-> It's not protection against a Russian nuclear strike, it's only a deterrence, and one I just explained might not be enough in the event of the fallout from Russian aggression against a NATO Aly, which was the whole point.
It's a strong enough deterrence to where I would call it protection. The ultimate protection is eliminating the Russian state, but as long as Russia exists, you can only deter even if the US spends $1 trillion on Ukraine.
->And as a side note, it's kind of hard to rely on the strength of NATO as a defense of what Trump is doing given how badly Trump has weakened NATO.
NATO has retained all of it's current members, so I don't believe we are weaker from that aspect. In fact, ever since Russia invaded Ukraine, Sweden and Finland joined NATO (which you should give BIDEN credit for), but Russia invading Ukraine ironically helped expand NATO.
-> You asserted that Putin tells his election officials to report false numbers that make him the winner. I asked why do you think they do that, as in what is their motivation for going along with this.
They get bribed by Putin's government. If he offers them $2 million each of Russian tax money to rig the election in his favor, then they would corporate for the money. It's dishonest money, but from their perspective, who cares? They don't care about morals over $2 million. When you have $2 million to gain if you cheat, what incentive do you have to be honest? Every politician is like this (unless they want to give up power, which people will sometimes do voluntarily; it's happened on DART before; we switched head mods before).
->You said "every leader does this", as in fakes their election numbers to secure victory. Prove that claim or admit it's a stupid claim.
If a leader wants power, then why would any world leader have an incentive to be honest about election results if they lose? None. What incentive do they have to lie? Power; money; validation from their constituents. I mean, in 2020, Yang got a lot of name recognition over UBI. The idea would have done wonders in NYC. 2021 NYC election, Yang gets clobbered despite his massive name recognition compared to the others. Why? It's because elections are for show and he couldn't bribe the pollsters with enough money to get himself to be the mayor of NYC. The pollsters probably told him that if he calls them rigged, then they would make sure he "disappears". So his keep his mouth shut on the rigged election to save his skin.
The world is pretty dishonest because there is an incentive to be dishonest.
Politics is a show.