So much for ending the Ukraine War in 24 hours.
It’s been six months since Donald Trump was sworn in as the 47th president. On the campaign trail, Trump promised the American people that he would end the Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war with Ukraine within 24 hours of assuming the presidency. He later amended that promise, claiming he would actually end the war before he even took office. When reporters inquired about his plan, what exactly he would do differently from President Joe Biden, Trump often argued that ending the war was a “very easy negotiation,” despite the reality that the United States is firmly stuck between a rock and a hard place in the region.
The truth is, Trump believed he would simply bowl over Putin with his words and his empty threats to “bomb the s*** out of Moscow” and that would be that. But Trump was wrong. The war continues.
In the six months since Trump began his second term in office he has hemmed and hawed and complained and lashed out against both Putin and Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky. But his most recent volley came against Putin on Sunday evening during a brief meeting with reporters at Joint Base Andrews. Trump, who has resorted to pleading with Putin to end the war, accused the Russian leader of speaking “so beautifully” during the day while bombing Ukraine during the night. “I’m very disappointed with Putin,” admitted Trump.
“No one’s saying this can be done in 12 hours,” stated Secretary of State Marco Rubio in April. He’s technically right. After all, Trump said over and over again that it would take twice as long—24 hours, to be exact. But in reality, it’s been more than 4,000 hours since Trump was inaugurated for a second term, and in that time nothing the president has said to Putin has changed the course of the war. Perhaps it is we, the voters, who are to blame for believing such a promise. Twenty-four hours. Were we so naive?
With cameras rolling in the Oval Office on Monday, Trump reiterated that Putin “talks so beautifully” in private during the day and then continues his bombing campaign at night. “I go home, I tell the first lady, you know I spoke to Vladimir today, we had a wonderful conversation,” Trump recounted. “She said, Oh, really? Another city was just hit.” Melania, the truth-teller.
With NATO Chief Mark Rutte sitting to his right in the Oval Office, Trump then announced his administration will provide Patriot missiles to Ukraine via NATO so the sale isn’t directly linked between the U.S. and Ukraine. The former secretary of state Mike Pompeo, a noted neoconservative who fell out with Trump’s base, loved the announcement. “What President Trump announced yesterday alongside Gen. Secretary Rutte, the head of NATO, was a closer, deeper, bigger step towards peace than we have seen so far,” cheered Pompeo.
Rutte was pleased, too. “You are the police agent of the whole world, you are the most powerful nation on Earth,” said Rutte of Trump and the U.S. Trump, the American First president, refused to interject or amend Rutte’s statement. “Police agent of the whole world”: Where have we heard talk like that before? The interaction caught the attention of the MAGA stalwart Steve Bannon, who rightfully pointed out that policing the world is the opposite of why Trump was elevated to the presidency. But Bannon couldn’t bring himself to lay the blame at Trump’s feet, instead claiming that Rutte doesn’t understand what America First really means.
“No, the answer is that is incorrect,” Bannon argued on his War Room podcast Monday. “We’re about America first. We’re not the cop on the beat for the entire world.” Pity the president doesn’t appear to agree.
Trump then threatened to exact “very severe” secondary tariffs (sanctions in MAGA drag) of 100 percent on Russia if a ceasefire with Ukraine was not reached within 50 days. But the threat of sanctions wasn’t enough for Trump. On Tuesday, the Financial Times reported that the president is now privately urging Zelensky to use those American-made weapons to “step up deep strikes on Russian territory.” Forget ending the war in 24 hours; Trump is now responsible for building and selling the munitions to continue the war in perpetuity.
Despite whiplash decision making (the president now says Ukraine should not target Moscow with strikes), Trump refuses claims that he is being played by the smooth-talking Russian leader. “He fooled a lot of people,” Trump said of Putin as Rutte listened. “He fooled Clinton, Bush, Obama, Biden. He didn’t fool me.” That’s right. Despite overwhelming evidence otherwise, Trump is still, somehow, totally in control.
The situation in Ukraine is so troubling, so out of step with Trump’s campaign promises, that it can be easy to overlook the dire reality in Gaza, where the Israelis continue to starve and murder Palestinians daily. Trump, who enjoys dreaming of Gaza paved in concrete and adorned with gold statues in his likeness, has essentially signed off on the Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu’s reign of terror. Though Trump often states he is unhappy with the situation in Gaza, and though news outlets were hopeful for some movement on the topic when Netanyahu was greeted as a respected statesman in DC just last week, the president has stopped short of condemning the Israelis for committing a state-sponsored ethnic cleansing.
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Trump, who bemoaned last Friday that he “is pissed” with Putin for failing to wrap up the war in Ukraine, has refused to make such incendiary statements about Netanyahu. During last week’s meeting in Washington, Trump called Netanyahu “the greatest man in the world,” and the prime minister returned the tongue-bath by nominating Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize, something the president has long angled for. Trump, the man who is currently calling for “deep strikes” into Russian territory, the man who bombed Iran when Israel said “jump,” and the man who breaks bread with Netanyahu, nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. On Wednesday, Israel attacked the Syrian capital of Damascus and Trump didn’t utter a word of criticism.
A peacemaker Trump has not proven to be. In less than one year, Trump has overseen 529 strikes compared to 555 during President Biden’s entire four-year term. For those of us who voted for Trump with the hope that the wars might indeed end, Trump is not unlike the other characters who have called 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue home these last few decades. Every time he has been presented with the opportunity to wash his hands of these tawdry wars occurring thousands of miles from our shores, Trump has fallen short. He should have interrupted Rutte and firmly explained that we are no longer the world’s police, that all of this gamesmanship and war abroad has severely weakened us on the domestic front. But interrupt Rutte, he did not. As with other failed promises from the campaign trail, now that Trump is in office, it is much much easier to roll over and allow the wars continue.
And so Trump, the man who predicted we would have World War III if the Democrats won, is now the main figure pushing war across the globe. He is, whether we like to admit it or not, our latest war president.
