Trump’s fight with Zelensky shows US considers Ukraine a colony (Uncut) 03-01-2025

Trump’s fight with Zelensky shows US considers Ukraine a colony, exploiting its minerals

Don’t tell us what we’re going to feel. We’re trying to solve a problem. Don’t tell us what we’re going to feel.

I’m not telling you. Because you’re in no position to dictate that. You’re in no position to dictate what we’re going to feel.

You’re going to feel very good. We’re going to feel very good and very strong. The fight in the White House between U.S. President Donald Trump and Ukraine’s leader Vladimir Zelensky is the perfect symbol of what the United States has done to Ukraine in recent years.

Your country is in big trouble. No, no. You’ve done a lot of talking.

The U.S. treats Ukraine like a colony. And now Trump is demanding hundreds of billions of dollars of payment by extracting minerals and other natural resources from Ukraine. And in that fight in the White House, Trump says it all openly.

He tells Ukraine’s leader, you don’t have the cards. This is not your decision to make. The U.S. is making this decision on Ukraine’s behalf.

You’re right now not in a very good position. You’ve allowed yourself to be in a very bad position. And he happens to be right about it.

From the very beginning of the war, Mr. President, I was upset. You’re not in a good position. You don’t have the cards right now.

With us, you start having cards. And when a journalist asked Trump what the U.S. is going to do in the future in Ukraine, if the U.S. is going to leave troops, Trump’s response was, we’re going to have workers taking the minerals and the rare earth elements from Ukraine. You know, we have security in a different form.

We’ll have workers there digging, digging, digging, taking the raw earth so that we can create a lot of great product in this country. The U.S. government pushed Ukraine into this war in the first place, using Ukraine as a proxy to try to hurt Russia, to weaken Russia. And now that the U.S. and NATO lost the war, Trump is simply throwing Ukraine under the bus and in the process trying to make hundreds of billions of dollars in profits.

Trump is imposing on Ukraine a minerals deal in which the U.S. will be paid hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue from Ukraine’s natural resources. And the British newspaper, The Telegraph, obtained a copy of this agreement that Trump is imposing. And it referred to this as a form of economic colonialism, saying the United States is turning Ukraine into an economic colony.

When Zelensky was in the White House, a journalist asked Trump what Ukraine will get out of this minerals deal. And Trump said, Ukraine’s not going to get anything. It’s the United States that is going to be paid hundreds of billions of dollars.

And the U.S. is going to get access to Ukraine’s minerals. He was proud of this. He boasted about this.

And in particular, Trump said that the U.S. wants to get access to rare earth elements. Although when you listen to this clip, listen carefully and you can hear that Trump actually repeatedly says raw earth elements. He apparently doesn’t know what rare earths are.

He refers to them as raw earths repeatedly. It’s clear that he was just given a talking point by one of his assistants. But in these comments, you can hear that the U.S. is exploiting Ukraine’s minerals and the U.S. is going to profit from this deal.

How does this provide long term security for Ukraine? Well, we don’t know exactly how much, because we’re going to be putting some money in a fund that we’re going to get from the raw earth that we’re going to be taking and sharing in terms of revenue. So it’s going to be a lot of money will be made from the sale and from the use of raw earth. And as you know, our country doesn’t have much raw earth.

We have a lot of oil and gas, but we don’t have a lot of the raw earth. And what we do have is protected by the environmentalists, but that can be unprotected. But still, it’s not very much.

They have among the best in the world in terms of raw earth. So we’re going to be using that, taking it, using it for all of the things we do, including A.I. and including weapons and the military. And it’s really going to very much satisfy our needs.

So something that just worked out really well. We have a lot of oil and we have a lot of gas. We have a lot, but we don’t have raw earth.

So this this has just about every component of the raw earth that we need for computers, for all of the things we do. Now, some of Trump’s allies have been saying this for years. In particular, the Republican Senator Lindsey Graham has repeatedly said that the U.S. wanted to get access to trillions of dollars of minerals in Ukraine.

