The Dictatorship
What the White House and Kremlin said about the Trump-Putin call
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON (AP) — The White House says a lengthy phone call between Presidents Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin had achieved “movement to peace” in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
But while Tuesday’s call ended with Putin and Trump agreeing on an immediate pause on strikes against energy infrastructure, the Kremlin makes clear that Russia has many additional demands before it will consider a broader ceasefire.
Much of the significantly shorter White House statement, meanwhile, looks ahead to Trump’s hopes of improved relations with Russia.
Read the statements released by the White House and Kremlin giving their versions of what Putin and Trump discussed:
What the White House said
Today, President Trump and President Putin spoke about the need for peace and a ceasefire in the Ukraine war. Both leaders agreed this conflict needs to end with a lasting peace. They also stressed the need for improved bilateral relations between the United States and Russia. The blood and treasure that both Ukraine and Russia have been spending in this war would be better spent on the needs of their people.
This conflict should never have started and should have been ended long ago with sincere and good faith peace efforts. The leaders agreed that the movement to peace will begin with an energy and infrastructure ceasefire, as well as technical negotiations on implementation of a maritime ceasefire in the Black Sea, full ceasefire and permanent peace. These negotiations will begin immediately in the Middle East.
The leaders spoke broadly about the Middle East as a region of potential cooperation to prevent future conflicts. They further discussed the need to stop proliferation of strategic weapons and will engage with others to ensure the broadest possible application. The two leaders shared the view that Iran should never be in a position to destroy Israel.
The two leaders agreed that a future with an improved bilateral relationship between the United States and Russia has huge upside. This includes enormous economic deals and geopolitical stability when peace has been achieved.
What the Kremlin said
The leaders continued a detailed and frank exchange of views on the situation around Ukraine. Vladimir Putin expressed gratitude to Donald Trump for his desire to help achieve the noble goal of ending hostilities and human losses.
Having confirmed his fundamental commitment to a peaceful resolution of the conflict, the Russian President declared his readiness to thoroughly work out possible ways to resolve the conflict together with his American partners, which should be comprehensive, sustainable and long-term. And, of course, to take into account the absolute need to eliminate the root causes of the crisis and ensure Russia’s legitimate interests in the field of security.
In the context of the U.S. President’s initiative to introduce a 30-day ceasefire, the Russian side outlined a number of significant points regarding ensuring effective control over a possible ceasefire along the entire line of contact, the necessity to stop the forced mobilization in Ukraine and the rearmament of the Ukrainian armed forces. Serious risks associated with the Kyiv’s regime inability to respect agreements were also noted, given that it has repeatedly sabotaged and violated agreements that have been reached.
Attention was drawn to the barbaric terrorist crimes committed by Ukrainian fighters against the civilian population of the Kursk region. It was emphasized that the key condition for preventing the escalation of the conflict and working toward its resolution through political and diplomatic means should be a complete cessation of foreign military aid and the provision of intelligence information to Kyiv.
In connection with Donald Trump’s recent appeal to spare the lives of Ukrainian servicemen surrounded in the Kursk region, Vladimir Putin confirmed that the Russian side is ready to be guided by humanitarian considerations and, in the event of their surrender, guarantees the lives and decent treatment of the Ukrainian Armed Forces soldiers in accordance with Russian laws and the norms of international law.
During the conversation, Donald Trump put forward a proposal for the parties to the conflict to mutually refrain from attacks on energy infrastructure facilities for 30 days. Vladimir Putin responded positively to this initiative and immediately gave the Russian military the appropriate command.
The Russian President also responded constructively to Donald Trump’s idea of implementing a well-known initiative concerning the safety of navigation in the Black Sea. It was agreed to begin negotiations to further work out specific details of such an agreement.
Vladimir Putin informed that on March 19 a prisoner exchange will be carried out between the Russian and Ukrainian sides — 175 for 175 people. In addition, as a gesture of goodwill, 23 seriously wounded Ukrainian servicemen who are undergoing treatment in Russian medical institutions will be handed over.
The leaders confirmed their intention to continue bilateral efforts to achieve a Ukrainian settlement, including taking into account the above-mentioned proposals of the U.S. President. For this purpose, Russian and American expert groups are being created.
Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump also touched upon other issues on the international agenda, including the situation in the Middle East and the Red Sea region. Joint efforts will be made to stabilize the situation in crisis areas, establish cooperation on nuclear non-proliferation and global security. This, in turn, will contribute to improving the overall atmosphere of Russian-American relations. One of the positive examples is the vote made in solidarity in the U.N. on the resolution regarding the Ukrainian conflict.
