EVER SINCE DONALD TRUMP RETURNED to the White House, the darnedest thing has been happening in Ukraine. Every day or so, Trump says Russia wouldn’t have attacked Ukraine if he were president. And every time he says it, Russia attacks Ukraine.
You might have thought that by now, Trump would stop saying it, since Russia’s continuing onslaught makes a mockery of his boasts. But he’s no more fazed by this falsification than he is by the evidence that he lost the 2020 election. He just keeps repeating his story.
In March, Trump proposed a 30-day ceasefire. Ukraine accepted the proposal, but Russia didn’t. Russian forces pushed into eastern Ukraine, and on April 13, Russia fired missiles into Sumy, a Ukrainian city, killing at least 34 civilians and injuring more than 100.
When reporters asked Trump about the missile strike, he excused it as “a mistake” and said the war had started only because Vladimir Putin “had so little respect for [Joe] Biden.” “If I were president,” said Trump, “that war would have never started.”
The next day, Trump claimed that in his first term, he had deterred Putin from invading Ukraine. “I told him, ‘Don’t do it,’” said Trump. But now that Trump was back in office, Putin seemed strangely undeterred. While Trump was touting his magical ability to rein in Putin, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov repeated that Russia wouldn’t accept Trump’s ceasefire plan. Meanwhile, along the front, Russian troops continued their assaults on Ukraine.
On April 17, Trump bragged again that he had deterred Russia in his first term. “I spoke to President Putin about it a lot,” said Trump. “There’s no way he would’ve ever gone in if I were president.”
The next day, Russia fired missiles into Kharkiv, killing a civilian and injuring more than 100 others. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky proposed a moratorium on strikes against civilian targets. Putin rejected it.
On April 22, in an interview with Time, Trump was pressed about a promise he had made in his 2024 campaign. “You said you would end the war in Ukraine on Day One,” the interviewer reminded him. Trump dismissed the quote. “I said that as an exaggeration,” he scoffed. “Obviously, people know that when I said that, it was said in jest.” But he repeated that the war “would have never happened if I was president.”
Again, Putin defied him. A day after the Time interview, Russia launched a missile and drone barrage against Kyiv, hitting five neighborhoods and killing a dozen people.
Trump, in response, tried to do what he claimed to have done in his first term: talk Putin out of further aggression. “Vladimir, STOP!” he wrote on Truth Social. “Lets [sic] get the Peace Deal DONE!” Despite Russia’s persistent bombardment, Trump insisted that Putin wanted peace:
Reporter: This proposal that you put on the table, it’s a 30-day ceasefire proposal. Your national security team presented it to both Ukraine and Russia. Two months ago, Ukraine agreed to that ceasefire proposal immediately. Russia has not. And my question is: Is Russia the obstacle to peace. . . .
Trump: I don’t think so. I think that they both want peace right now.
Again, Trump said the war “would have never happened if I were president,” since Putin “understood that I would not be happy” if Russia were to attack Ukraine. The next day, April 25, Trump announced, “Work on the overall Peace Deal between Russia and Ukraine is going smoothly.” He added, “They are very close to a deal. . . . Most of the major points are agreed to.”
No such deal materialized. Four days later, as Russian forces continued to advance, another Putin mouthpiece—Dmitry Medvedev, the deputy chair of the Russian Security Council—declared that the only acceptable outcome of the war was the destruction of Ukraine’s government.
In an interview on April 29, Trump assured ABC’s Terry Moran, “Because of me, I do believe that he’s [Putin] willing to stop the fighting.” Moran was incredulous: “You think Vladimir Putin wants peace?” Trump stood by his man: “I think he does, yes. I think he does.”
On May 2, Trump told NBC’s Kristen Welker that his magic chemistry with Putin was already working. “If I didn’t get involved, they [Russia] would be fighting right now for all of Ukraine,” said Trump. “If it weren’t me, they would keep going.”
But Russia did keep going. From one town to another, its troops continued to advance.
On May 6, a reporter asked Trump “what type of progress” his overtures to Putin had achieved. “A lot,” said Trump. “I think Russia wanted to take all of Ukraine, and they’ve stopped.”
They hadn’t stopped. Again, Trump proposed an unconditional ceasefire. And again, the Kremlin rejected it, insisting on impossible conditions.
Trump responded by welcoming Russia’s demands and shifting the burden to Ukraine. “President Putin of Russia doesn’t want to have a Cease Fire Agreement with Ukraine, but rather wants to meet on Thursday, in Turkey, to negotiate a possible end to the BLOODBATH,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “Ukraine should agree to this, IMMEDIATELY.”
Trump refused to punish Russia. On May 12, a reporter asked him whether he would impose “sanctions on Russia if Putin doesn’t agree with the 30-day ceasefire.” Trump reaffirmed his faith in Putin’s regime: “I have a feeling they’re going to agree. I do. I have a feeling.”
They didn’t. Zelensky offered to meet with Putin in Istanbul, but Putin spurned the invitation. Again, Trump made excuses for Putin. “Nothing’s going to happen until Putin and I get together,” Trump told reporters. “And obviously, he wasn’t going to go.”
On May 16, Fox News host Bret Baier reminded Trump: “You said, ‘Stop bombing.’ He [Putin] hasn’t stopped bombing. He’s not at the table.” But Trump—with the same delusional confidence he routinely expresses about massive fraud in the 2020 election—insisted, “He is at the table.” Throughout the interview, Trump tried to shift blame to Zelensky.
The next day, Russia launched its biggest drone attack of the three-year war.
On May 19, Trump had a two-hour phone call with Putin. “The tone and spirit of the conversation were excellent,” Trump declared on Truth Social. As a result, he promised, “Russia and Ukraine will immediately start negotiations toward a Ceasefire.”
The ceasefire didn’t happen. Instead, last week, Russia launched more than 300 drones and missiles into Ukraine, killing more civilians.
By this point, it was clear that Trump’s boasts about deterring Putin were empty. “He doesn’t seem willing to do anything that you want him to do,” a reporter told Trump. “Do you still believe that, that he wouldn’t have launched the war?”
Trump clung to his intertwined myths: “If I were president—if the election weren’t rigged—you wouldn’t have had the war.”
THE SADDEST THING about Trump’s Ukraine delusion is that he really could have deterred Putin from extending or escalating the war. But that would have required action, not braggadocio. At every turn, Trump refused to antagonize the dictator he thought was his friend.
Last Wednesday, after another barrage of Russian missiles and drones, a reporter asked Trump, “What stopped you from imposing new sanctions on Russia?” Trump answered that peace might be at hand. “If I think I’m close to getting a deal,” he explained, “I don’t want to screw it up by doing that.”
Then, on Friday, Fox News reporter Peter Doocy tried to ask Trump about the challenges of dealing with “a very stubborn Vladimir Putin.” Trump, offended that Putin was being singled out, interrupted the question. “And Zelensky,” Trump added. “Very stubborn Zelensky, too.”
What Trump doesn’t understand is that the world’s crises and tragedies—the war in Ukraine, the war in Gaza, the October 2023 massacre in Israel, the plight of Afghans abandoned by the United States—aren’t a stage for his ego. He treats these scenes of suffering as opportunities to promote himself, by crowing that if he had been president, they never would have happened. He doesn’t understand that being president is a job, and the job is to alleviate crises, not exploit them.
Putin recognizes that this is how Trump thinks. He knows that the American president, while yapping that the war never would have happened on his watch, won’t lift a finger against the aggressor.
And that’s why the war goes on.
Great Job Will Saletan & the Team @ The Bulwark Source link for sharing this story.
