James Plowman

Retired Infantry Sergeant Major with 53 months of combat in Iraq and Afghanistan. Husband, Father, Grandfather, Brother, and unapologetic Conservative.

[Victor Davis Hanson @VDHanson]

Ten bad takeaways from the Zelenskyy blow-up

1. Zelenskyy does not grasp—or deliberately ignores—the bitter truth: those with whom he feels most affinity (Western globalists, the American Left, the Europeans) have little power in 2025 to help him. And those with whom he obviously does not like or seeks to embarrass (cf. his Scranton, Penn. campaign-like visit in September 2024) alone have the power to save him. For his own sake, I hope he is not being “briefed” by the Obama-Clinton-Biden gang to confront Trump, given their interests are not really Ukraine’s as they feign.

2. Zelenskyy acts as if his agendas and ours are identical. So, he keeps insisting that he is fighting for us despite our two-ocean-distance that he mocks. We do have many shared interests with Ukraine, but not all by any means: Trump wants to “reset” with Russia and triangulate it against China. He seeks to avoid a 1962 DEFCON 2-like crisis over a proxy showdown in proximity to a nuclear rival. And he sincerely wants to end the deadlocked Stalingrad slaughterhouse for everyone’s sake.

3. The Europeans (and Canada) are now talking loudly of a new muscular antithesis, independent of the U.S. Promises, promises—given that would require Europeans to prune back their social welfare state, frack, use nuclear, stop the green obsessions, and spend 3-5 percent of their GDP on defense. The U.S. does not just pay 16 percent of NATO’s budget but also puts up with asymmetrical tariffs that result in a European Union trade surplus of $160 billion, plays the world cop patrolling sea-lanes and deterring terrorists and rogues states that otherwise might interrupt Europe’s commercial networks abroad, as well as de facto including Europe under a nuclear umbrella of 6,500 nukes.

4. Zelenskyy must know that all of the once deal-stopping issues to peace have been de facto settled: Ukraine is now better armed than most NATO nations, but will not be in NATO; and no president has or will ever supply Ukraine with the armed wherewithal to take back the Donbass and Crimea. So, the only two issues are a) how far will Putin be willing to withdraw to his 2022 borders and b) how will he be deterred? The first is answered by a commercial sector/tripwire, joint Ukrainian-US-Europe resource development corridor in Eastern Ukraine, coupled with a Korea-like DMZ; the second by the fact that Putin unlike his 2008 and 2014 invasions has now lost a million dead and wounded to a Ukraine that will remain thusly armed.

5. What are Zelenskyy’s alternatives without much U.S. help—wait for a return of the Democrats to the White House in four years? Hope for a rearmed Europe? Pray for a Democratic House and a 3rd Vindman-like engineered Trump impeachment? Or swallow his pride, return to the White House, sign the rare-earth minerals deal, invite in the Euros (are they seriously willing to patrol a DMZ?), and hope Trump can warn Putin, as he did successfully between 2017-21, not to dare try it again?

6. If there is a cease fire, a commercial deal, a Euro ground presence, and influx of Western companies into Ukraine, would there be elections? And if so, would Zelenskyy and his party win? And if not, would there be a successor transparent government that would reveal exactly where all the Western financial aid money went?

7. Zelenskyy might see a model in Netanyahu. The Biden Administration was far harder on him than Trump is on Ukraine: suspending arms shipments, demanding cease-fires, prodding for a wartime, bipartisan cabinet, hammering Israel on collateral damage—none of which Westerners have demanded of Zelenskyy. Yet Netanyahu managed a hostile Biden, kept Israel close to its patron, and when visiting was gracious to his host. Netanyahu certainly would never before the global media have interrupted, and berated a host and patron president in the White House.

8. If Ukraine has alienated the U.S. what then is its strategic victory plan? Wait around for more Euros? Hold off an increasingly invigorated Russian military? Cede more territory? What, then, exactly are Zelenskyy’s cards he seems to think are a winning hand?

