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Trump’s Latest Russia Russia Russia Turn Is about Iran Iran Iran
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The collective cognitive failure to be able to read Donald Trump has blinded us to the extent to which Donald Trump’s betrayal of Ukraine is about Iran Iran Iran as much as it is Russia Russia Russia.Faith-based Truth Social
The Daily Beast noted the other day that Truth Social’s daily traffic has cratered, losing over 30% of daily traffic since last June.
Donald Trump’s Truth Social is hemorrhaging users, with daily traffic plunging more than 30 percent in a year despite the president’s relentless stream of posts.
The social media platform averaged roughly 260,000 daily users last month, a steep drop from its peak of 420,000 in June 2025, according to data from digital intelligence firm Similarweb.
It’s an astonishingly small number. Heather Cox Richardson has upwards of 2.8 million subscribers on Substack, plus a bunch on other platforms. Meidas Touch has 6.5 million YouTube subscribers. On the other side of the spectrum, Joe Rogan has 11 million listeners. Benny Johnson has 6.1 million YouTube subscribers.
Just 260,000 users use Truth Social as if it were a social media website.
Of course, Trump’s own posts don’t, primarily, circulate on Truth Social. They are disseminated by Trump loyalists, self-described journalists, and haters far and wide, achieving a total dissemination that no doubt rivals those other outlets for viewers. But that dissemination happens only via a largely unexamined faith about what Trump Truth Social posts are. For MAGAts, sharing them announces tribal loyalty to the performed power in them. For journalists, it’s a lazy relationship with newsworthiness. For haters, it is often, equally, a tribal statement, triggering the same kind of emotional — and therefore irrational — response.
And while the MAGAts need only the performance of power, for the latter two, there is a conceit that the Truth Social posts in some way provide a transparent view on Trump’s “true” views … even though they are routinely riddled with lies.
The Diesel Tweet promising diesel that doesn’t exist
That’s how it happened that Trump’s Diesel Tweet came to be read not just as a statement of his reason for betraying Ukraine — he needed diesel to bring prices down before the election — but also of a momentous call with Vladimir Putin on October 9.
Even Chris Wright couldn’t paper over how absurd that interpretation is (I had been wondering whether Wright was lying to Trump to allow him to sustain this claim). He confessed that Russia didn’t have diesel to export, amid word salad attempting to explain how Trump stating that Russia might export diesel if they chose to stop invading Ukraine would induce them to make peace.
WRIGHT: They’re very different. Russia wants to and can export oil, as a — as was true when I said that, and as is true today. We have not removed the sanctions on Russian oil. We are removing sanctions on a product that Russia currently does not and cannot export.
The way forward for Russia to be able to export diesel is to reduce their war effort, make progress towards peace.
[Martha] RADDATZ: President Trump said that there was a deal, a ceasefire, an energy ceasefire a week ago. Russia and Ukraine said there was no such thing. Were you involved in that? Was there anything?
WRIGHT: This is President Trump encouraging Russia if they want to export diesel, if they want to get the benefits you believe that are about to be showered upon them, the only way they can do that is with an energy ceasefire or reduction of war effort. [my emphasis]
Because there is so much faith among data mules who treat these posts as some form of truth, there was little consideration of other possibilities, such as that the last person in the room — the FSB officer whom JD Vance lauded for being “soft-spoken,” the guy who has always played Trumps narcissism like a maestro — suggested he write the tweet like that, either told him to or leveraged his grievance to get him to scapegoat Ukraine for Trump’s own failures.
Both Putin and Trump acknowledged the Diesel Tweet was (also) about Iran
And in fact, both Putin and Trump acknowledged that their October 9 conversation was about — was also about — Iran.
In his post scapegoating Ukraine for the diesel shortage Trump’s own invasion of Iran caused, he included the non sequitur, “it must be understood, that Iran will not have a Nuclear Weapon!”
Wright’s word salad with Martha Raddatz also included that rhetorical dodge. When Raddatz pointed out what everyone should about the Diesel Tweet — that Trump, not Ukraine, caused the diesel shortages, Wright suggested she was dismissing attempts to deprive Iran of nukes.