But what did Trump do to get the weapons flowing? He created a loan system. They’re sitting on 10 to 12 trillion dollars of critical minerals in Ukraine. They could be the richest country in all of Europe.

I don’t want to give that money and those assets to Putin to share with China. If we help Ukraine now, they can become the best business partner we ever dreamed of. That 10 to 12 trillion dollars of critical mineral assets could be used by Ukraine and the West, not given to Putin and China.

This is a very big deal how Ukraine ends. In fact, in an interview on Fox News in November 2024, just two weeks after Trump won the presidential election, Lindsey Graham said clearly that the war in Ukraine is all about money. He said that the U.S. wants to get access to trillions of dollars of minerals and rare earth elements in Ukraine.

And he said that Trump is going to impose a deal on Ukraine in which the U.S. will enrich itself. Four thousand days into this war, Ukraine is still standing. This war is about money.

People don’t talk much about it, but you know, the richest country in all of Europe for rare earth minerals is Ukraine. Two to seven trillion dollars worth of minerals that are rare earth minerals, very relevant to the 21st century. Ukraine’s ready to do a deal with us, not the Russians.

So it’s in our interest to make sure that Russia doesn’t take over the place. It’s the breadbasket of really the developing world. Fifty percent of all the food going to Africa comes out of Ukraine.

We can make money and have a economic relationship with Ukraine that’d be very beneficial to us with peace. So Donald Trump’s going to do a deal to get our money back, to enrich ourselves with rare earth minerals. This is colonialism.

What the United States is doing to Ukraine, its so-called ally, is 21st century colonialism. This is how the U.S. empire treats its so-called allies. The U.S. empire is turning Ukraine into a resource colony to extract its minerals and rare earth elements, which are very important for U.S. technology companies.

You know, Trump wants to reindustrialize the U.S. and the U.S. needs to get access to minerals and rare earths, and they think that Ukraine has trillions of dollars worth of these elements. And also, it should be pointed out that extracting rare earths and processing them is extremely toxic. It’s very bad for the environment.

Researchers have warned about this. In a scientific article published in 2024, they wrote, quote, the long-term, large-scale mining and utilization of rare earths has caused serious environmental pollution and constitutes a global health issue, which has raised concerns regarding the safety of human health. End quote.

So the U.S. wants to take these rare earths from Ukraine, and in the process, the U.S. is going to pollute Ukraine. But of course, the U.S. treats Ukraine as a colony, so they don’t care. They don’t want to pollute people domestically in the U.S., although, you know, Trump criticized environmentalists.

But this is how the U.S. empire treats Ukraine, as a colony, so they can poison the Ukrainian people because the way that the U.S. empire sees it, Ukraine has been destroyed as a country thanks to the U.S. using Ukraine as a puppet, pushing Ukraine into this war, this proxy war against Russia. Ukraine lost, the U.S. lost, NATO lost. So now the U.S. wants to suck Ukraine dry and poison the country in the process.

And there is, of course, a geopolitical element of this. It’s not just U.S. corporate greed. It’s also the fact that the United States is trying to weaken China.

The U.S. is waging a new Cold War on China. And China plays a central role in global supply chains, especially for rare earth elements and critical minerals. And the U.S. Congress has a committee on the Communist Party of China that is dedicated to plotting the new Cold War and planning ways to try to weaken Beijing.

And the U.S. Congress published a lengthy report that is called the Critical Minerals Policy Working Group Final Report, and it’s subtitled Creating Resilient Critical Mineral Supply Chains. And this document is part of a larger campaign backed by the U.S. military that refers to China’s role in the critical mineral supply chain as a national security threat. Those are the words of the U.S. Department of Defense.

So the U.S. thinks that Ukraine could be a potential new source for rare earths in order for the U.S. to reduce its dependency on China and try to weaken China by removing it from the supply chain. Everything that the Trump administration is doing is aimed at trying to weaken China. And of course, this is bipartisan.

The Biden administration was doing this as well. However, unlike Biden, Trump has proposed that the U.S. should try to ally with Russia against China. Trump admitted openly in an interview in October 2024 that he wants to divide Russia and China as part of his strategy to weaken Beijing.

