Trump: "Hey Vladimir, do you remember the past? Well |forget about it!|"

And why not? He reneges on every other deal. To tRump, the voters who elected him, and Putin (who also kinda elected him) are no different than New York bankers or a janitorial contractor in one of his tasteless buildings. "Yeah, I got your January bill here for $7,234.00. I'll give you $3,000. If you don't like, you can sue me!"

It’s hard to think of an American political figure who has ever put forward such a dark view of the world—or such a despairing picture of policy paralysis. To fix matters, Trump did not offer a conventional “Come Home, America”–style program of isolationism. Instead, he promised kick-ass confrontation. We had been “losing” for too long. The right response, the way to start and keep “winning,” was not to get out of the game but to play it better—smarter, harder, tougher. Trump was the candidate who, claiming to know more about isis than the generals, would “bomb the shit” out of it. (With no inhibitions, either: What, he reportedly asked expert briefers, was wrong with using nuclear weapons against terrorists?) He had more experience negotiating business deals than the trade lawyers did, and knew how to cultivate the kind of personal relationships with the world’s high rollers that professional diplomats could only dream of…

Best of all, Trump suggested, his entire approach would be free. The famous boast that Mexico would pay for Trump’s proposed border wall echoed many of his other pronouncements. Seizing Iraq’s oil—the “spoils” of war, in his term—would help defeat terrorism. Allies would finally be made to “pay their bills.” The Pentagon budget increases that Trump promised would be funded, he claimed, by “ending the theft of American jobs.” Yes, we could be “great again”—and on the cheap.

He'll build great relationships by passing the bill to others? Yeah, that ought to work…

/FFS