Inflation is inching back up while hiring for new jobs is waning under the Trump 47 administration. Our pro-Trump right-column contributing pundit, Rich Corbett, makes the argument in this debate that the cause is a weakening US dollar and not the Trump administration’s economic and immigration policies. Stephen Macaulay has a somewhat different take, and to make space for our pundit-at-large, whose work usually appears in the right column, his counterpoint to “The Buck Stope With the Buck Itself” appears in the left column today.*
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WEDNESDAY 12/3/25
Eight Hours to Nowhere – Russian dictator/President Vladimir Putin kept White House envoy Steve Witkoff and son-in-law Jared Kushner waiting for three hours ahead of five hours of negotiations in Moscow Tuesday over the 19-point European/Ukrainian response to the Kremlin’s 28-point peace plan. After their meeting Putin accused Europe of thwarting President Trump’s attempts to bring peace to Ukraine and amending the process in order to blame Moscow, NPR’s Eleanor Beardsley reports on Morning Edition Wednesday.
Putin’s comments to reporters gets much more bellicose: Russia doesn’t want war with Europe, Beardsley reports, quoting translation of the dictator’s comments, but is ready for it if Europe brings it on.
It wouldn’t be like “the surgical war that Russia’s conducting in Ukraine,” Putin said.
Such “surgery” includes constant Russian bombardment of Ukrainian civilians while Trump’s peace process drags on.
Speaking in English from Ireland where he met with European leaders, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that Europe must keep the pressure on Russia “so that Russia does not believe it will be rewarded for this war with stolen Ukrainian land or (a) thousand kidnapped Ukrainian children.”
Speaking of Europe … The European Union is pushing ahead with plans to finance two-thirds of Ukraine’s financial needs for the next two years, at 90 billion euros (US$105 billion) says EU President Ursula von der Leyen. Despite opposition from EU member Belgium, according to The Guardian, financing would come from frozen Russian cash balances.
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About that Alleged War Crime – The September 2 US Military strike in the Caribbean on a Venezuelan boat allegedly smuggling drugs was lawful and proper, but just in case, War (Defense) Sec. Pete Hegseth says he didn’t do it.
“I watched that first strike live,” Hegseth said at a televised obsequiousness-filled three-hour cabinet meeting with President Trump Tuesday afternoon, USA Today reports. “As you can imagine, at the Department of War, we’ve got a lot of things to do, so I didn’t stick around for the hour or two hours or whatever.”
Responsibility thus has fallen on Adm. Frank M. Bradley, whom Hegseth says gave the order “well within his authority” to kill two survivors after the initial US strike on the boat killed nine others and triggered a fire.
Hegseth maintains that Trump has his department’s back on this sort of thing.
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Moral ‘Victory’? – Democrats appear to be buoyed by Tennessee General Assembly Rep. Aftyn Behn’s nine-ish-point loss to Republican Matt Van Epps in a special election for the state’s 7th Congressional District. With 95% of the vote counted, Van Epps “edged” Behn 53.9% to 45.1%, the Tennessee Lookout reports.
Democrats’ “moral victory”? Donald J. Trump beat Kamala Harris by 22 points in the district in 2024.
Van Epps replaces Republican US Rep. Mark Green, who resigned from Congress last July. –TL
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...meanwhile...
TUESDAY 12/2/25
Down to 19 Points – White House envoy Steve Witkoff and President Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner meet with dictator/President Vladimir Putin at the Kremlin Tuesday afternoon to go over a new, 19-point peace plan for Ukraine written after talks last week between the Americans and European and Ukrainian negotiators. This plan is to stand in for the 28-point plan reportedly drafted last month by Putin’s envoy, Kirill Dmitriev, Kushner and Witkoff.
While the pro-Russian 28-pointer went nowhere with Ukrainian and European negotiators, this week’s 19-pointer is unlikely to have much appeal to Putin, who insists on Russia retaining large portions of Ukraine it has not, so far, captured in the 3½-year-old war.
Speaking in Bishkek, Russia, last week, Putin said fighting in Ukraine will end only when “the Ukrainian forces leave the territories they hold,” according to Politico.
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It Was a Navy Admiral – The White House says a Navy admiral ordered the second strike on an alleged drug boat in the Caribbean last September 2 and that he acted “within his authority and the law,” even as both Republicans and Democrats in Congress are questioning whether the first strike, and even US military presence off the coast of Venezuela is legal in the first place (The Associated Press).
And if the second strike, which reportedly killed two survivors from the first missile strike on the boat was legal, why is the White House trying so hard to absolve Defense Sec. Pete Hegseth of a potential war crime?
Even the notoriously conservative Wall Street Journal Opinion page is dubious, writing; “Lawmakers are doing a public service by trying to get to the truth on whether the Trump administration killed defenseless survivors of a drug-boat strike.”
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Habba Out – A Philadelphia-based federal appeals court consisting of two Bush appointees and one Obama appointee ruled that Trump attorney Alina Habba has been serving unlawfully as US attorney in New Jersey. President Trump has kept Habba in the role via a series of “unusual maneuvers” The New York Times reports, with neither Senate confirmation nor appointment by district court judges.
However, former assistant US attorney Eli Honig, a CNN commentator, told NPR Morning Edition co-host Leila Fadel he expects the Trump administration to appeal the appeals court ruling before the US Supreme Court. –Compiled and edited by Todd Lassa*We never knowingly run AI-written news/analysis/commentary and generally eschew anything created by artificial intelligence. However, the illustration at the top of the center column was created by ChatGPT.