RADDATZ: I just — the Strait of Hormuz and the Iran War, you would admit, caused a lot of these problems.
WRIGHT: Absolutely. To prevent the Iranian regime from getting nuclear weapons, absolutely comes at a cost. The Iranian regime killed 30,000 to 40,000 of their own citizens in January. Since then, they’ve bombed every neighbor they have. Are you comfortable —
RADDATZ: I understand that.
WRIGHT: Are you comfortable with a nuclear-armed Iranian regime?
RADDATZ: I understand the point of stopping a nuclear weapon. That has not happened yet, and there’s no end in sight at this point.
In Putin’s readout of the October 9 conversation, he listed Ukraine, Iran, and various aspects of a strictly bilateral relationship with the US “were touched upon.”
During the October 9 telephone conversation with US President Donald Trump, considerable focus was on prospects for settling the Ukraine crisis, while the situation surrounding Iran and various aspects of bilateral relations were touched upon as well.
I’ve been arguing since March we need to understand that this is a world war and one possible outcome — made more likely so long as Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff were Trump’s “negotiators” on both Ukraine and Iran — would be that Russia uses it to get Trump to flip sides, as he has now apparently done.
Trump lies, again, about Iran
And here’s where Trump betrayed his weakness and here’s where his betrayal remains vulnerable to a concerted response.
His and Wright’s pathetic explanations about the Diesel Tweet are bad enough.
But his subsequent tweet explaining why he refuses to sanction Russia is even more pathetic.
Amid the repeated scapegoating of Ukraine and more spin about Russia giving the US something that would recognizably benefit the country (hostage negotiations) rather than Trump personally, Trump claimed that Russia was not doing “what they could be doing” to help Iran, a claim Trump has attempted to repeat in his babbling public statements.
As numerous people point out, though, US intelligence knows (and Volodymyr Zelenskyy keeps reminding) Russia is helping Iran kill Americans.
What Trump said in this tweet and has babbled publicly, of course, is that Russia could be doing more.
And that’s why, Trump says, he refuses to sanction Russia: For fear his best friend Putin will help Iran do worse to America and its partners than they’re already doing in Iran. For fear Russia will help Iran deal Trump an even more humiliating loss.
If that’s not already proof that Putin threatened Trump even as he offered him carrots in the form of oil contracts, Sergei Lavrov met with Abbas Araghchi and made it clear they are, in fact, doing quite a bit to support Iran, including feeding them so they can outlast the US in this current standoff.
Trump said Moscow and Beijing had the capacity to provide Tehran with far greater assistance but had so far refrained from doing so.
“Russia could have done a lot more to help Iran. Russia’s done very little for Iran,” Trump told reporters on Monday. He said China could also have provided much more assistance and described the limited help from both countries as “a very positive thing.”
Trump’s remarks came as Lavrov held talks with Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and President Masoud Pezeshkian in Tehran, where Moscow reaffirmed its commitment to its strategic partnership with Iran while calling for a diplomatic solution to the regional conflict.
At a joint press conference with Araghchi, Lavrov said Russia had no intention of abandoning economic and investment agreements with Iran despite the war.
He said Russian specialists were gradually returning to work at Iran’s Bushehr nuclear power plant and pointed to continued cooperation on energy and transport projects, including the planned Rasht-Astara railway.
Lavrov also said Moscow had provided humanitarian assistance during the war and would continue supplying food to Iran.
And even though Putin is flaunting his support for Iran (and has, at similar moments in the past) Trump is nevertheless allowing Putin to convince him that his own failures in Iran are all due to betrayal from America’s allies and not his own failures and the incompetent blowhard he put in charge of DOD.
Donald Trump lost the war in Iran. As a narcissist, he needs scapegoats to blame for his own historic failure, and Russia’s dictator has scripted convenient scapegoats for him: Ukraine for attacking Russia’s diesel refineries, Europe, for failing to join Trump’s rudderless attack.
And out of fear that Russia will make him lose the war worse, out of narcissistic imperative to deny his loss, Donald Trump has decided to align with Russia.
The post Trump’s Latest Russia Russia Russia Turn Is about Iran Iran Iran appeared first on emptywheel.