Why Trump Jokes About Nuclear Missiles — The Escalation, De-escalation Kayfabe with Putin Is Still Ongoing
- john raymond
- Aug 6
- 4 min read
On August 5, 2025, Donald Trump stood on the roof of the White House and made a joke about nuclear missiles. He mimed a launch and quipped that it was “another way to spend my money for this country.” Superficially absurd, the moment fits neatly into a pattern—one that is neither accidental nor misunderstood by the sharp observer.
It is the latest installment in a deliberate, ongoing campaign of strategic deception jointly conducted by Trump and Vladimir Putin. This is not escalation. It is not deterrence. It is not foreign policy. It is performance.
What we are witnessing is the continuing failure of a coordinated and increasingly ineffective spectacle: a controlled sequence of threats, retreats, and theatrical tension designed to simulate conflict between Trump and Putin, when in fact the two are collaborating.
The point is not to frighten Russia—it is to fool the American public and to paralyze NATO. This is escalation–de-escalation kayfabe—staged conflict that provides cover for inaction, delays, and ultimately, betrayal.
It is also unraveling. The timing is off. The audience is restless. And Trump’s improvisations, like his rooftop missile joke, reveal more than they obscure.
The Nature of the Kayfabe
In classical kayfabe, as in professional wrestling, both parties are in on the performance. The outcome is fixed. The conflict is fake. But the illusion depends on the audience believing in the stakes.
Trump and Putin are not enemies acting rashly—they are co-authors of a geopolitical farce. Their moves are meant to give the impression of opposition while securing the opposite result: the continued erosion of Western unity, the unchecked prosecution of Russia’s war in Ukraine, and the steady normalization of autocracy through confusion, distraction, and exhaustion.
The most recent sequence of this farce began when Dmitry Medvedev made ominous remarks about Russia’s Dead Hand nuclear retaliatory system. Trump responded by ordering a vague repositioning of U.S. nuclear submarines and later joked about installing nuclear missiles on the White House roof.
But these were not moves designed to escalate in any real sense. They were signals—meant to posture, not to pressure. They were not military decisions. They were media cues.
This is the essence of the arrangement: Medvedev says something alarming, Trump feigns outrage and performs a move, and both sides benefit. Putin gets space. Trump gets to look tough. And NATO is forced to debate whether the whole thing is real.
It isn’t. All it is, is asymmetric warfare aimed at the West.
The Epstein Interruption
Complicating this charade is a force Trump cannot control: the reemergence of the Epstein-Trump-Maxwell scandal. The revelation that Ghislaine Maxwell sat for a nine-hour interview with Trump’s former criminal defense attorney—who now serves as Deputy Attorney General under Pam Bondi—has reintroduced serious and credible questions about Trump’s proximity to that criminal network. And unlike the nuclear play-acting, this scandal has substance.
It is not lost on Trump or his handlers that these revelations threaten the entire kayfabe structure. The nuclear theater requires Trump to appear dominant, unshackled, unpredictable. But the Epstein scandal undermines all of that. It suggests compromise, vulnerability, and entanglement.
The more the Epstein story grows, the more Trump’s every move—especially the ones involving national security—looks not like improvisation, but cover-up.
The result is a faltering script. Trump’s rooftop antics feel strained, desperate. His bluster lacks direction. The audience is no longer certain what they’re supposed to believe. And the Epstein cloud ensures that every new performance invites not awe or fear, but righteous suspicion.
The Broken 50-Day Threat
The clearest evidence of the kayfabe’s collapse is Trump’s betrayal of his own 50-day ultimatum. He threatened India, Brazil, and China with secondary sanctions if they did not reduce their purchases of Russian oil and gas. The faux deadline came and went with no real sanctions aimed at stopping Russia. Instead, Trump introduced weak, symbolic tariffs—deliberately chosen for their lack of strategic impact on Russia.
The purpose of these tariffs are not even to punish India or Brazil. The point is to rewrite the narrative. Tariffs can be sold as “proof” of action, even though they have no meaningful impact on Russian revenue. In this way, Trump attempts to fulfill his broken promise by shifting the goalposts and reframing the terms.
This is the method: change the subject, repackage failure as victory, and count on a weary public to stop asking questions. But this time, the contradictions are too stark. The tariffs are ineffective. The nuclear threats are unserious. And the actual objective—stopping Russian aggression—has not even been attempted.
Because that is not, and has never been, Trump’s real goal.
Coordination, Not Opposition
The most important insight, the one that mainstream analysts still resist? Trump is not simply appeasing Russia. He is coordinating with it. His every move—his delays, his redefinitions, his rhetorical shell games—serves the Kremlin’s strategic interest. And the nuclear kayfabe, like the broken sanctions threat, only makes sense when viewed through that lens.
Trump is not failing to confront Putin. He is succeeding in helping him. The charade of conflict is a shield, not a sword. It exists to give cover to real-world inaction and to create just enough confusion that resistance never coheres.
The kayfabe must be understood not as incompetence, but as design. And the joke on the roof was not a blunder. It was a signal. Not to Putin, but to us.
What We Must Not Forget
It is important to remember that the core objective of the pro-Ukrainian side is not to punish India. It is not to showcase submarines or confuse cable news. The objective is to stop Russian aggression.
And that goal has been completely abandoned by Trump, in both word and deed.
He will continue to stage escalations. He will continue to mock the press, bluster about power, and repackage failure as toughness. But at every step, the direction is the same: delay meaningful action, provide cover for the Kremlin, and distract the public from the real consequences of his collaboration with Putin.
Their kayfabe only works when we forget our core goal is to stop Russians from killing Ukrainians.
That is why we must never forget.
Slava Ukraini.
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