Mutual interest in normalizing bilateral relations was expressed in light of the special responsibility of Russia and the United States for ensuring security and stability in the world. In this context, a wide range of areas in which our countries could establish interaction was considered.
A number of ideas were discussed that are moving toward the development of mutually beneficial cooperation in the economy and energy sector.
Donald Trump supported Vladimir Putin’s idea to organize hockey matches in the United States and Russia between Russian and American players playing in the NHL and KHL (Kontinental Hockey League). The presidents agreed to remain in contact on all issues raised.
Today’s edition of quick hits.
* Warsh was confirmed with 54 votes: “The Senate voted to install Kevin Warsh as chair of the Federal Reserve on Wednesday, handing the millionaire Trump ally the reins of America’s monetary policy even as he faced skepticism over his ability to remain independent of presidential influence.”
* When Barack Obama visited China in 2009, he was greeted by Xi Jinping himself. Nearly two decades later: “President Trump arrived Wednesday night in Beijing, where he was welcomed by a military band, an honor guard, hundreds of Chinese youth waving flags and China’s vice president, Han Zheng. Such carefully designed receptions for foreign leaders telegraph Beijing’s attitude toward these visits. … This time, they sent someone who is high-level but whose position is mostly that of a figurehead — which could be a way to send a layered message.”
* All the news on inflation is bad: “Wholesale prices in April posted their highest annual increase in more than three years, signaling more nettlesome inflation as pipeline costs intensify. The producer price index rose a seasonally adjusted 1.4% for the month, much higher than the 0.5% Dow Jones consensus forecast and the upwardly revised 0.7% March increase, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Wednesday. This was the largest monthly gain since March 2022.”
* The bar is low, but this represents a little progress: “Republican divisions over the Iran war deepened on Wednesday as three GOP senators voted with Democrats to curtail the conflict, signaling greater headwinds for President Donald Trump as he seeks to stem economic impacts that have damaged the party’s political standing. While the Democratic-led measure failed, it was the closest a war powers vote came to advancing in the Senate in the seven attempts since the war began as GOP concerns slowly grow over the path forward.”
* ICE’s newest chief: “The Department of Homeland Security has selected David Venturella, a former private prison executive, to lead U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the agency at the center of President Donald Trump’s controversial effort to detain and deport millions of undocumented immigrants. Venturella, who has served as a senior ICE adviser since February 2025, will be named acting director following the departure of Todd M. Lyons, DHS spokeswoman Lauren Bis said in a statement Tuesday.”
* In related news: “Ten thousand losses. That’s the Trump administration’s track record in court as federal judges grapple with the way ICE agents have swept through major U.S. cities and detained thousands of people in support of President Donald Trump’s aggressive deportation agenda.”
* It’s always interesting to me when discharge petitions work: “A bipartisan effort to force a vote on legislation sending fresh American security aid to Ukraine has amassed the 218 signatures needed to force a floor vote, the latest in a series of instances of rank-and-file lawmakers wresting control of the chamber’s agenda from Republican leaders.”
See you tomorrow.
Steve Benen is a producer for “The Rachel Maddow Show,” the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He’s also the bestselling author of “Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past.”
Ku Klux Klan denialism is in vogue for the MAGA movement these days.
As the GOP uses Jim Crow-like racial profiling and voter suppression tactics such as gerrymanderingsome Republicans are engaged in a campaign of obfuscation and misinformation to downplay allegations of racism.
And it increasingly seems that some of President Donald Trump’s supporters want to use falsehoods about the KKK to advance their goals.
Last week’s fact-free diatribe from Rep. Harriet Hageman, R-Wyo., about the KKK supposedly being a leftist organization is a prime example. As I recently wroteRepublicans have used the Justice Department’s dubious indictment of the anti-racist Southern Poverty Law Center to falsely portray racist extremism, which the SPLC tracks and investigates, as either nonexistent or a liberal contrivance. This tactic mirrors rhetoric deployed by conservatives who sought to deny the threat of the KKK during its rise, or even its mere existence.
The aforementioned falsehoods about the SPLC were the subject of an exchange Hageman had with conservative podcaster Winston Marshall in which she made the demonstrably false claim that the KKK, Nazis and the Aryan Nation are “far-left organizations” and “always have been.”
