“Before I even arrive at the Oval Office, shortly after we all together win the presidency, we will have the horrible war between Russia and Ukraine settled. It will be settled. The war is going to be settled. I’ll get them both. I know Zelenskyy, I know Putin. It’ll be done within 24 hours, you watch.”
— Donald Trump, remarks at a campaign rally in Erie, Pennsylvania, July 29, 2023
Well, no.
The war rages on. Trump’s “diplomacy” is in shambles, and in an astonishing confession of powerlessness, Trump revealed that he doesn’t understand Vladimir Putin at all, even as Putin is making it clear that he absolutely gets Trump.
The result is not simply the dramatic failure of Trump’s signature foreign policy campaign promise, but a cry of frustration from a man who never, ever admits that he’s wrong.
For years, Trump has sycophantically fawned over Putin, rationalized his crimes and parroted his talking points. To win the favor of his buddy in the Kremlin, Trump has upended decades of American foreign policy, switching sides in the United Nations to vote with Putin, insulting our NATO allies, while lavishing the Russian thug with praise for his supposed strength and brilliance and downplaying his negative qualities.
(When a Fox News anchor noted that Putin was a “killer” in a 2017 interview, Trump replied: “There are a lot of killers. You think our country’s so innocent?”)
Trump was so confident in his relationship — he imagined it was a friendship — that he repeatedly promised that he could end the war in Ukraine within 24 hours. He assumed that Putin would do him a solid. Putin had other ideas.
Just days after the two men spoke for two hours about a possible ceasefire, Russia launched a massive drone and missile attack on Ukraine. A frustrated Trump posted: “I’ve always had a very good relationship with Vladimir Putin of Russia,” Trump posted on Truth Social, “ But something has happened to him. He has gone absolutely CRAZY.”
This, of course, is delusional because Putin has always been like this. A brutal autocrat. A murderer who has been waging a genocidal war against his democratic neighbor.
But Trump, who has invested so much in his relationship with Putin, seems shocked, shocked to discover all of this now. “He is needlessly killing a lot of people, and I’m not just talking about soldiers,” he complained, as if this was not precisely what Putin has been doing for years now.
But while he could tolerate the killing, Trump is clearly upset by the humiliation. As Putin escalates his brutal attack on Ukraine, he is not simply defying Trump; he is also repaying years of Trump’s sycophantic groveling and appeasement with an unmistakable, deadly middle finger.
As Republican Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska noted over the weekend, “Putin is making a mockery of Trump, and Trump keeps attacking Zelenskyy.”
Indeed, this may be the great irony of Trump 2.0. While oligarchs and institutions quail in fear of Trump’s wrath and rush to bend the knee, it seems increasingly apparent that the only ones who really, truly understand Trump are Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Trump may be a bully, but Putin is the uber-bully, and he knows that deep down, Trump is perpetually frightened and needy, easily flattered and even more easily played.
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