Hegseth meeting Zelensky wears a Russian tie to clearly show Putin is his boss.

[summer_in_TX]

8. Hegseth's tie is a deliberate, malignant signal to Zelenskyy.

Besides Hegseth wearing that "plain Russian tie," the summit is actually set to happen in Budapest.

Fascinating article from Jim Stewartson. (The second part covers another malignant sign, the live fire of artillery over the highway.) America answered back, big time.

Budapest by itself is a sign. By holding a summit with Putin where Russia agreed in 1994 to respect Ukraine’s territorial integrity in exchange for Ukraine giving up its nukes—the Budapest Memorandum—Trump and Putin are trying to rewrite history.

[snip…]

Kirill Dmitriev, Putin’s personal aide and sovereign wealth fund manager, saw the same sign from Hegseth—a set of wide stripes of white, blue, and red on his tie—and Dmitriev’s semiosis, his interpretation, was different than JD Vance. Not only did he recognize the flag immediately, he mirrored it, and followed it up with the QAnon slogan “WWG1WGA.”

Liz Crokin, one of the most vile Pizzagate and QAnon propagandists of the last decade, a woman who Mike Flynn once said was “like my daughter,” also recognized the flag. She took it as an opportunity to portray Russia and the United States as friends—which Putin’s proxy was happy to acknowledge and agree with: “BOSS MOVE.”

This is malignant semiotics as psychological warfare: deliberately ambiguous signs that can be interpreted in just the way you want them to be by the right people. In this case, Hegseth was just showing his true colors; his white supremacist revanchist worldview is far more aligned with Putin’s than with the American protesters today."

It’s a Sign! — The Semiotics of Firing Artillery Over Protests