…for paying off his college loan for those four years at Syracuse.

From “​The World Is There for the Carving,” a N.Y. Times discussion about the trump administration’s rogue foreign-policy initiatives featuring Patrick Healy, M. Gessen and Bret Stephens:

Stephens: “It might be premature to draw firm conclusions. But, for now, I’d say the word ‘realignment’ feels much too weak. ‘Reversal‘ comes closer to the mark. A reversal in our vision of who counts as a democrat or a dictator. A reversal in who counts as a friend or an adversary. A reversal in our approach to the domestic politics of allied states. A reversal in the overall direction of our post-World War II foreign policy, which was about supporting embattled or enfeebled allies, promoting economic liberalization, embracing democracy or at least nontotalitarian states, favoring open societies over closed ones. It’s a world turned upside down.

“Another thing: It feels that Trump is seeking to turn America into a predatory state. The casual demand that Denmark relinquish Greenland. The not-so-casual demand that Ukraine hand over much of its mineral wealth. The surly threats to Panama, whose president is as pro-American as they come. The deal to return desperate Venezuelan refugees to the socialist dictatorship from which they fled in hunger and desperation. The joking — or not — about turning Canada into a 51st state. The unilateral and unprovoked trampling of trade agreements, like the U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade agreement he negotiated in his first term as a replacement for NAFTA.

“There are, in fact, spots where I find myself agreeing with the administration, particularly its tough stance on Hamas and Iran. I don’t want to lose sight of that. But on the whole, I find myself returning to the same word: nauseating. In fact, it’s actually worse: emetic.

Healy: “What you’re describing, Bret, I’ve come to think of as a new Trump doctrine: coercive conquest. And what’s extraordinary is that we now have a president of the United States who subscribes to the same worldview of coercive conquest as the president of Russia. Are you surprised that Trump is going in this predatory direction?

Stephens: “Surprised? The reason I voted for Kamala Harris, despite my millions of reservations about her competence and ideas, is that I feared something like this. Still, it is breathtaking to experience these policy shifts in real time. Also astonishing, in that some of these positions will be politically ruinous for Trump if he really follows through with them. If, for instance, Zelensky is deposed and a Russian puppet government in the mold of Belarus is somehow installed in Kyiv, it will be as politically disastrous for Trump as the swift fall of Kabul was for Joe Biden. To use Trump’s preferred epithet, it will look very weak.

M. Gessen: “Putin has been saying for years, in many different ways, that what he really wants — and feels he deserves — is to return to 1945, when the leaders of the U.S.S.R., the U.S. and Britain sat down in Yalta and carved up Europe. This idea is fundamental to Putin’s understanding of the world as it should be. He feels that Russia was cheated out of what it had won, fair and square, both in terms of land and in terms of influence. The war he unleashed in Ukraine was — and he made this explicit — had as its goal the recapture of power and land in accordance with this vision.

“So it’s not about Ukraine, has never been about Ukraine. And what he is proposing to Trump as they start talking — we are seeing this in the readouts of their first, 1.5-hour phone conversation and in the hypercharged tweets of Aleksandr Dugin, Putin’s favorite so-called intellectual — is to sit down and carve up the world.”

The Demi Moore Best Actress bandwagon was slowing down anyway (partially due to my own takedown riffs as well as the eloquent Jennifer Sey), but it stopped dead when Anora‘s Mikey Madison won the Best Actress award at the BAFTAs.

People have seen through the phony-baloney “Moore had to sublimate her artistic ambitions” narrative, and now Awards Daily‘s Sasha Stone and The Contending‘s Clarence Moye and Mark Johnson are agreeing that Madison has the scent of a winner.

Madison! Mikey Madison! Old Academy males always vote for the hotties! Maddy isn’t 100% locked but as HAL said when Dave Bowman was disconnecting his brain, “I can feel it…I can feel it.”

Moore might win anyway, I realize, as the same older-women crowd that voted for Jamie Lee Curtis‘s atrociously broad performance in EEAAO…they’re also in Moore’s corner. No accounting for taste.

@bobbydotube Substance starring Demi Moore possibly the worst movie I’ve ever seen in my life! It made absolutely no sense whats so ever! Waste of money and time on top of that? Nobody knew who Debbie Moore was and after this movie, I wish I didn’t know her either you should be ashamed of yourself, Demi Moore.! ##substance##demimoore##worstmovieever ♬ original sound – Bobby DoTube