9. If one views carefully all the 50-minute tape, most of it was going quite well—until Zelenskyy started correcting Vance firstly, and Trump secondly. By Ukraine-splaining to his hosts, and by his gestures, tone, and interruptions, he made it clear that he assumed that Trump was just more of the same compliant, clueless moneybags Biden waxen effigy. And that was naïve for such a supposedly worldly leader.

10. March 2025 is not March 2022, after the heroic saving of Kyiv—but three years and 1.5 million dead and wounded later. Zelenskyy is no longer the international heartthrob with the glamorous entourage. He has postponed elections, outlawed opposition media and parties, suspended habeas corpus and walked out of negotiations when he had an even hand in Spring 2022 and apparently even now when he does not in Spring 2025.

Quo vadis, Volodymyr?

[James Plowman @plowmanj3]

Biden has no sense of American pride at all.
https://t.co/QUUtuAZQ8D

[James Plowman @plowmanj3]

Excellent program. Finally someone with common sense in deep blue NY.
https://t.co/gouJ3luozN

[Victor Davis Hanson @VDHanson]

Trump, His Disrupters, and a Chance to Return to Normalcy?

Many of Trump first-round picks share some common themes.

One, many, who were in the past victimized by government bullies and cowardly bureaucratic grandees, or proved sharp critics of the administrative state, are now, in karma-style, in charge of the very agencies that hounded him.

So, Elon Musk, perennial target of government regulatory functionaries, was once policed, but now he polices the bureaucratic police.

Robert Kennedy, Jr., proposed overseer of government health programs, was often blasted as a crank by the subsidized scientists and the administrators within HHS whom he will now direct.

Pete Hegseth fought the military DEI machinery while a solider in the ranks and wrote a book about the corruption of the Pentagon. He will now, if confirmed, run the Pentagon.

Tulsi Gabbard was improperly put on a national security travel watch list as a supposed security threat—and now will be a guardian of our security as Director of National Intelligence.

Tom Homan was derided by the Biden administration and its Homeland Security minions as a fanatic border hawk; now he will run ICE and deal with the detritus of Biden fanaticism on the border.

Two, none of these appointments are traditional swamp creatures. Few rotate from the think tanks. This time around there are no retired “Wise Men” or retired four-stars. Few are Uniparty magnificoes revolving back into high government from their DC university or New York corporate and investment waystations. None are DEI, cover-our-identity-politics-base candidates.

By design, their past government service resumes are thin—few past undersecretaries of these or special assistant to those. And there are not a lot of suffixed alphabetic letters or prefixed long-winded titles that adorn their names.

In other words, they are vaxed from the sort of acculturated administrative state mindset that has alienated and terrified the citizenry.

Three, they all share a reputation from the mainstream media, bicoastal elite, or administrative state guardians as a little “out there” or even “crazy” and “nuts”, whether RFK, Tulsi Gabbard, or Pete Hegseth. So, their opponents rightly fear they are immune from mainstream media disparagements, the usually leftwing generated hoaxes, and beltway tsk-tsk scorn.

Fourth and finally, they are not radicals or nihilists. Rather, they are reformers who are trying to trim or eliminate bloated government machinery, or return institutions and agencies to their normal functions and original missions. In contrast, the last few years of Biden governance chaos and near insurrection were abnormal—and dangerous.

Destroying the border and breaking the law to allow 12 million to enter illegally were nihilist.

Stealthily routing government cash, to circumvent the law, to a communist Chinese-run viral gain-of-function engineering lab is beyond the belief.

Creating a commissar system in the military that demanded ideological orthodoxy over meritocracy, or the Chairman of the JCS secretly communicating with his People’s Liberation Army counterpart to warn about his own commander-in-chief’s stability was insurrectionist.

Weaponizing the DOJ by performance-art swat home raids on opponents, and collusion lawfare waged by local, state, and federal indictments against a former president and presidential candidate were un-American.

Asymmetrical prosecutions and FBI fusion with social media to censor the news were sheer government anarchy.

