After spending most of today at his private club in West Palm Beach, Florida, the president of the United States posted on his personal social media platform, Truth Social, at 4:36 this afternoon to share his perverted reasoning for refusing to implement sanctions on Russia. In the long and drawn-out post, he declared that because “Russia is doing very little” to help Iran compared to what it could be doing, he had decided to waive the new sanctions against the country led by his good friend, Vladimir Putin, even over the objections of our allies around the world and overwhelming amounts of criticism back here at home. He added that he wanted to keep Russia from doing any more to help Iran, writing, “I want to keep it that way, and will, unless stupid people get in the way.”
Those “stupid people” he felt the need to put on notice are lawmakers from both parties in the Congress his party controls, who wrote the very law, in honor of their fallen colleague, that he is now refusing to enforce. The Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act of 2026 was named after his own dead friend, the senator from South Carolina. Someone who spent the final months of his life fighting for Ukraine, and who died not even a day after returning from visiting the country, where he stood beside President Zelenskyy and secured the White House’s backing for new sanctions against Russia. Just one month after Congress passed the law and Trump himself signed it to impose new sanctions on Russia, Trump suddenly reversed course and waived the very sanctions Graham had worked so hard to secure.
Then in today’s social media post, Donald Trump had the audacity to say that he is doing this because he wants peace and that this is the best strategy to get it. He may very well believe that he is some great peacemaker, that Putin respects him, and that he is the only one who can broker a deal to end this war. But all that he is proving is what the rest of the world can clearly see. That he is Putin’s pawn, and that the Russians are playing him like a violin. Donald Trump is the guy who truly believes that the stripper at the strip club likes him. He has such an inflated sense of self-importance that he cannot see that he is being used, because his ego will not allow him to see it.
In that same post, Donald Trump tried to weaponize the devastation that Russia has inflicted on Ukraine, saying that Zelenskyy’s “country is in shambles, a large portion of his land is lost, his oceans and seas are gone, and his male population is low, wounded, and/or dead.” He included those details as some sort of proof of his argument that Zelenskyy and Ukraine have already lost and that Russia has won. He made no mention of the grave losses Russia has suffered and continues to sustain. He also didn’t add anything about how Putin, and only Putin, was responsible for starting this war and that he could end it right now by withdrawing from the country he has invaded and stopping the bloodshed. Instead, he accused Zelenskyy of having a financial interest in prolonging the war, writing that “with all of the money that Europe is famously giving him, and that Crooked Joe Biden gave him in the past, he doesn’t want to end this war, and probably never did.”
Everything Trump is doing is strategic to the extent Trump is able to think strategically, because Donald Trump knows that a significant number of his own supporters actually do care about Ukraine. They see right and wrong clearly on this one. His post today was just a desperate attempt to preemptively condition them to see the aggressor as the reasonable party and the country that was invaded, that did nothing wrong, that just wants to survive, as the problem. He is laying the groundwork now so that when he eventually abandons Ukraine entirely, or worse, helps Russia in an even more direct way, his base will see it as a necessary step toward peace and the right thing to do.
This wasn’t the only post where he cozied up to people standing on the wrong side of history. In another post, which he addressed “To the Great People of Israel,” he announced his “Complete and Total Endorsement” of Benjamin Netanyahu in his upcoming race for reelection as Prime Minister of Israel later this month. But this had nothing to do with caring about the people of Israel. He was doing a favor for another authoritarian leader, someone the International Criminal Court has an active arrest warrant for. He called Netanyahu a “Great Warrior Prime Minister” and declared that he has been “Strong, Brave, and Brilliant in the face of tremendous opposition.” He wrote that if Israel had anyone other than Netanyahu as its leader, “America will have to do this work ourselves, and I am not inclined to do so.” He used the people he had just called “great” as pawns, making American support for Israel conditional on Netanyahu staying in power. Netanyahu responded with his own message thanking Trump for his “extraordinary endorsement,” adding that “Israel has never had a greater friend in the White House.”
Knowing how hard so many of us oppose what Donald Trump is doing and has done, I would never blame an entire nation for the sins of their leader. The Israeli people deserve better than Bibi, just like we deserve better than Trump, and the Iranian people deserve better than the people controlling their government.
Just yesterday Donald Trump told us exactly why he keeps standing with evil people: “I like people that like me. I just like it, and I can’t help it. It’s a character flaw. I mean, I’ve had a couple of people, really horrible human beings, horrible, horrible, terrible people, but I heard through the grapevine they really liked me a lot. So, I like them too.”
In a single day, the president of the United States refused to impose sanctions on a country that invaded its neighbor and is bombing civilians, and publicly endorsed for reelection a leader wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes and crimes against humanity. Donald Trump continues to carry out his campaign to deliberately desensitize us to his worst impulses and dangerous plans. He wants us to feel comfortable when he aligns our country with the worst people and the cruelty they inflict. Donald Trump wants to destroy the idea of what America is supposed to stand for, so that he can turn it into anything he wants. He is normalizing the United States as a partner with evil. And he is making it so that one day we look around and we do not even flinch when our president sides with dictators, authoritarians, and fascists, because it has simply become what we are and we don’t remember it any other way. That is how it happens. Slowly, and then all at once.
