☕️ A GREAT FALL ☙ Saturday, March 1, 2025 ☙ C&C NEWS 🦠
We note the dramatic moment of Proxy War self-destruction, thanks to green-sweatshirted wonder; federal worker accountability email, redux; USAID's latest victim relieves sub-continent; more.
Good morning, C&C, it’s Saturday! Time for the Weekend Edition. Today’s roundup is another barn-burner: Democrat disarray deepens; total Proxy War meltdown unfolds in real time as Kiev’s head grifter gets thrown out of the White House; federal worker email goes out again and this time they mean it; and USAID flares up again in another unlikely locale in an all-too-predictable and grotesque form.
🪖 C&C MORNING MONOLOGUE 🪖
Yesterday’s regularly scheduled C&C programming was interrupted by a world-shaking but ultimately empty threat of a Jeffrey Epstein document dump. But in one day, it’s already become old news. In one day, we’ve got another massive tectonic news event, also related to the Proxy War, which is the invisible planet whose gravity is pulling all other news out of orbit.
This morning’s focus is mainly on yesterday’s literally unbelievable White House press event, which most resembled a WWE-style smackdown. Corporate media’s coverage threw open the journalistic thesaurus, grasping to describe the impossible event using words like “fiery,” “furious,” “meltdown,” “acrimonious,” “contentious,” “devolving into a shouting match,” “disastrous,” and “upending.”
Across the pond, the Times of London is running overwrought op-eds like this remarkable piece:
“The rule book,” the article concluded, “is being ripped up by the day.” Exactly.
If we can barely keep up with the developments, what hope do the Democrats and the Swamp creatures have? They find themselves jammed into the crux of a terrible dilemma: on what to focus? They impatiently wait for Trump to make a mistake, but even potential mistakes are being eclipsed by the next day’s even more momentous news, leaving no time for narrative development.
“Things are falling apart," said Democratic Policy and Communications Committee (DPCC) co-chair Representative Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.) in a blunt internal memo leaked to Axios. Axios reported the story under the headline, “‘Things are falling apart’: Fuming Democrats struggle with Trump speech strategy.”
"It is more important than ever that House Democrats tune out the stream of chaos and ... communicate with precision on the issues that matter," the DPCC memo advised. But what are those issues?
Time’s headline yesterday was even more blunt:
Maine Representative Jared Golden, twice re-elected in a Trump district, thinks the party needs structural reform. “You can see Russia as a threat,” he told Time, “and still question whether or not we should be risking getting drawn into a war.”
Let’s dig in.
🌍 WORLD NEWS AND COMMENTARY 🌍
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When it went down yesterday, I was racing through the dining room after my lunch break, grabbing up my devices and a file folder to head back to the office. As I winged past the door to the living room, I observed my bride standing motionless, intently watching Trump and Zelensky gabbing on the TV. Since Michelle never stops moving unless she’s sleeping, I knew something must be up— and walked in to witness the most remarkable diplomatic event since … I don’t know when. Since Humpety Dumpety had his great fall. The New York Times ran the story under the absurd headline, “Behind the Collision: Trump Jettisons Ukraine on His Way to a Larger Goal.”
“No! You’ve talked enough.” Surely, by now you’ve already seen the high-speed train wreck, or at least the spicy parts. Social media instantly forgot all about the previous day’s Epstein non-disclosure; it vanished like a morning haze in the sunlight of Zelensky’s spectacular diplomatic self-destruction.
The short version is that Zelensky attended a high-profile meeting with President Trump to finally sign the long-discussed minerals deal. The two teams met in the Oval Office for media before a state luncheon, after which they planned to jointly sign. Everything went swimmingly— until around 24 minutes in, when Zelensky started trying to re-negotiate the deal. Things went downhill fast, a very public argument proceeded, and then Trump abruptly canceled the presser and threw Zelensky out of the White House.
Global fireworks ensued.