There are legitimate questions about the confirmability of Matt Gaetz, or his prosecutorial experience, or some of his alleged past excesses, but his very accusers were mostly quiet about the weirdos, creeps, and revolutionaries in the Biden administration—accused of stealing women’s luggage at airports, or lying that a subordinate “racist” border patrol whipped in slave-master fashion innocent would-be immigrants, or trying to fix a felonious presidential son’s sentencing to avoid the accustomed legal consequences of his criminal behavior.

In sum, the currently loud censors have zero credibility given the unprofessional, weaponized, and nihilist  examples they have bequeathed.

[James Plowman @plowmanj3]

Does this really surprise anyone that they’re once again censoring favorable news for Trump?
https://t.co/IiS6DH3sX9

[James Plowman @plowmanj3]

One more reason why Walz was a terrible pick as a running mate.
https://t.co/xdR5f0zIuN

[James Plowman @plowmanj3]

Glad he’s finally calling out their bullshit.
https://t.co/DVC87RqeZS

[👮‍♂️The Badged Patriot👮‍♂️ @BadgedPatriot]

ACTUAL CALL:
I responded to a residence on a medical alarm for a 79 yr old woman who had fallen out of her chair. When I arrived, I noticed a Trump sign in her front yard.
After I helped her up, I said, " I like your sign in the front yard." She said, "Thank u. Have u voted yet, young man?". I said, " Yes ma'am. How bout you?" She said "No I vote on election day. I hope u didn't vote for that Jezebel. " I said, "No ma'am I didn't." She said."Good. I just don't like her. You'd think as much as she's used her mouth in her lifetime, she'd be better versed in using it to tell the truth, but she doesn't have an ounce of truth in her." 😆👮‍♂️👮‍♂️

[James Plowman @plowmanj3]

If they’re only used in Kursk, and not in Ukraine that may tamper NATO feeling a need to respond. NK going against hardened Ukrainian troops will be a test of NK soldiers resolve in a fight that’s not their own. https://t.co/eVGr9Qhl7W

[James Plowman @plowmanj3]

This is how WWIII could start. It’s great for NK as they may gain invaluable combat experience that they don’t have. How does the West react to it? Most likely with chirps rather than bangs. But we’ll see. https://t.co/0XuBbt5Wly

[James Plowman @plowmanj3]

I feel it was a mistake listening to the US and not attacking the nuclear sites. This attack did open that possibility up in the future as it apparently destroyed much of Iran’s air defenses. Hats off to a very successful operation by the IDF. https://t.co/8PU1X00g80

[James Plowman @plowmanj3]

Only blind ideologues see reality as a “weapon” wielded against them; actual scientists embrace it.
https://t.co/VY9pLDVKpb

[James Plowman @plowmanj3]

That’ll have Democrats in a hissy fit.
https://t.co/x77FDwwWUg

[James Plowman @plowmanj3]

Another activist judge doing the bidding of the far left.
https://t.co/BNoPjg6KFX

[James Plowman @plowmanj3]

Him saying it out loud, while at the same time claiming they’d somehow look at it differently given a second chance. Complete bullshit and he knows it.
https://t.co/ZeveLqRM2A

[James Plowman @plowmanj3]

@southgrace427 @bobby_verlaine Now that’s hilarious

[James Plowman @plowmanj3]

Interesting

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

Trust those who return the shopping cart

[James Plowman @plowmanj3]

If these ideas are left unchecked, they will be internalized by a new generation of students, who will then graduate, attend university, vote, enter the workforce, and raise families of their own, further embedding antisemitic beliefs into American society
https://t.co/IvtNsPtuCy

[James Plowman @plowmanj3]

I’m not a fan of Adams. But give him credit for calling out his own party’s lies.
https://t.co/aNjr8Wb8Qo

[James Plowman @plowmanj3]

“He suggested the nominees should sit and have a conversation.” It’s actually a brilliant idea, rather than debates with moderators. Sit the two candidates down across from each other and have a conversation about whatever issues they choose. Genius.
https://t.co/HYUdcAk0Uz