Jake Broe Misses the Point: What Matters Is New Deliveries of Weapons and Defense Systems—and New Sanctions That Work
- john raymond
- Jul 8
- 2 min read
Jake Broe means well, but he is still missing the point. In his latest commentary, he treats the online battle for public perception as if it were the decisive front in the Ukraine war. It isn’t.
The decisive fronts are twofold: new deliveries of weapons and defense systems, and new sanctions that actually work. Everything else is noise—and unfortunately, Jake’s continued focus on online narratives only serves to obscure the real threat.
Worse, it risks letting Trump off the hook.
Let’s be clear: Trump is not “confused.” He’s not “surrounded by idiots.” He’s not “reversing bad decisions” made by “bad advisors.” That framing—Jake’s framing—lets Trump get away with helping Russia.
The carve-out in the proposed sanctions bill, the one Jake tries to paint as hopeful, is a trap. It gives Trump discretion. And when you give Trump discretion, you give Putin oxygen. That carve-out won’t lead to pressure on Russia—it will lead to further delay, foot-dragging, and symbolic performance disguised as policy. That’s not oversight. That’s surrender.
The key to understanding this is asymmetric war—something Jake still doesn’t fully grasp. In an asymmetric war, slowness is not a policy flaw. It is part of the attack. Delay is the weapon. Confusion is the strategy. Ambiguity is the shield.
So when Trump interrupts pre-approved weapons shipments and blames Pete Hegseth or Elbridge Colby, that is not incompetence—it is asymmetric sabotage. When he unfreezes aid only after pressure mounts, that is not Trump “being pushed in the right direction”—it is a calculated performance to create the illusion of movement while sustaining strategic stagnation.
The lie is the attack.
And Jake falls for it. Still.
By treating Trump’s reversals as corrective rather than corrupt, Jake perpetuates the idea that Trump can be reasoned with, or that MAGA voters might abandon him if only they saw the contradiction with Russia.
But MAGA doesn't care about contradictions. Their loyalty is post-truth. They will follow Trump whether he praises or condemns Putin—because the contradiction is the point.
Jake's belief that getting pro-Trump and pro-Russia factions to argue online is a winning strategy is naïve. Putin wants chaos in the West. He wants public confusion. He wants Ukraine’s defenders to waste energy on infighting, signal-boosting dissonance, and memes.
Meanwhile, Trump drags his feet. The weapons arrive late. The sanctions don’t get enforced. And the battlefield gets darker.
That’s the actual danger. Not what’s trending on Twitter. Not what Lindsey Graham says in a press release.
The danger is that the President of the United States is slow-walking aid to a democratic ally while pretending he isn’t—and being allowed to get away with it by commentators like Jake, who mistake foot-dragging for progress and public contradiction for a change of heart.
So, to Jake: stop giving Trump the benefit of the doubt. Stop treating reversals as real movement. Stop looking to social media for the war’s turning point. The turning point is kinetic. It is legislative. It is logistical.
Deliver the weapons. Enact the sanctions. That is what matters. Anything else is a distraction.
And distractions, in asymmetric warfare, are not neutral.
They are the attack.
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