The one thing you never want to happen is you never want Russia and China uniting. We united them. It’s a shame.

The stupidity of what they’ve done. I’m going to have to ununite them. And I can think I can do that, too.

I have to ununite them. In fact, if you watch the full meeting that Trump held with Zelensky in the White House on the 28th of February, as I did, if you go through all of it, you can see that Trump hinted at this. He said the U.S. wants to invest in Ukraine to get access to its rare earths or, as he said, raw earths and other minerals.

And he said that the U.S. wants to use that to create technology, including weapons. And then Trump said that the U.S. is going to use those weapons in many locations, as he said. Listen here.

We’ll have workers there digging, digging, digging, taking the raw earth so that we can create a lot of great product in this country. This is an incredible agreement for Ukraine because we have a big investment in their country now. And what what they have, very few people have.

And we’re able to really go forward with very, very high tech things and many other things, including weaponry, weaponry that we’re going to use in many locations, but that we need for our country. That clip is very revealing. Trump was saying the quiet part loud.

The U.S. is turning Ukraine into a colony, extracting its resources to create weapons and technology to prepare for war on China, the new Cold War against China. And Trump doesn’t see Russia as a threat. That’s why he wants to ally with Russia against China.

Now, as I explained in the other video that I did about this, which I will link to in the description below, I don’t think that Trump will be successful in dividing Russia and China. I could be wrong, but I think he’s going to fail. But the point is, is that Trump doesn’t care about peace.

This is not about peace. This is about turning Ukraine into a colony to prepare for a future war against what the U.S. sees as the real so-called threat, which is China. Now, according to The Telegraph, the British newspaper, which is actually linked to the conservative party, so they’re somewhat sympathetic to Trump, but they also deeply support Ukraine and they’re very anti-Russia.

And this newspaper obtained the original draft of the deal that Trump has been trying to impose on Ukraine. And according to the language of this deal, it would give the United States control over the, quote, mineral resources, oil and gas resources, ports, other infrastructure, end quote, in Ukraine. And the deal would be based on New York law.

Again, this is colonialism. So Ukraine has to follow U.S. domestic law. And according to the original plan, the United States would be paid 50 percent of all revenues received by Ukraine from the extraction of its resources.

And the U.S. would be given 50 percent of the financial value of all new licenses issued to third parties in the future permanently. Someone close to the negotiations referred to this U.S. colonial plan as, quote, pay us first, then feed your children, end quote. Also this deal demanded by Trump, the original deal, would have given the U.S. the right of refusal for the purchase of exportable minerals for all future license.

As this newspaper put it, Washington will have sovereign immunity and acquire near total control over most of Ukraine’s commodity and resource economy. Now, that was the text of the original deal that Trump was trying to impose on Ukraine. However, there were negotiations later and allegedly, according to reports from the Ukrainian government, they did come to a slightly different agreement.

And this was discussed in the Financial Times in an article published by Scott Besant, who is Trump’s treasury secretary. Scott Besant is also a billionaire hedge fund manager. Ironically, he previously worked for the billionaire oligarch George Soros, who is one of the main bugbears, the main, you know, boogeyman of the Republican Party.

But now Donald Trump picked a Soros protege, this billionaire hedge fund manager, to oversee the treasury. And in this article, Besant revealed that the terms that the U.S. and Ukraine agreed to is that they will create a joint fund. And I’m going to read directly from his article, quote, the terms of our partnership propose that revenue received by the government of Ukraine from natural resources, infrastructure and other assets is allocated to a fund focused on the long-term reconstruction and development of Ukraine, where the U.S. will have economic and governance rights in those future investments, end quote.

So the U.S. is going to control what Ukraine does with its own money, with the money that it’s earned through the sale of minerals and oil and gas. And of course, the U.S. wants to take those minerals and especially rare earths from Ukraine if they have them. I mean, there’s still debate about whether or not Ukraine has so many rare earths, but the U.S. thinks that they do have all these rare earths.

So Ukraine will sell that. And then with the money that Ukraine gets, it puts it in this fund and the U.S. government will control what Ukraine can do with its own money. This is economic colonialism.

