Donald Trump finally called “bullshit” on Vladimir Putin this week, although no one seems to know what it means. An explanation, and perhaps the best, is that Trump, late, has recognized what has long been obvious to the rest of us: may Putin play it, pretending to speak of peace while unloading the war of aggression of Russia in Ukraine. Trump announced on Monday that he was “not satisfied with President Putin” and canceled his own Pentagon to restart arms expeditions to Ukraine. A day later, at a meeting from the Cabinet to the White House, Trump said without Putin, “we get a lot of bullshit by Putin”, observing that when the two are talking – as they have frequently in recent months – it is “very nice all the time, but it has proven to be without meaning”.
Quite early, the Wall Street Journal The editorial committee rented the “Pivot on Mr. Putin of Trump. We could practically hear the sighs of relief in European capitals. In Kyiv, Ukrainian officials praised the news, even if they were naturally wary. In Capitol Hill, the Republicans have seized the time to announce that they were now expecting to call a vote this month on bipartite legislation – sponsored by more than eighty senators – which would allow Trump to impose a tariff paralyzing up to five hundred on countries that buy Russian oil, gas or uranium.
On Wednesday, the head of the majority of the Senate, John Thune, revealed the plans to move forward with the bill. Lindsey Graham, who was the main supporter of the measure in the Senate, said Trump “was ready to act for us”, although a nameless house manager said Politico that the administration still had scruples to be “micro -management” by the Congress on foreign policy. Later in the day, I spoke with Richard Blumenthal, the main democratic promoter of what he called “a measure from which the time has come”. Blumenthal was at the airport with Graham, on the way to meet Volodymyr Zelensky and other European leaders. What had changed with the president? I asked him. “To judge by what I have seen publicly and what I heard in private, he recognizes that Putin plays it and the United States for fools,” said Blumenthal. “I think he rightly feels faced, and Putin has slowed down the United States.”
Blumenthal and Graham both qualify the bill as a “crushing” punishment for those who help the war effort of Russia; In our conversation, Blumenthal added that he had been told that, more than once, Putin had raised her concerns concerning the measure in private with Trump – which suggested that his passage could constitute a real incentive for the Russian president to come to the table. But Trump has not yet offered approval beyond that he was “strongly” looking at the measure. He also did not ask the congress additional military assistance for Ukraine, which will soon become an urgent problem, when the $ 1.25 billion aid package that Joe Biden approved at the end of his presidency was exhausted later this summer. There is no indication when Trump will ever do. And, if he does not do it, will it be important to the fate of Ukraine which he once cursed Putin during a meeting of the cabinet?
The risk here is in the pious wishes that Trump has done something other than recognizing the embarrassing reality that Putin is not ready to put an end to the war he has launched himself just because Trump asks him if not to do. Trump has certainly taken a while to admit the evidence, that the peace agreement he promised to deliver within twenty-four hours after returning to his functions does not exist-a hundred and seventy days later. But does that also mean that Trump has become a convert overnight to the cause of Ukraine? Is he now, like some fervent corners of old-fashioned republican hope, increasing sanctions to Russia, sending billions more in kyiv and locking arms with American European allies?
This is the game that many foreign policy hands expected that Trump could withdraw in January – it would be an intelligent offer for a lever effect to force Putin at the negotiating table, they thought and would have the additional advantage of breaking the conventional wisdom that Trump was willing to sell in Moscow. But not only did this not happen; Trump leaned strongly in the other direction, sagging Putin, voting with Russia to the United Nations Security Council, repressing the President of Ukraine at the Oval Office. So what is Trump’s true policy? For a frequent switch like him, can anyone ever say which flop or flop is real?
The most final conclusion of this episode so far is perhaps not what it reveals about Trump’s real intentions towards Putin as what she tells us about the dysfunction within the Trump administration. After the news of the Pentagon’s arms judgment to Ukraine was reported, the president himself seemed to know nothing more, raising two possibilities, who are both alarming – as he was really not aware and the host of Fox News who became the defense secretary Pete Hegseth was authorized to make such a consecutive decision to his part, or Trump had and had changed his mind and had changed his mind. On Wednesday, no scenario could be excluded, such as the “awaiting Godot” dialogue between Trump and Shawn McCreesh, journalist for the Times::
Do you have that? Of course not. As Blumenthal observed it when we spoke on Wednesday, the exchange reminded him of his old age of prosecutor: “Are you lying now, or are you lying then?” The response to Trump’s twists left the opening of one or the other interpretation. What has come more clearly is his permanent wish to be considered as taking all decisions at all times, which is both physically impossible and absurd.
The reality reflected here is that he does not trust anyone, and this includes those, such as Hegseth and his Defense Subsecretaire for politics, Elbridge Colby, who called themselves the ideologues of Trump’s doctrine. By cutting the flow of arms to Ukraine, I am sure they thought they realized the wishes of Trump. But they forgot a basic working rule for Trump, which is that “America first” is Trump that it is. The president himself argued this point during the intra-Maga Fragie on his threat to bomb Iranian nuclear installations, which many self-proclaimed first-year-old figures considered a betrayal of Trump’s commitment to avoid military tangles of the Middle East. As Trump explained to THE Atlantic Michael Scherer at the time, “Well, since I am the one who first developed America, and considering that the term was not used before my arrival, I think I am the one who decides.” Then he went ahead and bombed Iran. The correction of this week’s certification course on Russia took place in similar lines. Ideology, for Trump, is never the most important thing, in a city where it is too often considered the only thing that matters.
So, is the love story between Trump and Putin for good? Throughout the week, I thought of Trump and his mentor Roy Cohn, the avatar of the McCarthyism who taught the New York budding real estate developer how to play hard ball policy. The two were once so close that they spoke as often as five times a day; Trump kept a photo of Cohn in his office. However, after the diagnosis of Cohn with AIDS In 1984, Trump “dropped him like a hot potato”, as the former secretary of Cohn said, and did not speak to his funeral. But, years later, it was Cohn’s lawyer at the naked joints that Trump often had a pine when he was in the White House. The fact is that nothing is forever with Trump, except for his own perceived interest. This is Trump’s first lesson, and, in geopolitics or something else, the one that many have not yet learned. ♦
