The stakes of the US election are higher than ever | Sidney Blumenthal

If the president is not politically viable, the stakes of this election not only remain but are even higher than ever

I saw western civilization pass before my eyes as Joe Biden drowned.

Putin is waiting for Trump," John Bolton, Donald Trump's former national security adviser has said. When the presidential debate turned to foreign policy, the former president made an apparently startlingly revelation. He implied that he had a previously unknown conversation with Vladimir Putin before his invasion of Ukraine, perhaps in late 2021 or early 2022. According to Trump, Russia's president discussed the US withdrawal from Afghanistan. When Putin saw that, he said, you know what, I think we're going to go in and maybe take my - this was his dream. I talked to him about it, his dream." That dream, of course, is the conquest of Ukraine as the restoration of the major piece of the collapsed Soviet Union after the cold war.