And where is Ukraine going to invest that money? Well, the billionaire Treasury Secretary Scott Besant, he hinted very strongly that Ukraine is going to use its money to invest with U.S. corporations, as Scott Besant noted, because he went to Ukraine and he met with Zelensky and he wrote, quote, I met many American companies that have been on the ground in Ukraine for years. And I have spoken with many more who are ready to support the Ukrainian economy through a just and lasting peace. The terms of this partnership will mobilize American talent, capital and high standards, end quote.

So he’s pretty clearly hinting there that Ukraine’s money from selling its resources will be reinvested with U.S. companies operating in Ukraine. So Ukraine will be funding the U.S. corporate takeover of the country. Again, this is economic colonialism.

That’s the only word to describe it. Now, after the U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Besant published that article in the FT, the Financial Times published another report that provides a little more information about this Ukraine deal. The FT pointed out that according to the language of the deal, this Ukraine fund will be set up, quote, with the encumbrance legal claim of such revenues in favor of the United States, end quote.

So not only is the U.S. going to decide what the fund will do with this money that comes from Ukraine, but the U.S. will have a legal claim over the revenues that Ukraine gets from exporting its minerals. And as the Financial Times pointed out, you know, they published Scott Besant’s article, but they pointed out that he conveniently did not mention how much of the proceeds from mineral extraction will be allocated to the fund or how much will be paid to the United States. He conveniently left out this very important detail about how much money the U.S. is going to be paid from Ukraine.

And by the way, one of the most incredible details of this article is that Besant reveals that Zelensky visited Trump in Trump Tower in September 2024, and the Ukrainian leader proposed giving the U.S. a stake in Ukraine’s rare earth elements and critical minerals. And this was part of his attempt to convince Trump to continue giving Ukraine weapons to fight against Russia. So this is the ultimate irony of all of this, is that Zelensky was always a Western puppet, in particular, a U.S. puppet.

The U.S. used Ukraine to fight this proxy war against Russia. They lost the war. Now Trump is throwing Ukraine under the bus, sacrificing Ukraine.

And this proposal that Zelensky had made, it has gone on steroids. Trump is demanding even more than Zelensky had originally proposed. So this is why, again, this is a lesson to other countries around the world.

By the way, I should point out that this is similar to what the U.S. did to Iraq. After the U.S. invaded Iraq in an illegal war of aggression in 2003, the U.S. overthrew the Iraqi government and created a puppet regime. And then what happened? The Bush administration passed an executive order that stated that all of the oil revenue received from Iraq must go into an account administered by the U.S. Federal Reserve, the U.S. Central Bank.

And then the U.S. says, oh, well, this is not colonialism because Iraq still has access to that money, but the U.S. government oversees that money. So they’re not technically taking the money from Iraq, but Iraq has to get permission from the United States to use its own money that it receives from selling its oil. This is another form of economic colonialism.

This is how the United States treats other countries. The U.S. is not a normal country. It is an empire that tries to impose its hegemony and colonial policies on other countries to benefit U.S. corporations, U.S. billionaires like Trump.

There are 13 billionaires in the Trump administration. Trump himself is, of course, a billionaire. And the de facto co-president is Elon Musk, the richest billionaire oligarch on earth.

And what the Bush administration did to Iraq was just the beginning of what now the U.S. is doing to Ukraine, which again, Ukraine is its supposed ally. This is how the U.S. treats its allies. This is why the infamous U.S. imperial strategist Henry Kissinger famously said, quote, it may be dangerous to be America’s enemy, but to be America’s friend is fatal, end quote.

And Ukraine, unfortunately, is learning the hard way that it is definitely fatal. The U.S. is destroying Ukraine’s economy after the U.S. pushed Ukraine into this war against Russia and destroyed an entire generation of Ukrainians. It’s really completely tragic to see what the U.S. is doing to the Ukrainian people.

It is so sad. And Trump was asked about this in the White House in a press conference on the 25th of February, three days before Zelensky arrived in Washington. And a journalist asked Trump, what is Ukraine going to get out of this deal? They don’t get anything.

