Date: Tuesday, 21 October 2025
https://ericzuesse.substack.com/p/why-only-idiots-will-negotiate-with
https://theduran.com/why-only-idiots-will-negotiate-with-the-trump-administration-ever
Why Only Idiots Will Negotiate With the Trump Administration Ever Again
20 October 2025, by Eric Zuesse. (All of my recent articles can be seen here.)
On October 20th, the Washington Post headlined “EXCLUSIVE: Rubio promised to betray U.S. informants to get Trump’s El Salvador prison deal: To secure Washington’s access to El Salvador’s most notorious prison, the secretary of state made an extraordinary offer to President Nayib Bukele.”, and reported:
In the days before the Trump administration deported hundreds of Venezuelan immigrants to a notorious prison in El Salvador, the president of that country demanded something for himself: the return of nine MS-13 gang leaders in U.S. custody.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, in a March 13 phone call with Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, promised the request would be fulfilled, according to officials familiar with the conversation. But there was one obstacle: Some of the MS-13 members Bukele wanted were “informants” under the protection of the U.S. government, Rubio told him.
To deport them to El Salvador, Attorney General Pam Bondi would need to terminate the Justice Department’s arrangements with those men, Rubio said. He assured Bukele that Bondi would complete that process and Washington would hand over the MS-13 leaders.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio promised to betray MS-13 informants in exchange for access to El Salvador's most notorious prison.
Rubio’s extraordinary pledge illustrates the extent to which the Trump administration was willing to meet Bukele’s demands as it negotiated what would become one of the signature agreements of President Donald Trump’s early months in office. While the outlines of the quid pro quo have been public for months, the Trump administration’s willingness to renege on secret arrangements made with informants who had aided U.S. investigations has not been previously reported. …
In promising to terminate the informant arrangements, current and former Justice Department officials say Rubio threatened to undercut years of work by U.S. law enforcement to apprehend and secure the cooperation of high-ranking members of one of the world’s most deadly gangs.
“The deal is a deep betrayal of U.S. law enforcement, whose agents risked their lives to apprehend the gang members,” said Douglas Farah, a U.S. contractor who worked with federal officials to investigate and help dismantle the MS-13 gang.
Nixing the agreements also threatens to damage the credibility of the Justice Department, which routinely relies on informants to build cases against high-level criminals, officials said. …
At least three of the MS-13 leaders Bukele requested had divulged incriminating information about members of his government. … The others remain in the United States, waiting to learn whether they, too, will be handed over to the very government they were cooperating against. …
“The Trump Administration’s results speak for themselves,” said Tommy Pigott, a State Department spokesman. “Hardened TdA gang members are back in Venezuela … MS-13 gang members are being prosecuted in the U.S. and El Salvador. And Americans are safer as a result of these incredible efforts.” ….
It is reasonable to presume that the one of the three which Bukele has who had “divulged incriminating information about members of his government” is now dead, missing, or otherwise being treated worse than the other tens of thousands in El Salvador’s mega-prison are being treated.
Why would any Government trust a Government like America’s, enough to negotiate with it?
And why should any Government that has already negotiated an agreement with this Government continue abiding by its terms? Would it be fair and reasonable for all such Governments to make continued compliance by them conditional upon Washington’s agreeing in clear terms to Washington’s now making additional concessions? If Washington then declines to provide any such, then should the other country take action to separate itself from its alliance with this rogue regime that sells-out even its allies?
To be a friend of the U.S. Government is an extremely dangerous situation to be in. This has aleady been amply proven by the enormous harms that Europe’s alliance with it, after the U.S. regime in 2014 perpetrated an extremely bloody coup that overthrew the democratically elected neutralist head-of-state in Ukraine and installed there a rabidly anti-Russian regime that since has drained over $400 billion from America’s European ‘allies’ in order to sustain on Russia’s border this rabidly anti-Russian government there (installed BY the U.S. regime), have done to Europe. It’s causing a severe recession — perhaps ultimately a depression — in Europe. WHY should they continue this? The actual question is: SHOULD they continue this?
After all: This problem didn’t really START with Trump.
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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s latest book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.
