Missiles to Moscow: Trump Prepares to Escalate

It's a bird, it's a plane, it's SuperTrump!

Jul 14, 2025

A couple of months ago, Trump claimed the Houthis were finished—that they didn’t want to attack anymore. Trump said they had lost their will to fight due to the ferocity of US counterattacks. The US had bombed them into surrender.

Now they are blamed for attacking two ships and sinking one of them last week; but I raised the question in my Deeper Dive, as to why they would sink a ship bound for Iran with a load of steal. Iran is their supporter. There is a mystery there that no one is talking about. I’ll leave that with the Deeper Dive, but the main point of today’s story is that the Houthis are far from finished.

Trump likes to claim the big finish. The Houthis were finished, but they aren’t. He’s done now with Epstein, but far from it. The war with Iran was over in twelve days with Iran nuclear capability “obliterated,” but it’s not. So, no wonder Trump is not happy that the war he would end in Ukraine in 24 hours keeps dragging on. Russia is making almost no progress, in spite of attacks that have been more intense.

Trump promised a big announcement about Putin’s Ukraine invasion for today, but it’s not completely clear what the big announcement was. It appears it may have just been that, if Putin doesn’t stop attacking Kyiv in another fifty days, then Trump is going to get serious and smash Russia down with 100% tariffs placed against Russian products and against any nation who buys their oil. That is kind of like a free 49-day pass: attack-Ukraine-all-you-want-for-the-next-49-days, and then stop and say you’re ready to negotiate to avoid getting hit with the sanctions on day 50.

While Zero Hedge referred to it as a TACO threat, Lindsey Graham says there is more to come in the next few days. According to Graham, Trump’s opinion of Putin has soured, and he’s ready to arm Ukraine to the hilt with missiles that it can use to attack Moscow if it wants to, since Putin is attacking Ukraine’s capital. Graham might just be the flagpole to run that one up on and see how much effect jawboning threats has on Putin or see how the Trump base responds to promises of an intensified war. If it doesn’t fly, he can say that was just Graham talking. Still, the guy who likes the big finish is clearly out of patience with Putin for making him look bad—making him look like he is not capable of bringing about the big changes he told us would be easy for a man like him.

Graham expects within a few days we’ll see “weapons flowing at a record level to help Ukraine defend themselves” and “tariffs and sanctions available to President Trump he’s never had before.” Graham says Putin’s biggest miscalculation was to play Trump by pretending to be interested in negotiating peace but using the time these talks bring to attack Ukraine even harder. So, Graham warns,

You just watch. In the coming days and weeks there is going to be a massive effort to get Putin to the table.

Trump, himself, indicated weapons will be going to Ukraine that can hit Moscow, and he promised that Europe will be paying for all of them.

He also vowed to send US weapons—compromising of "everything" in their arsenal—to Nato so they can distribute them to Kyiv.
Trump called them "top-of-the-line weapons" and said [NATO Secretary] Rutte can deploy them "where they are needed".
Trump insisted the US makes "the best equipment, the best missiles, the best everything".

So, we’re going to sell them the best. Europe will pay, and Ukraine will use them against Russia wherever the NATO chief sees fit.

The Nato chief praised Trump's move as a game changer.
He said it would allow Ukraine to access "really massive numbers of military equipment" for air defence, missiles and ammunition.
"This builds on the tremendous success of the Nato summit," he added.
"The Europeans are stepping up."

So, Trump is stepping up the Ukraine war. Putin is bombing more, and Ukraine will soon have everything it needs to take its retaliation for that bombing deep into Russia.

Of course, just as Trump boasted he’d finish this war in 24 hours…

he once again claimed Russia’s invasion would never have happened if he had been president in 2022 - saying he saw it coming during conversations with Putin.

Really? He also saw Putin’s willingness to sign a peace agreement arriving in an easy 24 hours. Trump says whatever rhetoric he wants to fire out of his mouth.

“It’s all talk until missiles go into Kyiv,” he said, adding that the war “has got to stop.”

It’s hard to tell there who Trump is referring to when he says, “It’s all talk.”

Putin has seven weeks to fight tough as nails, and then it all has to stop, or sanctions will be applied on day 50 … or not … as with the various tariffs.

Trump told reporters at Joint Base Andrews: "I am very disappointed with President Putin.
"I thought he was somebody that meant what he said, and he’ll talk so beautifully and then he’ll bomb people at night. We don’t like that.
"We will send them Patriots which they desperately need because Putin … really surprised a lot of people. It’s a little bit of a problem there, I don’t like it…."
But frustration has been mounting in recent weeks, particularly following a July 3 phone call with Putin, in which the Kremlin tyrant reportedly told Trump he planned to escalate operations to seize full control of occupied Ukrainian territories within 60 days.
"He wants to take all of it," Trump told French President Emmanuel Macron shortly afterwards, according to a source cited by Axios.

Trump just now figured that out? Is that basis of the 50 days—to stop Putin just short of taking all of it? Is he talking tough but giving Putin enough time to finish his current plan?

According to Trump, US weapons enable Ukraine “to shoot down a lot of things”

We’re not sure what those things are, but maybe this is a clue:

There are all sorts of reports on Russian Telegram channels that Ukraine is preparing a major drone and missile attack on Moscow…. It could include up to 1,000 drones and ballistic missiles, including Neptune missiles and British Storm Shadow missiles. An attack of this magnitude could only be conducted with Western targeting data, something sure to rustle Putin’s feathers. The Russian leader has said many times that the use of Western-provided ballistic missiles on Russian territory would be seen as an attack not just by Ukraine but by Kiev’s Western backers….
If these reports are true, it would mark a continuing Trump pattern that we’ve seen in recent weeks. He basically lays down an ultimatum to a foreign country, do what he wants or be bombed. He did it with Iran. Now he’s apparently ready to do the same with Russia.

As Trump likes to say, I guess we’ll find out in a couple of weeks.