🚀 Yesterday, as I watched Trump and Zelensky bickering on live television, dumbfounded, Michelle turned to look at me in wonder. Astonished, she asked, “What is happening?” I said, “we’re watching history unfold—nothing like this has ever happened before.” What I felt most strongly was a soaring sense of gratification and gratitude: President Trump and Vice President Vance were saying the things that we’ve all been saying and thinking for at least two years now.
You are disrespecting the American people.
World leaders never utter these kinds of frank words to each other. At least, not in public. Not like this. They never trot out to address the media until all the disagreements have been carefully ironed out, and the tablecloth of diplomacy is impeccably creased and whitened. But not yesterday.
Corporate media, European media, and the New York Times are doing their best to spin narrative damage control. They are trying to lay the overpriced eggshells of blame before Trump and Vance, but it’s a lost cause. Anyone can watch the show for themselves and see that Zelensky repeatedly provoked an initially agreeable Trump— until he finally snapped.
If you somehow missed it, @thatsKAIZEN made a clickable index to the entire 45-minute presser highlighting the precise moments when Zelensky drove his peace bus off the cliff.
🚀 Nobody but partisan warmongerers is buying what the corporate media is selling. Senator Lindsay Graham (R-S.C.), a diehard Zelensky fanboy for decades, slouched out afterward affirming for reporters that he was proud of President Trump, and recommending that Zelensky should step down:
CLIP: Chief Neocon Senator Graham throws Zelensky and his cargo pants under the war bus (2:38).
For another example, after watching the whole thing for himself, rabidly pro-Ukraine influencer Konstantin Kisin (670K followers) retracted his early blame of Trump/Vance and admitted the meltdown was Zelensky’s fault:
Pictures emerged of Ukraine’s Ambassador, seated in the gallery, experiencing a green sweatshirt-induced migraine:
Even Scott Jennings’ liberal MSNBC co-anchor agreed that Zelensky “took the bait … and he shouldn’t have:”
CLIP: “All Zelensky had to do was put on a tie, sign the papers, and have lunch” (1:14).
🔥 Here’s what really happened. Zelensky never intended to sign the deal. He’s been playing games for weeks, and he demanded a face-to-face meeting with Trump under the pretext of holding a formal signing ceremony. The problem was, Zelensky wants the U.S. to “guarantee” its security against Russia, in a sort of mutual-defense agreement as though Ukraine were part of NATO.
It would be NATO membership benefits without dues or obligations. But Trump has repeatedly said the U.S. will never provide security guarantees, and that Ukraine cannot join NATO.
Enter the Europeans. We can now see this week was a full-court press, a joint Ukraine-Europe operation to box Trump in so that he’d be forced to agree to a guarantee. On Monday, colorful French President Emmanuel Macron visited Trump— delivering the carrot. On Thursday, British Prime Minister Kier Starmer visited Trump— to show the stick.
Following Macron and Starmer’s coordinated efforts, Zelensky was supposed to be walking in yesterday with Trump already having agreed to Zelensky’s plan.
The European weenies knew that Trump had taken any security guarantees off the table. But they thought they’d found another way. They’d proposed to send an EU “peacekeeping force” to Ukraine, and told Trump the U.S. would only have to guarantee security to the EU —not Ukraine— a “backstop” providing a politically expedient way for Trump to indirectly break his earlier promise.
But Macron’s carrot and Starmer’s threats fell flat. So when Zelensky arrived yesterday, what was supposed to be a done deal was still Trump’s deal. That’s why Zelensky, in a panic, tried to renegotiate the deal during a press conference intended to announce he was signing the same deal.
At around the 19-minute mark, Trump glowingly praised Ukraine’s courage and its fighting skills, and even promised that the US would keep providing Kiev with military support. But by minute 24, Zelensky started openly demanding security guarantees, which Trump had already ruled out. “We will never accept just cease-fire. It will not work without security guarantees,” the Ukrainian dictator emphatically said in broken English.
Zelensky rambled on and on, as a stony-faced Trump grew increasingly aggravated. “When we speak about security guarantees,” Zelensky said, “when the Europeans are ready for contingents (of peacekeepers), they need USA back stop. This is crucial. This is very important. This is what we want to speak about. We need to provide this. We need this very much. Otherwise Putin will never stop. He hate us.”
