Nero was libeled by the christians after the fact. You feed a few of them to lions and they never shut up about it. But that was the custom then.

Rome had a lot of monsters as emporers, Nero didn't even rank.

IE caricalla, and that was before shit got really bad.

I cannot think of any head of state who has a worse track record in terms of statecraft, vision, inspiration, or even pure accomplishment. Even if you flatten your moral judgment and only look to how skillfully even the evilest men in history achieved their aims, he's plainly a negative outlier. His only signal achievement is in uniting the sentiment of the entire planet against the US.

Trucking and farming are far larger, and more important uses of diesel in the US

Trump has wedded himself to the oligarchs who are making money from data centers while an overwhelming majority of Americans hate those motherfuckers. Did you see what he did a couple days ago? What in the actual fuck. He's been disconnected from reality for his entire life, but dude is drifting off into space right now

To win an election, that's all he cares about

They are having diesel shortages and super high prices since the refineries keep getting blown up while simultaneously a lot of the middle east ones are out of commission. So not necessarily a ton for America to vacuum up and feel substantial relief but it does give fat stacks of cash to boost refinery repair efforts by pumping up demand and prices for Russian diesel

Yes. They have banned exports. While sanctions lift is dressed up as diesel for us, its actually all energy sanctions relief to all.

Nothing would make me happier than to see US diesel purchased from Russia go to the bottom of the ocean.

And I'm a fucking environmentalist.

I honestly feel like the only reason to do this is so that when Ukraine inevitably and justifiably hits a Russian tanker that happens to be destined for the US is so that Trump can say “fuck Ukraine, they attacked us”. Over like a few hours of fuel supply demand. Ideas planted by Russians into the minds of US leaders under different pretenses - or hell maybe even explicitly. I can’t help but feel like they’re looking for an excuse to be on Russias side.

The quantity, from who should be an adversary in an active war against who should be an ally, is far too low to be meaningful other than for ulterior motives.

I don't think this is about Russian interference. The rich in the USA benefit from war up to a point, but supporting the losing side indefinitely is not to their benefit.

Ukraine can't win this war from the ruling class's perspective since Ukraine warding off Russia wouldn't award them any advantage. There's no resource or strategic asset for Ukraine to gain, they're just defending so every outcome for them is literally a loss. Rebuilding Ukraine isn't going to be worth it even as an extraction racket, and their mining resources have been overstated.

It would have been one thing if weapons sales could have forced Russia to retreat or come to some sort of concession, but that hasn't worked. What Ukraine is missing isn't weapons, it's soldiers, and nobody's ready to send men in any meaningful way.

So they want to cut their losses and normalize with Russia again. Ukraine was a fun little exercise, a spicy little risk to get a foothold in Europe's breadbasket and on Russia's border. It didn't work, but it's fine, they're investing over the long term and you can't win them all. So just be rational, throw Ukraine under the bus and move on to the next debasement of humanity.

I'd be angrier about this deal if I didn't suspect that Trump tweeted this without any planning and when his flunkies try to act on it they'll just get stuck asking Grok 'how do I import russian diesel" and never actually figure out how to do this.

I don't know if this is a hot take, but I don't think Trump's administration knows how international business or oil shipping works. I legit don't think they can figure out how to buy diesel from Russia.

Russia doesn't have much diesel to export. Putin instituted a ban for a reason

This will help the midterms in that it's an "accomplishment" Trump can point to that will totally fix his fuckups right after the election

Just like he's been claiming the Iran war will end right after the midterms