And Trump said, well, we gave weapons to Ukraine, hundreds of billions of dollars of weapons in support to Ukraine. What he didn’t mention is that most of that money went to the U.S. military industrial complex, went to U.S. corporations that then sent the weapons and ammunition to Ukraine. Trump claims that supposedly $350 billion by the U.S. were sent to Ukraine.

In a second, I’ll talk about how that’s false. It’s not true at all. He completely made up that number.

But then he says that the U.S. expects to be paid back $350 billion by Ukraine. By the way, the official GDP of Ukraine, if we can believe the official statistics, which are very questionable because of the war, but the official GDP is around $180 billion. Trump is demanding that Ukraine pay the U.S. twice the size of the entire economy of Ukraine because the U.S. used Ukraine as a puppet, as a proxy to fight a war against Russia.

And the U.S. lost. And now they’re going to suck Ukraine dry. Here’s this clip.

What does Ukraine get in terms of $350 billion and lots of equipment and military equipment and the right to fight on and originally the right to fight? Look, Ukraine, I will say they’re very brave and they’re good soldiers. But without the United States and its money and its military equipment, this war would have been over in a very short period of time. In fact, I was the one that gave the javelins.

You remember the famous javelins? That was me. That wasn’t Obama. It wasn’t Biden.

It wasn’t anybody else. It was me. And they wiped out a lot of tanks with those javelins.

And the expression was that Obama gave sheets and I gave the javelins. That was a big deal at the time. It wiped out.

That was the beginning when people said, wow, that’s something. Well, that was American equipment. Without American equipment, this war would have been over very quickly and American money too.

I mean, a lot of money. By the way, note how the end of that clip there, Trump boasted that he gave javelin missiles, that’s anti-tank missile systems to Ukraine. And he said that Obama only gave Ukraine sheets where he gave Ukraine missiles.

So Trump is boasting of the fact that he helped to start this war in the first place. And now Trump is trying to blame everything on the Democrats, on Obama and Biden, saying he had nothing to do with it. But at the same time, Trump is so stupid that he says, I have nothing to do with this.

But then he boasts, yeah, I gave Ukraine all of these weapons to fight a proxy war against Russia. And now he’s expecting Ukraine to pay $350 billion. He’s repeated this figure multiple times.

Here’s another clip in which he makes it clear that he wants to suck out of Ukraine twice the size of the entire GDP of the country. Spent money like nobody’s ever seen. $350 billion.

The other thing that we don’t like is that Europe has spent $100 billion. We’ve spent $350 billion. So what we’re doing is now we’re saying, look, we want to be secured.

We want to get that money back. This number that Trump keeps citing of $350 billion is completely made up. He fabricated it.

Even according to the U.S. Department of Defense, the Pentagon, they reported that in the three years from the beginning of 2022 to the end of 2024, the U.S. military appropriated $182.8 billion in just appropriations. Now, that includes not just money that went to Ukraine. It also includes all of the military operations related to this proxy war against Russia, including the training of military personnel in Europe, including all of the weapons and ammunition.

And again, I need to stress, a lot of that money went to the U.S. military industrial complex. It wasn’t aid in scare quotes the U.S. was giving to the Ukrainian people. It was contracts that the U.S. government gave to Raytheon and Lockheed Martin and the Beltway bandits.

And they made the weapons and missiles and rockets and bullets and everything. And then they sent that to Ukraine. But Ukraine wasn’t benefiting from it.

It was the U.S. military industrial complex whose profits skyrocketed. And Ukraine sacrificed an entire generation of people. So Ukrainians were dying on the front lines.

The U.S. was fighting to the last Ukrainian. But the U.S. military industrial complex profited. And now Trump wants Ukraine to pay back twice what even the Pentagon says was appropriated.

By the way, I should point out that other analyses, independent analyses done by, for instance, this German think tank, the Kiel Institute, they estimated that the U.S. spent around 120 billion dollars. Again, a lot of that went to the U.S. military industrial complex. But this is even if you’re being very charitable and you’re using the Department of Defense’s official figures, Trump is demanding twice as much as the Pentagon was appropriated in payment from Ukraine, sucking Ukraine dry.