Then he shifted into a weaselly running gear. “This is the rule of the war. Who began— those pay. This is the rule. Putin began this war, he has to pay all money for renovation.” Warming to his theme, and referring to Russian assets frozen by sanctions, he continued, “Some Russian assets we have in Europe, some $300 billions, we can use them, for renovation and buy military support from US also. But it’s not enough.”
In other words, Zelensky threw our crappy minerals deal back in our faces. It’s not enough. On top of security guarantees, he demanded that we, America, Trump, make Putin pay. And then pay more after that.
Remember, this is all before the presser went sideways, before Zelensky started talking over Vance’s answers to the media, rolling his eyes, shaking his head, and ultimately publicly confronting JD over the notion of having any “diplomacy” with the Russians at all. Vance called the disrespectful and ungrateful little git out, for being disrespectful and ungrateful.
And as they say, the rest was history.
“I want to see guarantees,” Mr. Zelensky finally demanded of Trump. Trump said okay, that’s it and canceled the press event. Minutes later, Ukraine’s Martial Law Administrator fled the White House, taking his cargo pants with him, his luncheon of rosemary roasted chicken and creme brulee uneaten, the minerals deal unsigned, and Ukraine’s future hanging under a black pall of doubt.
President Trump, the Times glumly noted, “has never appeared so enraged and combative with a foreign visitor.”
🚀 To choose a single word that could encapsulate the fulminant fracas, and which might offer a shred of hope to the hapless Ukrainites, that word might be catharsis.
Surely, hearing those tough truths aired was cathartic to we beleaguered Americans who have helplessly watched the Biden Administration heap our treasure on the corruptocratic Kievians, who somehow managed to “lose” $100 billion dollars, while our own border dissolved like toilet paper in a hurricane, our interstate infrastructure lay in unattended ruins, and our fellow citizens were lucky to get $700 checks after serial domestic disasters.
But it was also obviously cathartic for President Trump. Zelensky pushed him so far he even defended Russia, pointing out that President Putin suffered through the same RussiaGate scandal that Trump did, even though the whole thing was a disastrous hoax. One got the clear sense Trump had wanted to say it out loud, to Zelensky’s face, for a very long time. Zelensky dished up the perfect opportunity.
Afterwards, Trump told reporters that Zelensky can come back when he really wants peace, and not a minute before.
Trump now holds the fate of Ukraine in his hands. He would now be fully justified —now that Americans have seen for ourselves Ukraine’s ‘best and brightest’ at his dumpiest, least attractive, and most impossible— to halt all further aid to Ukraine and let the Europeans’ chips fall where they may. Or the President could demand even stronger and more punishing terms, as a good-faith apology from Ukraine, to induce America to return to the negotiating table.
🚀 Cathartic or not, calling this showdown catastrophic for Project Ukraine would be a galactic understatement. The multi-dimensional chess board has been overthrown again, the chess pieces scattered all over the marble floors of the global houses of power.
The endless grift, a Ukrainian house of cards, meticulously built on manufactured narratives, elite lobbying, and bottomless Western funding, collapsed in real time under the weight of now-apparent contradictions. Zelensky’s public tantrum didn’t just blow up bridges—it vaporized them. For nearly four years, if not longer, the Proxy War project has survived on a carefully cultivated illusion of Ukraine as a noble underdog bravely resisting an unprovoked invasion, an indispensable ally to democracy itself.
But yesterday, before the world’s gimlet eye, Zelensky shattered that illusion for all time with his own words. His breathtaking sense of entitlement, his arrogant demands for American guarantees, and his utter lack of gratitude all reinforced what so many of us have known for years: Ukraine isn’t an ally. It’s a bottomless money pit of ever-more-reckless demands, managed by a cartoonish madman who thinks he can order the United States around.
Trump’s irate response wasn’t just the latest chapter in a long-running geopolitical drama—it was a long overdue reckoning, a mark of emphatic punctuation. In a single, unscripted moment, Trump and Vance did what no Western leader has so far dared to do: pull back the plush curtain on Ukraine’s war racket.
