Just over a month ago, President Donald Trump appeared to finally grasp what pretty much every other leader of the free world has long known: that Russian President Vladimir Putin is untrustworthy. Speaking to reporters during a Cabinet meeting in July, Trump said, “We get a lot of bull---- thrown at us by Putin, if you want to know the truth. He’s very nice to us all the time, but it turns out to be meaningless.”
Trump used almost exactly the same profanity to describe his frustration with the lack of progress toward peace in another Cabinet meeting last week. “It doesn’t matter what they say,” Trump responded when presented with claims that Russia would not agree to a peace deal as long as Volodymyr Zelenskyy remains president of Ukraine. “Everybody’s posturing. It’s all bull----, OK?”
Just over a month ago, President Donald Trump appeared to finally grasp what pretty much every other leader of the free world has long known.
This full-circle moment, however, further underscores the disappointing results of Trump’s Putin summit in Alaska. In the press conference afterward, Trump claimed the pair had “really made some great progress today” in “an extremely productive meeting.” In the president’s own words, it was “a great and very successful day in Alaska.”
Within a week of this apparently “great progress,” Russia launched over 700 drones and 40 missiles into Ukraine, one of which struck an American-owned electronics plant. And on Wednesday night, it carried out yet another massive attack — its second-largest aerial assault on Ukraine since its invasion in 2022 — which killed at least 23 people, including four children, and damaged European Union and British Council buildings in Kyiv.
Russia’s continued acts of aggression do indeed back up the president’s assertion that the Kremlin and its representatives cannot be taken at their word. But the Russian assaults have revealed Trump’s claims of a “successful” meeting with Putin to be just as hollow.
Surrounded by his Cabinet, even Trump struggled to hide his frustration. “Every conversation I have with him is a good conversation,” he said. “And then unfortunately, a bomb is loaded up into Kyiv or someplace, and then I get very angry about it.”
But frustration is not nearly enough. This strategy of simply recycling the same expressions of anger remains woefully ineffective in the face of Putin’s attacks and duplicity. Now might be a good time for any of the officials who flanked Trump on Monday, or who participated in his Cabinet meeting on Tuesday, to remind their boss that merely voicing outrage about Putin’s actions does nothing to actually stop them.
We know this because we’ve seen it all before.
In March, Trump said that he was “very angry” and “pissed off” about Putin’s criticisms of Zelenskyy. In April, he pleaded “Vladimir, STOP!” on Truth Social. In May, just six days after posting that he had spoken with Putin over the phone and that he believed “it went very well,” Trump reversed course, complaining that the Russian president had “gone absolutely CRAZY!” and telling reporters that he’s “killing people, and I don’t like it at all.”
This strategy of simply recycling the same expressions of anger remains woefully ineffective.
Indeed, in the months since Trump returned to the White House, Moscow has more than doubled the number of drones and missiles fired toward Ukraine compared to the final six months of Joe Biden’s presidency. That Russian forces have made sizable gains in Ukrainian territory this summer will only further complicate any potential peace talks between the two nations, or whatever “negotiation” Vice President JD Vance continues to insist is necessary to bring an end to this conflict.
Ultimately, Trump’s 180-degree turn on Putin represents not only his fizzling attempts to bring an end to this conflict (he is more than 200 days into his pledge to end the war in 24 hours — and counting), but also more broadly the consequences of his failure to appropriately handle his executive powers. Over the course of his second term, Trump has reversed course on multiple issues including tariffs, the release of the Epstein files and whom ICE should be targeting in immigration raids.
All too often, the one person who most clearly highlights Donald Trump’s presidential weaknesses is Donald Trump himself. However, one could say by now that his Russian counterpart is a close second.