And when you consider all of this context, you can understand why the Ukrainian leader, Volodymyr Zelensky, was so angry in this press conference he held with Trump at the White House. And this is why it’s so condescending and so arrogant to hear these leaders of the U.S. empire that has waged war around the world, has killed millions of people, has devastated entire regions of the world. And yet J.D. Vance, the U.S. vice president, who his his career was cultivated by the billionaire oligarch Peter Thiel, he created J.D. Vance in a political Petri dish.

And then here is Vance in the White House and he’s lecturing Zelensky about why Zelensky needs to thank the U.S. after the U.S. destroyed Ukraine. He claims in an Orwellian fashion that the U.S. is trying to save Ukraine. But in reality, it’s the U.S. that destroyed Ukraine in the first place.

But Mr. President, Mr. President, with respect, I think it’s disrespectful for you to come into the Oval Office, try to litigate this in front of the American media. Right now, you guys are going around and forcing conscripts to the front lines because you have manpower problems. You should be thanking the president for trying to bring it into this conflict.

And do you think it’s respectful to come to the Oval Office of the United States of America and attack the administration that is trying to trying to prevent the destruction of your country? And then in this meeting, Trump repeatedly told Zelensky, you are not in a position to dictate terms to the end of this war. We control Ukraine. We are deciding how this war is going to end.

You are a colony. Trump repeatedly said you don’t have any cards. We have the cards.

Trump treated this like a card game. Don’t tell us what we’re going to feel. I’m not telling you because you’re in no position to dictate that.

Remember, you don’t have the cards right now with us. You start having all kinds of cars right now. You don’t see us.

And then one of the most insulting parts of this is that Trump said our stupid previous president, Joe Biden, gave you three hundred fifty billion dollars. I’ve already established how that number is fake. But Trump said Biden spent all this money on Ukraine and I’m demanding that you pay back all that money, even though that money, a lot of it went to the U.S. military industrial complex.

And then Zelensky, I mean, this guy is a total U.S. puppet. And he’s now realizing that he destroyed his country on behalf of the U.S. empire. And he’s being blamed for it.

And this is why Zelensky is like, wait, you can’t blame me. It was your government. Yes, it was a Democrat, but it was still the U.S. government.

Trump can’t come in and say suddenly that now the U.S. is a new country. Everything that happened before I entered the White House never happened because now I’m the president and Biden was a previous president. That’s not how politics works.

Trump is the leader of the United States. The previous presidents, including he himself, are responsible for this war. We gave you through this stupid president three hundred and fifty billion dollars.

You gave your military equipment. You men are brave, but they had to use our military. Whatever.

If you didn’t have our military equipment, if you didn’t have our military equipment, this war would have been over in two weeks. In fact, Trump repeatedly boasted that he gave the Javelin missile systems to Ukraine. And he boasted that Obama only gave blankets and sheets, but Trump gave missiles.

And now Trump says, oh, I had nothing to do with this. Blame my predecessors. This is why Zelensky says, but it was your government.

The people of the U.S. voted for Biden and Obama, and then they also voted for you. You’re all responsible. Trump wants to erase all of that history and simply is telling Ukraine pay up for you.

That was it with me. That was with a guy named Biden who was not a smart person. That was your that was your brother.

It was your excuse me. That was with Obama who gave you sheets and I gave you javelins. Yes, I gave you the javelins to take out all those tanks.

Obama gave you sheets. In fact, the statement is Obama gave sheets and Trump gave javelins. You got to be more thankful because let me tell you, you don’t have the cards with us.

You have the cards, but without us, you don’t have any cards. That fight in the White House is, for me, the perfect symbol of this colonial relationship that the U.S. has with Ukraine. The U.S. fought until the last Ukrainian.

You know, Trump and Vance were yelling at Zelensky and telling him to be grateful because they no longer have any soldiers to fight in Ukraine. You have to be thankful. You don’t have the cards.

