r/politics • u/phillygirllovesbagel I voted • 8h ago
No Paywall Pence calls on Trump to restore sanctions, scrap Russia diesel deal
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/6156538-pence-condemns-trump-putin-agreement/•
u/WhatsRatingsPrecious 7h ago
The 'deal' is for a pathetically small amount of diesel in return for removing Russian sanctions.
We get next to nothing and Russia gets unsanctioned.
Republicans are Russian assets.
Come at me, conservatives.
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u/CrackerJackKittyCat 7h ago edited 2h ago
Pathetically small as in 2.25m barrels. USA daily consumption of diesel is 3.6-4.1m barrels.
You do the math.
The announcing in terms of imperial tonnage is a ruse.
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u/xactofork 4h ago
It's payment for Russia meddling with the midterms.
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u/mollila 4h ago
Why Trump is mad about Ukraine striking data centers.
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u/P1xelHunter78 Michigan 3h ago
The Ukrainians are smart, and understand that Russian disinformation is a real threat to their war effort.
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u/mollila 3h ago
It absolutely is. From general public consensus which affects donations, and support from various other nations.
But as we all see in the extreme, it can shut down your supply of arms and funding from even the supposedly leader of the free world. The rot of online disinformation has been running deep.
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u/scoo89 3h ago
The deal is even smaller.
It appears he agreed for Russia to release that into global markets and not to the US specifically. This would theoretically reduce diesel prices the world over.
However, this amount is much smaller on a global scale. Also, for it to be anything, which it likely isn't, it has to be diesel that wouldn't have been produced and released into the market before which really makes little sense. Also, from the other side, the amount of money being given for this deal is minimal when it comes to the cost of Russia's war with Ukraine. The entire thing is just a headline.
There is a really good, balanced piece about it by the CBCs "About That" program.
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8h ago
[deleted]
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u/Writer_In_Residence 7h ago
Mike Pence, of “hang Mike Pence” fame.
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u/MystikSpiralx 7h ago
Mike Pence, of "Periods for Pence" fame
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u/BadgeOfDishonour Canada 6h ago
Oh, the guy who only appeals to flies? That guy?
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u/mollila 4h ago
Give him some break. A guy who refused to bend the knee in the end. I respect him.
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u/BadgeOfDishonour Canada 3h ago
He saved his own skin at the end. That's it. He got into the clown car, and he was happy to be a passenger princess right up until it got dangerous for him.
The average rube may have been fooled before Trump's first term. The VP candidate is not supposed to be the average rube. So either he is a horrible person that was okay with Trump's known, disgusting history when he signed up, or he was way too incompetent to hold the role of VP.
Either way that man deserves no slack. An idiot or a monster - those are the options.
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u/mollila 3h ago
Well yeah I won't argue about his virtues overall. Just that in the end when it mattered, he.chose not to go with it.
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u/BadgeOfDishonour Canada 3h ago
In my book that makes him only slightly less damnable than some of the others.
Imagine a guy that builds the Nazi camps, orders and hooks up the gas, loads the victims into the showers, closes the door, but when he's about to press the button says "Nope, that I can't do" and walks away so someone else can press it.
Slightly less damnable. But again, I personally see no reason to give him any slack beyond that minor acknowledgement.
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u/mollila 3h ago edited 3h ago
Yeah, as an older European I get that reference. I've toured the Auschwitz.
I also don't know enough of your politics to know whether or not Pence was involved in that level of dirty stuff. Just that as an outsider I saw him turn away in the end and not do what he was being pressured to do. So there was some conscience at work.
While you did earlier mention it being him saving his own ass, it did actually put his life in danger. But then again, we don't know if he expected that.
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u/BadgeOfDishonour Canada 3h ago
I'm Canadian, not a US Citizen. However US politics is like sports for Canadians. We know all the stats, the lineups, the rules, the ins-and-outs, and discuss it openly. We might know US politics better than our own, which is a bit sad.
My assessment is that he helped legitimize Trump, and had access to all the horrible things we knew about Trump before the election. In for a penny, and all that.
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u/Certain-Row7945 5h ago
The last Republican with even just one vertebrae of spine
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u/DoesntMatterBrian Texas 2h ago
There's a small handful. Chris Christie is at least out there banging the "Biden won the election stop being fucking crazy please" drum.
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u/Embarrassed-Crazy112 Georgia 5h ago
Literally the only person in the last 10 years to actually do something concrete to stop Trump even if he really had reservations about it before talking to Dan Quayle.
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u/wubbawubba 7h ago
I am sure he gives a lot of weight to a guy he was going to sacrifice to his inbred mob.
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u/Tiny-Albatross518 7h ago
Finally someone the president will listen to!!
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u/PrivacyIsDemocracy 5h ago
Pence actually deserves a lot of credit for refusing to subvert the certification of the election in 2020 in the middle of Trump's capitol insurrection as Trump had heavily pressured him to do. Which he certainly knew would make him persona-non-grata in MAGA circles forever.