It changed everything. The fallout will be incalculable. European leaders, having spent prodigal efforts outsourcing their foreign policies to Washington, must now face the music by themselves. Zelensky, once the darling of Davos, now seems more like a liability than any kind of asset. And here in America, the billions shoveled into Ukraine while our own country spiraled into chaos have become an open question inviting formal inquiry, rather than a security policy.
As Trump repeatedly warned Zelensky, “you aren’t holding any cards.” Yesterday, Zelensky incinerated the entire deck. If this meeting is the opening act in Trump’s foreign policy reset, it was a warning shot heard ‘round the world.
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It’s just like Scream 2! The worst crime ever committed against innocent workers is happening again. The New York Times ran the story yesterday, headlined “Federal Workers Will Get Another Email Asking Them to Detail Accomplishments.” Cue the wailing and crying.
The new email, which began streaming into federal inboxes yesterday, was hilariously titled “What did you do last week? Part II.” Just when they thought it was safe to go back in the office.
Like last week’s infamous email, yesterday’s email directed federal workers to draft five bullet points describing what they accomplished this week. But —striking terror into the Swamp— it also said that, going forward, employees would be expected to complete the task every week before midnight each Monday (EST).
DOGE responded to the pushback from last week’s email and fine-tuned the process. The Office of Personnel Management sent the email to some departments, while other agencies sent their own emails— frustrating widespread complaints that OPM lacked legal authority to request the information directly from workers under those agencies.
For example, newly confirmed Department of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth emailed DOD civilian employees on Thursday requesting the brief updates. They were told to answer the OPM email and cc their supervisors. In his email, Hegseth wrote, “The Department of Defense initially paused this directive over the weekend but now requires all DoD civilian employees to submit five bullets on their previous week’s achievements.”
“Non-compliance may lead to further review,” the Secretary stated. Classified activities were, obviously, excepted. How many classified activities are there?
Either way, it’s a horror movie. Please spare a tear for federal workers now required to tell what they accomplished at work every single week. However will they manage to have time to do their jobs? What about all the stress and anxiety? What about their private sex chats?
On Wednesday, during the first Cabinet meeting, Musk deferred reporters’ questions about whether workers who refused to reply to the email would be fired. But President Trump chimed in. “Those people are on the bubble,” the President said. “Maybe they’re going to be gone.” You never know.
It appears they’re serious about the “What did you do last week” emails. It’s Groundhog Day meets Friday the 13th.
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Thursday, the UK Guardian ran a mind-blowing story headlined, “India’s first trans clinic forced to close after USAid cuts.”
I hardly know where to start with this story. The “Mitr Clinic,” situated in the south Indian city of Hyderabad, had its US foreign funding cut off under Trump’s 90-day USAid funding freeze. Clinic staff were fired, and patients were advised to seek alternative treatment elsewhere.
First, I am fond of India. I would like to apologize to Indians for exporting transgender lunacy to their country. Second, what on Earth? What possible rationale can USAID defenders offer for this one? India obviously does not want sex-change clinics, or they’d pay for it themselves. Beyond sowing chaos by destabilizing Indian culture and its government, what interest does the US possibly have in this? Why are we paying for confused Indians to get sex change surgeries?
We were literally paying for the whole operation. The Guardian reported that “Roomy,” a transgender patient of the clinic, said, “Mitr was the only facility where we were getting free healthcare without any discrimination.” Free treatment. Free.
I carefully scoured the article for a hint of a justification. There was none, except the Guardian reported that 6% of clinic patients also have HIV. I’m not unsympathetic, but Indian HIV sounds like an India problem.
Good grief. How deep does this Alan in Wonderland rabbit hole go? The good news is, thanks to the new Administration, we’ve stopped inflicting this sort of gender-bending insanity on other countries. And the world heals.
Have a wonderful weekend! We’ll regroup on Monday and resume drinking from the firehose of essential news and commentary. Be encouraged. Twitter: jchilders98.
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