You’re buried there. You have people that die until you’re running low on soldiers. Listen, you’re running low on soldiers.

But that’s because the U.S. and NATO fought to the last Ukrainian. They’re the ones who sacrificed Ukrainians and now they’re telling Ukraine to be grateful for for the for us sacrificing you. And then the worst of all of this, the cherry on top of the imperial hypocrisy is that the U.S. is demanding to be paid back after the U.S. fought to the last Ukrainian.

It is so vile. It is so cynical. And then after all of that, as if it weren’t insulting and stomach churning enough, the obsequious Trump toady, Lindsey Graham, this Republican senator who obediently tells Trump, yes, sir, whatever you want.

Yes, sir, I will do it. Please tell me what to do. He goes out in a press conference and then Lindsey Graham says that Ukraine and Zelensky can no longer be trusted to be partners in business investments of the U.S. acting as though Ukraine is benefiting from this.

Ukraine’s not benefiting. It’s the U.S. that is benefiting from extracting the minerals from Ukraine and turning Ukraine into a colony. At the end of the day, I was hoping that this minerals deal, which would be transformative in the relationship, would go over well.

What I saw in the Oval Office was disrespectful. And I don’t know if we can ever do business with Zelensky again. And I think he has made it almost impossible to sell to the American people that he’s a good investment.

Listen to what he said there. Lindsey Graham is acting like Ukraine benefits from this. He says we’re investing in Ukraine, but the U.S. gets revenue from Ukraine’s sale of its minerals and oil and gas.

The U.S. controls all of the investments that Ukraine makes. Ukraine’s not benefiting from this. It’s U.S. corporations and the U.S. government that are benefiting from this.

This is colonialism. And then finally, a journalist asked Lindsey Graham if he thinks that Zelensky should stay in power. And this U.S. senator says that Zelensky should consider resigning because the U.S. wants an even more obedient puppet.

They want to throw out their old puppet because their old puppet is no longer obeying orders. So they need a new one. He either needs to resign and send somebody over that we can do business with or he needs to change.

For me, this whole affair is the perfect symbol of the true face of the U.S. government. You can never trust the U.S. government. Trump is making that very clear.

But this is not new. This is not just Trump. The U.S. empire has been carrying out these kinds of policies for decades.

The difference is that Trump doesn’t hide it. He says it openly. He says the quiet part loud.

Look, for instance, at the U.S. relationship with the U.K. at the end of World War Two. Famously, in 1945, the U.S. gave a $4.3 billion loan at that time adjusted for inflation today. That would be a loan of 77 billion dollars.

This was twice the size of the entire British economy at the time. And it took the U.K. six decades to pay off this loan. It was finally paid off in 2006.

And The New York Times pointed out that at the time, this loan strained relations between the U.S. and the U.K. because British politicians expected that the U.S. would simply give this as aid to the U.K. because this was the end of World War Two. Their country was destroyed in World War Two. But again, this is how the U.S. empire treats its so-called allies.

Trump has simply taken off the mask. He no longer uses rhetoric of democracy and human rights like Democrats do. He’s saying very clearly we are an empire and we’re going to colonize Greenland to get access to rare earths and other minerals in Greenland because he wants those as well.

He wants to weaken China, wage the new Cold War in China, prevent China from getting access to the Arctic region. He’s saying that the U.S. is going to colonize the Panama Canal. It’s going to try to colonize even Canada, attacking Mexico, colonize Gaza.

And here he’s also colonizing Ukraine economically. And again, I’m going to conclude with this famous quote from the U.S. imperial strategist, Henry Kissinger. We know that Kissinger did say this in the context of Vietnam and the puppet regime that the U.S. was propping up in South Vietnam.

And Kissinger famously said, quote, It may be dangerous to be America’s enemy, but to be America’s friend is fatal, end quote. And Ukraine has learned that the hard way, with Trump yelling in the face of Zelensky and telling him to be grateful for being colonized by the U.S. empire. On that note, I’m going to conclude.

I am Ben Norton. I’m the editor in chief of Geopolitical Economy Report. I want to thank everyone for joining me today.

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