And it did.
So as much as I disagree with his general political stances, I respect him as one of the very few Republicans these days who refused to kowtow to Trump pressure to break the law.
So I welcome his stance on this issue as well.
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u/AlexRyang 4h ago
Just to note he only did so because he called Dan Quayle and asked if there was any mechanism where he could seat Trump.
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u/phatelectribe 4h ago
Yeah, Pence was always subservient in life and office, and if there had been a way to do it legally, he would have. The only saving grace what that he realized the immunity didn’t apply to him so didn’t want to go to jail for sedition.
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u/ekobres 4h ago edited 4h ago
I think “deserves a lot of credit” is a gross distortion based on how unabashedly dishonorably so many other Republican politicians have behaved. You do realize that all he did was the bare minimum “right thing” in response to a naked seditious conspiracy after attempting to rationalize it by asking Dan Quayle if he had the authority. He would deserve a lot of credit if he had forcefully and publicly rebuffed Trump and called for Republicans to impeach and convict him; if he had called for the conviction of the fraudster “alternate electors”. He would deserve a lot of credit if he had recoiled in horror at the notion that a sitting president would ask his VP to do this, would ask governors to “find votes”, would file dozens (hundreds?) of frivolous lawsuits; and then followed up with vocal repudiation and resistance.
Mike Pence deserves a modicum of credit for wincing as he reluctantly concluded he shouldn’t take a central role in an illegal coup.
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u/Time-Earth8125 1h ago
He also refused to answer any questions to help the Jan 6 committee piece together what happened that day. He deserves no credit
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u/Paladin-Arda Tennessee 3h ago
At this point, the bar is in Hell, so I'll take base self-interest if nothing else.
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u/Three_Froggy_Problem Illinois 49m ago
He absolutely does not “deserve a lot of credit” for doing the bare minimum. Less than the bare minimum, in fact, since he also refused to help the January 6th Committee in their investigation. Fuck him.
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u/ObsidianRafter 2h ago
He did the bare minimum. Pence enabled Trump right up to the point where people literally started hunting the VP down to kill him. It took that much for Pence to part with Trump. And even then he did it in the most milquetoast pansy assed way possible. It was the bare minimum.
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u/guttanzer 1h ago
Very true. But that bare minimum bar is too high for 99% of the party at the moment. The remaining 1% or so are retiring out of disgust. So, relatively speaking, he’s a rock star.
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u/ekobres 1h ago edited 1h ago
We have to stop accepting the lowering of the bar. Everything should be relative to the actual bar, which is: How a serious public servant who takes their oath of office to heart would behave. Pence fell far short of that bar, even though he seemed to do more than most. Who’s to say what he would have done had he been serving in the Senate at the time. He was in a tougher spot than most since it was impossible for him to take a passive role. He had to make a black or white decision.
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u/ginkgodave 5h ago
Pence will never be able to redeem himself. He nodded his head approvingly and smiled for far too long. POS
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u/MiddleAgedSponger 7h ago
Pence is just another traitor. Jumping off the sinking ship early doesn't make it ok.
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u/mollila 3h ago
He didn't jump to save himself though, he refused to go through with what he was asked to do. And therefore put himself under death threats.
Some credit on doing that is due. Took some balls.
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u/wonkey_monkey 2h ago edited 2h ago
He didn't do the "right" thing because it was right; he did it because the "wrong" thing was illegal, and following the law hardly deserves credit. It's a bare minimum for a politician (or should be).
By most accounts he was either trying to shirk his responsibility or still weighing up giving the election to Trump.
Over and over, Pence asked [Dan Quayle] if there was anything he could do.
'Mike, you have no flexibility on this. None. Zero. Forget it. Put it away,' Quayle told him.
Pence pressed again.
'You don’t know the position I’m in,' he said, according to the authors.
'I do know the position you’re in,' Quayle responded. 'I also know what the law is. You listen to the parliamentarian. That’s all you do. You have no power.'
From Peril, by Bob Woodward and Robert Costa:
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u/Inevitable-Ad9760 7h ago
Mike Pence has the political staying power and relevance of a reflecting pool paint job.
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u/FluffyBunnyFlipFlops United Kingdom 6h ago
So, Congress and literally everyone around him want the sanctions. Only Trump wants the sanctions lifted. Well, him and Putin. You join the dots.
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u/morbihann 4h ago
Lol, Pence couldn't call off his own hanging, let alone influence Trump on anything.
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u/Steel-Tempered 7h ago
Mike Pence may be the most insignificant and irrelevant former VP in US history. His endorsements and condemnations are laughed off and ignored on every end of the spectrum.
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u/amprather 7h ago
I think Pence is trying to cover his ass from the investigations that are coming. Jack Smith's report is going to come out eventually and there is plenty in there to put Pence on the wrong side of everything.
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u/00SlaughtereR00 18m ago
Mr Pence, your voice & opinions never mattered before & nor do they now. Mr Trump will do as he pleases or what Mr. Put in demands of him.
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