As someone who is scarcely left-wing and would love to see The Donald actually Make America Great Again, I must say that Mr. Art of the Deal is looking like Mr. Clueless Buffoon when it comes to Ukraine.
Say what you will, Biden kept Putin’s invasion from being the three-day cakewalk Putin had imagined.
Team Trump has made every mistake a clueless negotiator could make – announcing the concessions you will make before negotiations have even begun; failing to follow through on any of your threats and deadlines; sending uninformed dummies to the table; and trumpeting (pun intended) “progress” and “successes” when there obviously have been none.
The Alaska “summit” was the last embarrassing straw for me. It sent every possible wrong message. Putin and his cronies had to be drunk on champagne and euphoria by the time their flight landed back in Moscow. The must think Trump is the all-time useful idiot.
I think Trump projects himself onto Putin. He sees Putin as a “winner” like himself, a pragmatist who thinks only in terms of deals and dollars. He has no clue as to the depth of evil and ideological commitment with which he is dealing. Zelensky, on the other hand, is a peon, the sort of loser to whom TV Trump would've said "You're fired!"
I think Trump actually agrees with Putin that Ukraine is not a real country, that it rightfully belongs to Russia, and that the war is just a nuisance that should go away so the big boys, the winners, can just get on with their deals. He has no clue as to depth of hatred that Ukrainians (and all former Soviet republics) have for Russia.
The only way to end the Ukraine war is to bring Russia to its knees economically, which is easily enough done. Despite all the posturing, Trump will never do anything that actually gives Russia an incentive to end the war. He is the best thing that ever happened for Putin and the worst imaginable thing for Europe and Ukraine. I say this while agreeing that the European countries do need to take more responsibility for their own security and defense, but caving to Putin the way Trump is doing is not the way to accomplish this.
I have lost at least 50% of whatever respect and hope I had for The Donald. The way that Mr. “I Can End It in 24 Hours” has flipped and flopped and threatened and caved and stumbled and fumbled is a national embarrassment. I can’t imagine what the sophisticated European leaders say about Trump behind closed doors – or, alas, maybe I can – but I feel sure they wish there was some plug they could pull to shut him up and make him go away. Frankly, so do I.
