Thursday, October 15, 2026
Caption for the featured image at the top of this op/ed… Holding hands. A BBC News picture of Trump and Putin at the 2025 Alaska Summit. Giddy with anticipation, President Trump thinks to himself, “My god, his skin is sooo soft.”
Far be it from me to be spouting a conspiracy theory, but sometimes the only explanation for someone’s behavior is one for which you don’t have any hard proof – other than that it makes perfectly good sense.
As you’ve no doubt heard, President Trump has relaxed sanctions against Russia to permit President Putin to sell us 1.8 million metric tons of diesel fuel. The selling price will be somewhere between $1.3 and $2.6 billion depending upon market conditions and other factors. And then we may buy another 3 million metric tons sometime later.
A metric ton of diesel fuel is 7.45 barrels. At 42 gallons/barrel, 7.45 barrels (one metric ton) contain 313 gallons. So, Trump is giving Putin permission to sell us 563 million gallons of diesel fuel.
Trump wants us to think he’s doing us a favor, that this deal will somehow lower the price of diesel fuel in the United States. A year ago, the retail price of diesel was $3.67 per gallon. It’s now $6.18. Those 18 wheelers that deliver food to your local grocery store? They run on diesel fuel, the cost of which you and I are paying in the prices of the food we buy.
He’s not. Not doing us a favor that is. We use somewhere around 160 million gallons of diesel fuel a day. Every day. So, over time, Russia is going to sell us a 3.5 day’s supply. The first tranche will be only one sixth of the total sale or about 94 million gallons which is well less than – hardly more than half – what we consume in single day. Needless to say, amounts this small will have near zero impact on the prices of the diesel fuel we buy.
So, no. Trump is not doing us a favor. This isn’t close to sound economic or political policy. He’s doing Russia – who needs money – a favor at our expense. Putin will use the money we pay Russia to fund his losing war with Ukraine. Oh, and Elon Musk, another friend of our President, has just cut off Ukraine’s access to Musk’s Starlink satellite system upon which Ukraine’s war effort depends. Donald Trump, our President, is helping Putin defeat Ukraine. If, for no other reason of which there are many, what Trump is doing is an impeachable offense.
By the way, that 160 million gallons of diesel fuel our shippers use every day? Roughly 3.7 million barrels a day? We “f-in” – pardon my language – produce roughly 5.2 million barrels a day, way more than we need, so much more that we export the surplus. That’s right, our idiot President, who is as dumb as he is nuts and, speaking of nuts, as crooked as a cashew, is buying diesel fuel from Russia that we don’t even need. That we’re just going to store someplace or export.
Relaxing US sanctions against Russia to facilitate the sale of diesel fuel that we don’t need and that will have pretty much no effect on prices is all about helping Putin defeat Ukraine. Who’s next? Poland or some other NATO country?
And I think I know why Trump is doing it. There are only three possible reasons.
- Trump’s mental state is such that he can’t help but admire authoritarian leaders. Trump, in other words, wants to be like Putin when he (Trump) grows up. …This is true, but not the most important reason.
- Intellectually speaking, Trump doesn’t have even a basic understanding of the economics of what he’s doing. …He might not, but certainly some of his advisors do. So no, I think Trump knows exactly what he’s doing.
- Putin has something on Trump. “Bingo!” And I’m not talking about lude pictures Putin’s hidden cameras took of our President during one of his trips to Russia years ago. No. The leash Putin has on our President is financial.
According to the Center for American Progress and other sources, there was a time, in the 1990s, when Trump found himself $4 billion in debt with no regular banks willing to save him, so poor was his reputation as a businessman. To survive, Trump turned to foreign lenders and, you guessed it, to Russia in particular. Simply put, Russia, now run by Vladimir Putin, owns Donald Trump – and that’s why Trump does whatever Putin asks him to do. …See “Trump’s Conflicts of Interest in Russia” by the Center for American Progress, July 14, 2017.
Trump isn’t technically an agent of Putin. He just acts that way, mostly for financial reasons although his narcissism probably prevents him from seeing it that way.
How ‘bout them apples?
-Les Cohen
