Make Money Not War - and the vodka is already chilled

Trump Vodka is back, gleaming under the lights, while Eric Trump proudly announces that the first bottles can already be preordered. A scene from another world: golden letters on an icy bottle, next to a small U.S. flag pretending this is about patriotism and not the family’s newest business venture. But in Washington it has long been clear that this is exactly what it is: a president who conducts foreign policy with the same reflexes his family uses to sell gin, steaks, or real estate. Now it is vodka. The timing is no coincidence. It is the dot on the i.

While Europe is still trying to understand what Trump’s so called peace plan for Ukraine is supposed to look like, the real approach has long been visible: peace through deals. Peace through business. Peace through the logic of people who have spent decades learning that everything is negotiable as long as the price is right. That the Kremlin recognized this weakness is written in black and white in the old emails from the so called Mueller archive, the documents secured during the major investigation into Russian interference in the U.S. elections and considered today one of the most complete collections of internal communication from that period. The name Konstantin Kilimnik keeps appearing in them, a longtime partner of Paul Manafort who was identified by U.S. authorities years ago as a link to Russian services. And it was Kilimnik who wrote back then that a small nod from Trump would be enough to launch a new Ukraine project. A sentence that is deadly in its simplicity: a president would only have to say he wants peace and Manafort could travel to Moscow, skip all the nonsense, and prepare a solution that Kyiv would accept within weeks.

Kilimnik is not describing a diplomatic process, but a transaction. A shortcut. An invitation from the Kremlin to pull the U.S. government out of official foreign policy and replace it with personal relationships, exactly as Trump prefers to see the world: as a stage where networks, loyalties, and private connections decide what is possible. This fits the man who today is considered the unofficial architect of this new line: Steve Witkoff. For three decades he has been doing business in which Russian money has repeatedly played a role, sometimes openly, sometimes tucked away in New York’s real estate web. The man who now has access to the president like few others once said he would have liked to buy buildings by the dozen. At the prices I paid back then, I would have liked to buy even more, he said once. A sentence that would be banal in any other context, but not when you know the origin of many of these investors. Not when you know the networks that pushed from Moscow into Manhattan in the 1990s. And certainly not when you know how often Witkoff and Trump stood side by side in business.

Today it is supposed to be him who helps Trump design a peace path that is allegedly faster, clearer, and more willing to compromise than anything Europeans have ever proposed. But in truth it is a path on which Russia is already waiting. Not a plan that protects Ukraine, but one that holds a gun to its head. The Kremlin has been saying openly for months that the West simply needs to recognize the realities. Witkoff provides the fitting background: decades in a milieu where Russian fortunes, Russian circles, and Russian interests were as natural as the next multimillion dollar deal.

And Trump? He stands there, like his son, next to a vodka bottle. Broad smile, proud of something that shines and can be sold. Peace then is not a goal, but a product. A promise held up to the camera so the world believes it is halfway fulfilled. Europe now sees that something is going off track. Not because Trump is hiding something, but because it is too obvious. The message is: money calms the world. And anyone who does not fit should swallow, not argue. This is not a diplomatic concept. It is a business model that assumes a war can be solved like a dispute between investors. The Kremlin has long priced this in. It knows that with Trump you only have to strike the right tone and the president starts looking for a deal that makes him look good. That Ukraine must pay for it with land, security, and its future is the part his confidants never say out loud, but allow to shine through everywhere.

JB – We have CID (likely the Counterintelligence Division)
– Uncertainty about Hillary Clinton
– Contractors have access to the system
– Hillary Clinton plans to hit Trump
– Clinton’s health

Kerry – Trump finances
– Debts to Moscow

JB – Journalist(s) say they are working with Trump
I mentioned the New York Times – Russia

Durbin – The Department of Justice should examine a pattern in the intrusions and scans of state voter databases

See our article The Forgotten Protocol - How James Comey Already Knew in 2016 What America Still Denies, at the link: https://kaizen-blog.org/en/das-vergessene-protokoll-wie-james-comey-schon-2016-wusste-was-amerika-bis-heute-leugnet/

The vodka is chilled. The backdrop is set. The president is looking for the next big moment he can sell as a triumph. And in the background men like Witkoff are waiting, men who have spent years learning how to steer political decisions into financial channels. Make Money Not War sounds more harmless than what is really behind it. Because this line describes a policy that does not create peace, but gives it up. If this approach prevails, Ukraine will not only have to fear for its land. But for the truth about who America is really negotiating with. And for what?