After everyone has had time to absorb all that happened, and more importantly – all that didn’t happen, during Friday’s summit between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, seemingly endless questions swirled as to what to make of the meeting and, in particular, Trump’s weird behavior afterward. One question seemed to predominate after even Fox News’s Jacquie Heimlich noted that Putin “steamrolled” Trump, and that was the degree to which Trump was “frustrated” by the meeting. Perhaps Trump wasn’t sufficiently prepared for the consequences of walking away empty-handed.
According to one member of the White House press pool traveling to the summit, Trump was uncharacteristically very quiet after the meeting, after being quite chatty on the way out. From The Hill’s Brett Samuel’s report:
On the way to Alaska, Trump came to the back of the plane to speak to reporters roughly 20 minutes after taking off for the seven-hour flight from Joint Base Andrews in Maryland. He fielded questions ahead of his summit with Putin about what he was expecting.
But the typically talkative Trump was apparently no longer interested in taking questions once he arrived in Alaska. He did not respond to questions shouted by this reporter and others during various photo ops with Putin, nor did he take any questions at what had been billed as a joint press conference with the Russian leader.
Makes one wish to have had a microphone inside the presidential limo when Trump and Putin rode alone, or even be in the room when the two met as a total of six discussing ending the Russo-Ukrainian war.
After taking no questions from the press, and Putin speaking first for ten minutes to Trump’s three, the questions quickly arose:
The abrupt ending to the press conference left many reporters wondering whether Trump was frustrated by the summit. The Hannity interview before departing Alaska only added to those questions.
Former head of the Council on Foreign Relations Richard Haas stated, upon observing all of this, that it is astonishing how little work went into the meeting. Summits like this are meant to merely put pictures on top of agreements hammered out in minute detail beforehand, the bow on top of the present. And yet on this, Trump seemed to be free-wheeling with a trained ex-KGB agent known for his ability to manipulate, especially the easily impressed Trump. It appears to have happened again.
The naive might ask what, if anything, Putin gained by this meeting. He took home a lot. While President Zelensky got scolded in the Oval Office, Putin walked the tarmac of an American military base, on American soil, to a clapping president. The international pariah was greeted as an “alpha star” by the MAGA faithful, cheering on a war criminal. Moreover, Putin can now continue to prosecute the war in Ukraine with perhaps more freedom to say “I tried” in sitting down with Trump, the implication being that the American president is too weak to have any impact.
No wonder Trump is frustrated, which would otherwise be okay – this war needs to end. Except Trump isn’t seeking to end the war to save Ukrainian lives. No, he just wants that damned Nobel Peace Prize so badly that he called up the Norwegian foreign minister in the last week of July to politic for it. He won’t be getting it over anything from this meeting. That an American president is that self-absorbed is taken as a given, but no less humiliating.
So yes, the only sensible takeaway is that Trump was frustrated for good reason – he gave Putin everything Vlad could have wanted, while getting nothing, and for bad reasons. That elusive Nobel has never been farther away, and Ukrainians are even more on their own.
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‘The Art Of The Deal ‘ appears to consist of letting the other guy indulge in ‘ The Art Of The Steal’.
T.A.C.O.
He doesn’t know any other way, he’s such a loser.
Trump is “faccia brutt”
Trump was dejected and disappointed. Because his chances for the Noble Piece Prize now look farther away than ever.
As for Putin, those supposed “gains” he won are just press-think BS. He got nothing.
The guy who actually
The last sentence was supposed to read: The guy who actually got something out of this is Zelensky/