BIG TALK: Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky is in Washington today to meet with President Trump, who appears once again to have taken the Russian side in the three-year-old invasion. Zelensky will be accompanied by a host of European leaders, including President Emmanuel Macron of France.

  Trump is expected to present Zelensky with what is essentially the Russian plan for ending the war; give up claim to Crimea and the eastern Donbas region.

  Russian President Vladimir Putin is intent on restoring Russia to its power under the Soviet Union and weakening the NATO alliance. Only hours after Zelensky arrived in Washington, a Russian attack killed 10 people.

  And yet Trump posted on his Truth Social, “President Zelenskyy of Ukraine can end the war with Russia almost immediately, if he wants to, or he can continue to fight.”

  The carrot dangling in front of Zelensky is a possible US guarantee of security to back the peace deal. But Zelensky has always said he would not surrender territory taken by force.

  On Friday Putin said, “We would like to move towards resolving all issues by peaceful means,” which he could do on any day if he likes. But he keeps attacking Ukraine. He refers to the “situation around Ukraine,” rather than what it is, a war.

  Putin knows how to seduce Trump with flattery. During Friday’s press conference he echoed Trump’s oft-repeated claim that there would have been no war if Trump had been president. 

  Trump also shared that Putin told him he believed the 2020 US election was rigged because of widespread mail-in voting, saying, “you can’t have a great democracy with mail-in voting.” This from the king of fixed elections. 

CAPITAL OCCUPATION:  The Trump administration plans to expand the National Guard presence in Washington with troops committed by the  governors of Ohio, West Virginia, and South Carolina. Eight hundred guardsmen are already deployed in DC.

  The Washington Post reports that six masked and unidentified officers grabbed a food delivery driver as came out of a Northwest Washington coffee shop Saturday morning. They drove him away in an unmarked vehicle.

  Video recorded one bystander saying, “You guys are ruining this country, you know that?” and one of the officers replied, “Liberals already ruined it.”

THE WAR ROOM: Mass protests broke out in Israel … hundreds of thousands of Israelis filled city streets, and blocked roads and highways …  as the military prepares for a major assault on Gaza City. Opponents fear this will mean the death of the remaining hostages in the hands of Hamas militants.

  Occupation will certainly bring more death and starvation to Gazans. More than 60,000 have died in the war.

LIKE A HURRICANE: Hurricane Erin has brought high surf and rip tides to the East Coast. The storm brought heavy rain and flooding to Puerto Rico over the weekend. Erin is a Category 3 with winds up to 129 mph.

THE OBIT PAGE: British actor Terence Stamp, who in his breakout role as the sailor Billy Budd in the film version of the Herman Melville tale was described as having “heartbreak blue eyes,” died yesterday at age 87.

  His roles ranged from being a swordsman in “Far From the Madding Crowd” and a transgender nightclub entertainer in “The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert,” to a tyrant from another planet in “Superman.” He appeared in more than 50 films.

— Celebrity lawyer Gerry Spence, known for his famous clients and his fringed buckskin jacket, died at age 97.

  Spence was the cowboy of the courtroom who rarely missed a shot. Among his clients acquitted; Aman who shot his former wife in front of eight witnesses; A white supremacist charged with killing a federal agent at Ruby Ridge in Idaho; Imelda Marcos, widow of the Philippines president accused of looting the  national treasury and famously spending much of it on shoes.

  He also won a string of civil lawsuits, among them, $52 million from McDonalds. He once he once told a jury, “You’ve got to get the hogs out of the spring if you want to get the water cleared up.”

  Speaking once about civil damages he told an interviewer in his baritone; “What do you have in life … reputation, and money. And if you take my reputation, shouldn’t you give me money?” 

THE SPIN RACK:  Texas Democrats are expected to return to the state today to allow a vote on congressional redistricting that would favor the Republicans. — Three people were killed and nine wounded in a gang-related shooting at a bar in Crown Heights, Brooklyn early yesterday morning. Three shooters had opened fire with  9-millimeter and .45-caliber guns. — The union representing Air Canada’s 10,000 flight attendants said that it would defy the government’s back-to-work order and continue their strike paralyzing the airline. —  Five former Wisconsin women’s basketball players filed a federal lawsuit against former coach Marisa Moseley saying that they were “psychologically abused by their college basketball coach and the university that failed to protect them.” The suit accuses Mosely of  toying with the mental health of players. Moseley never had a winning season with the Badgers.  

BELOW THE FOLD: US retailers have ordered fewer artificial Christmas trees this year because of higher prices caused by President Trump’s tariffs. Halloween decorations are already in the stores. Labor Day is two weeks away.

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