As last week’s White House Cabinet meeting got underway, Donald Trump took a moment to pat himself on the back for his latest breakthrough with Russia’s Vladmir Putin.
Noting brutally cold conditions in Ukraine, the American president declared, “I personally asked President Putin not to fire into Kyiv and the various towns for a week, and he agreed to do that. And I have to tell you, it was very nice. People said, ‘Don’t waste the call, you’re not going to get that.’ And he did it, and we’re very happy that they did it.”
Steve Witkoff, the White House’s controversial special envoy, took the opportunity to gush about how awesome Trump’s awesomeness is, saying the president’s special request to Putin was a reflection of Trump’s “indomitable spirit.”
There was, however, one obvious problem: Putin didn’t pause his attacks on Ukraine. Indeed, the day before the Republican’s boasts, a Russian strike on a civilian passenger train in northeastern Ukraine killed five people. A HuffPost report added, “According to both Ukrainian and outside observers, Russia has attacked Ukraine every single night” in January.
As this week got underway, Trump circled back to peddle the same discredited claim.
“I did call up President Putin and he’s agreed,” the Republican told reporters at a bill-signing event in the Oval Office. “I asked [Putin] if he wouldn’t shoot for a period of one week, no missiles going into Kyiv or any other towns, and he’s agreed to do it.”
Less than 24 hours later, The Associated Press reported:
Russia carried out a major attack on Ukraine overnight, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Tuesday, a day before representatives of the two countries were due to attend U.S.-brokered talks on ending the 4-year-old all-out war. At least 10 people were wounded in a bombardment of at least five regions of Ukraine that comprised 450 long-range drones and 70 missiles, including a record number of 32 ballistic missiles. It specifically took aim at the power grid, Zelenskyy said, as part of what Ukraine says is Moscow’s ongoing campaign to deny civilians light, heating and running water during the coldest winter in years. So, to recap: Trump praised Putin last week, thanking the Russian leader for pausing attacks in Ukraine, while Putin launched additional attacks in Ukraine. And this week, Trump did the same thing, again celebrating his successful appeal to Putin, touting the Russian leader’s willingness to pause the deadly violence while the latter was committing additional acts of deadly violence. It’s possible that the American president, eager to applaud Putin, doesn’t fully understand that Russia continues to attack Ukraine. Perhaps Trump doesn’t believe what’s actually happening on the ground. Either way, the Republican’s boasts are literally unbelievable.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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