larry johnson thinks the trump is playing his usual game;

 While I am still appalled and alarmed by what President Trump’s “plan,” announced last week, to unleash a new Nakba on the Palestinians and take control of Gaza, it has occurred to me that Trump was playing a character in order to produce another outcome. Before explaining what I think he was doing, I believe that the case of General Kellogg is a good example of how Trump does one thing in public and then, behind closed doors, does the opposite.

A week ago, many of us were worried about the bellicose statements of Trump’s Ukraine Envoy, Keith Kellogg, who remarked that Russia’s current sanctions “pain level” is at about 3 out of 10, and that Trump has much more room to raise that “pain level” by putting sanctions pressure on Russian oil and gas:

“You have to put economic pressure; you have to put diplomatic pressure, some type of military pressures and levers that you’re going to use underneath those to make sure [this goes] where we want it to go”.

It was widely assumed that Kellogg was speaking on behalf of President Trump. Kellogg’s comments were, to put it mildly, not well received in the Kremlin. Russian Deputy Foreign Minister, Sergei Ryabkov, came out publicly warning that Moscow-Washington relations are “teetering at the brink of complete rupture”; the “antagonistic content” of Russian-US relations has become “very critical” today, Ryabkov cautioned:..........more..........