with CHARLIE HARPER

Something significant might just have happened on Tuesday afternoon in hot, humid Washington, DC.

In the midst of the appropriately saturated news coverage of the tragic flash floods in Texas’ picturesque Hill Country along the Guadalupe River between Austin and San Antonio, CNN and other cable news outlets switched to the White House.

In the presidential mansion’s impressive Cabinet Room, President Donald Trump was holding forth during the portion of a regular cabinet meeting that was open to reporters. He took questions from a couple of reporters on the Russia-Ukraine War. As he did so, it seemed that at long last, Trump has figured out what even casual observers have known for 25 years.

Vladimir Putin is a ruthless, implacable foe of the West in general, and of the United States in particular. This unreconstructed cold warrior looks and acts the part of a cynical assassin, with his thin lips, aquiline nose, trim build and ominously menacing Slavic countenance.

Putin can nonetheless clearly be charming. When he was president, George W Bush thought he had figured out Putin. “I can see into his soul,” Bush naively intoned at one point. Putin, who like his Soviet predecessors seems to instinctively feel more comfortable dealing with conservative Republican presidents than with their more social justice-minded Democratic counterparts, had obviously charmed Bush II.

Like Bush, Trump since 2017 has believed that he enjoys a special relationship with and insight into the mind of Putin. For almost a decade, Trump has boasted about his mutual admiration society with Putin. To almost anyone with even a slight knowledge of Russia, its history and political makeup, this seemed nonsensical.

And since the US and Russia still possess massive nuclear arsenals, Trump’s silly, narcissistic, innocent fascination with Putin represented a potentially disastrous, existential threat to the future of our world.

Putin, fundamentally, is just what most of us think he is: He is a cunning, skilled, experienced advocate for Russian nationalism and its return to the international power and glory of his young professional life as a KGB agent in the post-war Soviet satellite entity then known as East Germany.

Putin is not our friend. On Tuesday, Trump may have finally figured this out. If so, we can all breathe a sigh of relief. Ukraine is still standing, defying the patched-up Russian army even as Putin launches ever more savage attacks on civilians in Kyiv and elsewhere in a persistent attempt to bring this former Soviet satellite nation to a point of capitulation.

Trump and Putin have spoken a couple of times recently. Here’s how Trump described their conversation as the news cameras rolled:

Trump said he was “very unhappy” with Putin, with whom he spoke for more than an hour last Thursday.

“We get a lot of bullshit thrown at us by Putin, if you want to know the truth,” Trump said. “He’s very nice all the time, but it turns out to be meaningless.”

If Trump has finally awakened from his inexplicable slumber on Putin, well, better late than never.

At a June NATO summit meeting, Trump appeared to soften his resistance to continued support for Ukraine and its president Volodymyr Zelensky. He has mused publicly that the US might indeed need to ramp up military support for Ukraine.

“I don’t know what the hell happened to Putin,” Trump had said in May, before posting on social media, “he has gone absolutely CRAZY.”

News coverage of Trump’s recent conversations with Putin have mostly followed a similar narrative.

In speaking with Trump, Putin reportedly reiterated his resolute position on negotiations for a ceasefire, which has led many Western officials to question whether he is serious about peace talks. According to a Kremlin spokesman, Putin told Trump that Russia would continue its aggressive pursuit of its war aims and resolve the “root causes” of the conflict.

That “root causes” phrase is Kremlin shorthand for Moscow’s demands that Ukraine cede territory, embrace neutrality, be excluded from joining NATO or other military alliances and be subjected to limits on its military.

“Russia will not retreat from those goals,” the spokesman said, without describing them.

But the Russian goal is simply the demilitarisation and neutralisation of its western neighbour Ukraine, establishing a dependable buffer against aggression from the West. Together with northern neighbour Belarus, whose status as a Russian satellite is already further along and well established, a neutralised Ukraine would represent achievement of Russia’s historical number one foreign policy goal – security against Western assault.

Absolutely nothing new about that. It’s been the bedrock principle of Russian and Soviet foreign policy for hundreds of years. And from Napoleon to Adolf Hitler and their momentous attempts to overrun Russia, it’s not hard to understand why.

The Russian spokesman said that during recent talks with Putin, “Donald Trump again raised the question of the quick end to the military action. Vladimir Putin, for his part, answered that we are continuing to try to search for a politically negotiated solution to the conflict.”

Will Trump reinvigorate Western resistance? We can always hope so.

Keep your shoes on

There’s a report circulating that, if it is confirmed, should ease some of the inconvenience imposed on air travellers by the security response to 9/11 and the number of airliner hijackings in recent decades.

You might not have to take off your shoes as you pass through airport security on the way to your airport departure lounge any more.

The following statement was issued the other day: “TSA and DHS are always exploring new and innovative ways to enhance the passenger experience and our strong security posture,” a TSA spokesman said. “Any potential updates to our security process will be issued through official channels.”

TSA is the US Transportation Safety Administration, whose staffers screen your passage from the departure hall at the airport through to the boarding gates when you travel by commercial airliner. DHS is the Department of Homeland Security, home agency to TSA and one of the principal responses of the George W Bush administration to the vulnerability of the US that was exposed by the terroristic attacks of September 11, 2001.

The TSA spokesman continued. “Air travellers should feel relieved knowing that technology has advanced so significantly that TSA officers can detect threats while you continue wearing your shoes,” he said. “In the old days, this wasn’t the case.”

The TSA has been requiring passengers to take off their shoes since 2006, nearly five years after a terrorist tried to detonate an explosive in his shoe while aboard an American Airlines flight from Paris to Miami.

Let’s see how this plays out. But keeping our shoes on at the airport would be a welcome change.

BOND RETURN GOOD FOR BAHAMAS

James Bond is coming back. And that’s often been good news for The Bahamas.

As we know, The Bahamas, and Nassau in particular, has played a significant role in the 27-film James Bond film franchise. The relationship between James Bond and the Bahamas began with Thunderball (1965) and continued with Never Say Never Again (1983) and Casino Royale (2006). All three films relied heavily on locations in and around Nassau and Paradise Island, and the thrill of that never really gets old.

And almost every James Bond film with an underwater scene was filmed in the Bahamas, including You Only Live Twice (1967), The Spy Who Loved Me (1977), For Your Eyes Only (1981), and The World is Not Enough (1999).

There has been much speculation about the potential release of the next Bond film, and even more about who would take over for Daniel Craig in the title role. Best current guess is 2027, but only rumour on the lead actor.

But the film’s director has been picked, and that’s progress. French-Canadian director Denis Villeneuve will be at the helm.

“Some of my earliest movie-going memories are connected to 007. I grew up watching James Bond films with my father, ever since Dr No with Sean Connery. I’m a die-hard Bond fan. To me, he’s sacred territory,” said Villeneuve.

Connery lived for decades at Lyford Cay until his death in 2020.

Amazon bought MGM in 2022 for $8.25 billion, acquiring the rights to distribute all 27 of the Bond films. MGM’s Bond films are the studio’s most lucrative intellectual property, having brought in billions since first releasing “Dr No” in 1962.