” ahead of his meetings with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and several European leaders.

“A big day at the White House. We have never had so many European Leaders here at one time. A great honor for America!!! Let’s see what the results will be,” the president wrote on Truth Social.

Errrrr no. No, it’s not an honor of any kind, let alone a great one. They’re there to try to prevent Trump from handing Ukraine over to Putin. They’re there to try to minimize the damage Trump is doing. They’re there because Trump is both malevolent and an idiot.

The nightmare continues.

CNN:

Donald Trump is rewarding rather than punishing Vladimir Putin for failing to meet the US president’s own deadline for agreeing to a ceasefire, according to a leading Russia analyst.

“It’s profoundly disconcerting what’s happened in the past two weeks,” Nigel Gould-Davies, senior fellow for Russia and Eurasia at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, told CNN. Gould-Davies said Trump chose to “reward” Putin with Friday’s summit in Alaska after the Russian president shirked Trump’s latest ceasefire-or-sanctions deadline a week earlier.

Since the summit, he said, Trump has “completely abandoned his demand for a rapid ceasefire, and his threat to impose sanctions, and is increasingly taking Putin’s view that instead the war (in Ukraine) can only be ended by a ‘comprehensive settlement.’”

Such a settlement would address what Putin regards as the “root causes” of the war in Ukraine, which Gould-Davies said is “much more fundamental” than issues of land and aims to deny Ukrainian statehood and identity.

The “root causes” are that Putin wants Ukraine to be just a little piece of Russia while Zelensky and Ukraine do not want that.

It’s quite similar to Trump’s insulting suggestions that it would be cool for Canada to become the 51st state in the US.

Less makea deeel.

The big picture: White House advisers claim that Monday’s crucial meeting between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Washington is evidence of momentum from the summit with Putin.

…

“There’s a way to make a deal: get the buyer and the seller in the same room at the same time discussing it,” said one of the Trump advisers familiar with the talks. “What we’re trying to figure out is if both sides really want a deal and what the contours look like.”

Yes, right, that’s exactly what this is, it’s pure unadulterated deal-making, like when you go to a yard sale and try to get the price down on a toaster.

There are going to be a lot of adult supervisors this time.

This time, when President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine arrives in the Oval Office, he will come with backup.

An array of European prime ministers and presidents are flying in for the meeting on Monday to make sure that a viable, defensible Ukraine survives whatever carving up of its territory is about to happen at the negotiating table.

But they are also there to make certain that the trans-Atlantic alliance emerges intact. President Trump’s instant reversal on the critical issue of obtaining a cease-fire before negotiating over land or security guarantees has left many of them shaken, and wondering whether Mr. Trump had once again been swayed by President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.

Golly gee, ya think?

By most accounts, the European officials want to ensure that Mr. Trump has not pivoted too close to the Russian side, and does not try to strong-arm Mr. Zelensky into a deal that will ultimately sow the seeds of Ukraine’s dissolution. And they want to safeguard against the risk of the United States, the linchpin of European security since NATO’s creation in 1949, undermining that interest.

They want to make sure Trump doesn’t burn the house down, blow up the barn, and sow the fields with salt.