President Donald Trump became a laughingstock over the weekend after he appeared to forget that Alaska is part of the United States, just as he turned soft on an earlier vow to finally take a hard line against Russian President Vladimir Putin to end the war in Ukraine.
Trump’s slip came Friday during a Fox News interview with Bret Baier aboard Air Force One, just before the president departed for Alaska for the first U.S. summit with Putin since 2021. Speaking ahead of the talks, Trump aired a tough tone, telling Baier:
“…If it’s bad. If it’s something I don’t see a future in… I’m a deal guy, if it’s something I don’t see a future, I’m gone. I’ll leave. I don’t have to do a press, I’ll just say, ‘Not gonna be a deal, I’m out of here.’ And I’ll go back to the United States.”
The reference to returning “to the United States” from Alaska, the nation’s 49th state, added in 1959, ignited a wave of mockery online. The Instagram account calltoactivism amplified the clip, captioning: “Is Trump experiencing cognitive decline or is he just the dumbest president we ever had?”
One person in the comments section remarked: “Hey Jake Tapper, your next book is literally writing itself every damn day,” a reference to Tapper’s recent exposé on President Joe Biden’s cognitive decline near the end of his term and the efforts by Democrats to conceal it.
Last week, Trump threatened “very severe consequences” for Putin if he refused to make a peace deal. But after the two leaders met on Friday, Trump emerged without announcing any breakthrough or any new penalties for Moscow. Instead, Putin received a red-carpet welcome in Anchorage, complete with a jet flyover and a 10-minute ride with Trump in the armored presidential limousine known as The Beast.
Putin left the sit-down with no visible sign of the harsh measures Trump had vowed just hours earlier. Instead, U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff told CNN the Russian president “agreed to allow security guarantees for Ukraine” and offered vague concessions on territorial “land swaps.”
The Kremlin, however, has not confirmed any such moves and continues to demand that four occupied Ukrainian regions—Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson—remain under its control. Previously, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky had criticized these concessions as unacceptable.
For months, tensions had been mounting between the White House and the Kremlin, with Trump talking tough on social media to vent his frustration over Putin’s war. In April, after Russia unleashed its deadliest barrage on Kyiv in nine months, Trump declared he was “not happy” and urged Putin to “STOP!” while pressing Ukraine to accept a ceasefire that never materialized.
That attack saw Moscow fire 70 missiles and 145 drones, most aimed at the capital — a strike Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said was intended to pressure Washington.
“I am not happy with the Russian strikes on KYIV. Not necessary, and very bad timing. Vladimir, STOP! 5000 soldiers a week are dying. Let’s get the Peace Deal DONE!” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
But after the meeting with Putin on Friday, Trump made an astonishing about-face, suggesting a shift in U.S. policy toward Russia and floating concessions that favored Moscow’s demands, even suggesting on Truth Social that Ukraine give up Crimea, annexed by Russia in 2014, and abandon its bid to join NATO.
Zelensky has “been told in no uncertain terms by Trump… that he is going to have to accept that the territory that’s been lost is mostly lost for the long term,” Robert English, Director of Central European Studies at the University of Southern California, according to CNN.
Those remarks set the stage for a tense Monday meeting at the White House between Trump, Zelensky, and a delegation of European leaders, including France’s Emmanuel Macron, Germany’s Friedrich Merz, Britain’s Keir Starmer, and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.
The coordinated visit reflects fears that Trump was steering too close to Moscow’s wishlist.
“The very fact that they’re all there together and trying to reach a common understanding is critical,” English said. But he added that negotiations are now shifting away from Ukraine’s NATO aspirations toward “crafting long-term security arrangements” that stop short of membership.
Trump’s meeting with Putin stood in stark contrast to his meeting with Zelensky in February, when Trump berated the Ukrainian leader at the White House, saying, “You don’t have the cards.”
Putin received warm handshakes, praise for his “energetic and sincere efforts” at peace, and a limo ride that critics said underscored Putin’s sway over the U.S. president.
Critics said the Alaska summit illustrated Trump’s pattern of striking a combative posture against Putin in advance, then pivoting once face-to-face. Ahead of the meeting, he declared, “within the first two minutes, three minutes, four or five minutes,” he would know if it was a “good meeting or a bad meeting.”
The Fox News chyron read: “Applying Pressure: Trump threatens consequences if talks fail.”
Instead, Trump left the encounter echoing Russia’s narrative and calling for Kyiv to make painful territorial concessions. Putin aide Kirill Dmitriev even reposted Trump’s words on social media, calling them “the real solution” and urging “peace to prevail during the Big Day.”
The summit also carried an economic undercurrent, with critics noting Trump appeared more focused on potential business opportunities than on advancing America’s strategic interests. Aboard Air Force One, he praised Putin’s entourage of financiers and trade officials: “I noticed (Putin’s) bringing a lot of business people from Russia, and that’s good. I like that, because they want to do business, but they’re not doing business until we get the war solved.” Among them were Finance Minister Anton Siluanov and Kirill Dmitriev, head of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund.
Trump even suggested he might raise commercial ties if the talks made progress.
“If we make progress, I would discuss (business opportunities), because that’s one of the things that they would like; they’d like to get a piece of what I built in terms of the economy,” he told reporters, according to CNN. Yet experts caution that a return to business as usual would be no simple task. Since Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, more than 1,000 Western companies have withdrawn from the country, with Chinese firms and Russian knock-offs like “Stars Coffee” filling the void.
Meanwhile, the outcome of Friday’s summit has rattled European allies who fear being sidelined in the peace negotiations. Since NATO’s founding in 1949, the U.S. has been the linchpin of the alliance. Now, as Trump inches closer to Putin’s position, leaders worry Washington could undercut Europe’s security framework and cause irreparable harm.
Zelensky’s Monday visit will test whether Europe can stiffen Trump’s resolve or whether Ukraine is being pushed into swallowing what English described as a “bitter pill”—the loss of Crimea and most of the Donbas region.
Either way, Trump’s Alaska stumble became symbolic of the moment—a president who forgot where he was.
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