Hageman told Marshall:
The Aryan Nation, the Nazis and the KKK are not far-right organizations. Those are far-left organizations, and they always have been. The KKK was created and started by the Democrats in the United States to prevent Blacks from being able to participate in the political arena, if you will. So I’m going to say they’ve never been associated with the right; they’ve always been associated with the left.
This is the kind of derangement that would make a reputable historian weep.
And you can see in Hageman’s comments why speaking of politics in directional terms (i.e., “right” vs. “left”) is flawed. The KKK has never been liberal and essentially has always been a conservative group of Christian white supremacists. Some Republicans — particularly Black supporters of Trump’s, as we have seen lately — like to portray Democrats as the party of the KKK because at the time of the organization’s rise, the white Christian conservatives most vehemently opposed to Black civil rights called themselves Democrats.
But in reality, the KKK didn’t belong to any particular party, and the Democratic Party didn’t create it. People suggesting otherwise are most likely trying to score cheap political points.
As historian Elaine Frantz explained in a 2011 essay titled “Klan Skepticism and Denial in Reconstruction-Era Public Discourse,” the conspiracy to turn a blind eye to the KKK and its racist terrorism was a bipartisan project:
While Klansmen and their Democratic political allies deliberately spread doubt about Klan reports, they could not have succeeded as thoroughly as they did without the substantial, if intermittent, collaboration of their Republican opponents.
Hageman and some of her fellow Trump supporters apparently don’t want Republicans to be associated with racists, but pseudointellectual diatribes on American history are not the way to avoid that. Instead, I’d suggest not using phrases popularized by the KKK decades ago, such as “America First,” and refraining from celebrating former klan leaders, like Nathan Bedford Forrest.
And, of course, ceasing the GOP’s demonstrable and devastating political crusade against Black people would go a long way.
Ja’han Jones is an MS NOW opinion blogger. He previously wrote The ReidOut Blog.
The Trump administration allegedly paid off FBI agents fired or punished for misconduct, including one who impeded a probe into a white nationalist group and another agent who appeared at the Capitol during the Jan. 6 insurrection.
Those are the bombshell claims at the heart of a new probe Maryland Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin opened Tuesday into the Justice Department, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and FBI Director Kash Patel.
Raskin “launched an investigation into a scheme inside the Department of Justice (DOJ) to direct millions of taxpayer dollars to FBI agents fired for serious misconduct, many of whom are aligned with Donald Trump,” according to a press release announcing the probe.
Raskin’s letter to Blanche demands details on the alleged payouts, which Raskin said were negotiated by Empower Oversight, a well-funded conservative activist group linked to Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley that has focused on MAGA conspiracy theories under the guise of defending “whistleblowers.”
Raskin cites as an example an FBI agent who allegedly received a payout and reinstatement at the FBI after being removed for refusing to participate in a probe of the white supremacist group Patriot Front, which has been involved in acts of violence and intimidation toward Black people and immigrants. Raskin said this occurred despite revelations that the agent also “engaged in commercial sex overseas while on an official FBI assignment—unequivocal grounds for security clearance revocation and dismissal from the FBI.” The letter notes the agent was reinstated under Patel.
This claim seems particularly noteworthy in light of the Trump Justice Department’s indictment of the Southern Poverty Law Centerwhich investigates racist extremism and has even previously assisted the DOJ in such investigations. The SPLC is seemingly being targeted for purported fraud in connection with its work against white supremacist groups. Meanwhile, Raskin’s allegation is that the Justice Department rewarded someone for refusing to investigate white supremacy.
Raskin’s list of alleged payouts overseen by Blanche or Patel includes an agent who was reinstated and given more than $100,000 by the department after a court declined to reinstate him after he leaked details of a probe into the far-right group Project Veritas to the media. The representative also references an agent who was reinstated and given his security clearance back after facing punishment over documents, including photos and video, that showed him in a restricted area during the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol back in 2021.
“There are many more examples of these indefensible and lawless payments,” Raskin’s letter to Blanche claims.
The letter demands a list of all FBI or DOJ employees who have received settlements or back pay after being fired or disciplined for alleged misconduct, and all documents pertaining to the negotiations.
Raskin lays out the picture of a lawless regime that prioritizes loyalty to the president — the first to be convicted of a felony — and subservience to his political agenda over seemingly all else. If the allegations are accurate, it’s a disturbing development, but arguably a predictable one.
The DOJ did not immediately respond to MS NOW’s request for comment.
Ja’han Jones is an MS NOW opinion blogger. He previously wrote The ReidOut Blog.
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