Thankfully, right now, we still remember who we are and what this country was founded on. Earlier this week, students from North Carolina A&T State University, Bennett College, and UNC Greensboro marched together for 45 minutes to cast their ballots after polling sites were removed from their campuses by the Republican-controlled Board of Elections. The board chair, a Republican named Eugene Lester, said that “voting is a privilege,” and another leader said that the campus sites “disproportionately favor one political party.” State Board member Siobhan O’Duffy Millen called it “a war on students.” The College Democrats of North Carolina filed a lawsuit, and their attorneys wrote in the filing: “Contrary to the views of Defendant Eugene Lester, the Guilford County elections board chair, voting is a right of citizenship, not a privilege.” Their attempts to make voting harder and interfere in the election didn’t work. They still voted.
North Carolina A&T students have long been pioneers in moving this country forward while not taking any nonsense from anyone. Back in 1960, four freshmen sat down at a Woolworth’s lunch counter in Greensboro and refused to leave. Their brave act helped launch the sit-in movement and expand the civil rights movement across the South. Here we are all these years later, and students at the same school are once again fighting the good fight to make this country better and more just. Young people have always been at the center of the moments that change the trajectory of this country, and they are doing it again.
I think back to when I was in college in the mid-1990s, and how different the world felt. I was not worried about my rights being taken away and I was not fighting to preserve anything. I was spending my time with friends and volunteering with organizations focused on the AIDS crisis and the foster care system, because I thought the country was moving forward, and I wanted to be part of it. I thought that peace in the Middle East was possible, that racism could be driven into silence even if it could not be erased entirely, and that homelessness was just a problem that we needed to find the right solutions for, not treat as a crime. When I look at college students today, they do not have the luxury of that idealism. They can’t live in a world that offered the same hope and possibility that so many of us got to experience because they are constantly faced with threats to their rights and uncertainty about their futures. They are treading water instead of swimming toward progress and possibility.
I know how lucky I was to be living during that time in history when a better future felt within reach, when so many other generations faced struggles that made the future feel far less certain. But this generation in particular has been hit by one compounding crisis after another, with none of them resolving before the next one arrived. Their parents were trying to survive the Great Recession while still carrying the wounds of September 11th. Then came a pandemic that stole many of their most formative years, the years when they were supposed to learn how to be people in the world and figure out who they are. Some of them lost grandparents and parents during Trump’s botched 2020 response. Then came George Floyd and the reckoning with racial injustice, which, for a very short time, actually felt like it might lead to a better world for everyone. Then Trump was elected again, and they, like all of us, are watching what feels like the slow-motion dismantling of our entire country while the president does all he can to make us see each other as enemies.
This is why our vote next month during the midterm elections matters so much. It may very well end up being the most important election in modern history. And even if it all goes exactly as our country’s survival needs it to, Donald Trump may still do everything in his power to undermine it. He may look for every loophole he can find to delay certifications and challenge the results. We need to be prepared for attempts to prevent the duly elected members of Congress from being seated. If there is one thing we know about Donald Trump, it’s that he does not play by the rules because he does not believe the rules apply to him. But we cannot let any of that stop us. We have to make our voices heard at the ballot box and insist that every single one of our votes is counted and that the decision of “We the People” is upheld. Future generations are counting on us, and we can’t, and we won’t let them down. That is why I still have hope for America. And you should, too.
I’ll see you tomorrow,
Heather
PS. You can make a significant difference right now by subscribing to my Substack. Your support helps me cover more ground and keep telling the truth about the lies and destruction unfolding in this country.
This commentary represents my personal opinions and analysis of matters of public concern, informed by publicly available information. Any references to individuals constitute opinion and commentary protected under the First Amendment.
Picture of the day: Are you seeing messages like this one everywhere you go? I’m seeing them at small mom-and-pop shops and larger chains, and I hope they are spurring conversations and serving as reminders for people to make a plan to cast their ballots! This postcard in particular made me think back to when my oldest two daughters were little, and the three of us would squish into the polling booth while I cast my ballot. I remember doing much the same with my own mother and my little sister. It always felt very serious and, at the same time, very exciting. But it never felt like the fate of the world was riding on not just the right people being elected, but on enough people turning out in the first place. I look forward to the possibility of a future when voting can feel that way again.
Links to sources used in writing this article:
https://rollcall.com/factbase/trump/calendar/
https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2026/10/16/8058264/index.amp
https://kyivindependent.com/trump-signs-sweeping-russia-sanctions-bill-into-law/
https://msmagazine.com/2026/08/31/north-carolina-students-campus-voting-access-photo-id-amendment/
https://spectrumlocalnews.com/nc/charlotte/news/2026/02/14/nca-t--election-site--early-voting
https://www.icc-cpi.int/defendants/benjamin-netanyahu
https://www.wsbtv.com/news/world/trump-sidesteps/XKVXKIPPRA2R5BC6MQQUGBI66A/
I believe we'd all like to know what Putin has on Trump. My guess is a snuff film.
Saying he's being played is giving him far too much credit. I think he knows exactly what he's doing, and for whatever reason, it serves his interests.
When Congress flips, I hope we see a whole series of investigations into what I consider treasonous conduct, and more importantly, what he stood to gain from it.
But for now, I don't buy the idea that he's being manipulated. I think he understands exactly what he's doing and why.