You get the feeling now that, with time running out on El Caudillo del Mar-a-Lago and his retinue of crooks and mountebanks, all the dark debts he owes to people for their help in getting elected are coming due, the debts to Vladimir Putin and the Volga Bagmen first among them. There was the extortion plot aimed at a newly elected president of Ukraine whose country already was in what is at the very least a warm war with Russia. Now, in a decision announced in the dark of a Sunday night, the administration has decided essentially to green-light a potential slaughter of the Kurdish fighters who did so much to dislodge ISIS in Iraq.

Read the rest of Charlie Pierce’s piece at Esquire.