"No one in the world knows how to make deals like me!" [View all]

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Peter Baker @peterbakernyt 1h
"The day began with a hellish war in Ukraine, with air-raid sirens in Kyiv and fierce battles in the east, and that is how it ended. The only difference is that Putin got one hell of a photo op out of Trump and more time ... to prosecute his war." @sbg1


Susan Glasser: Donald Trump’s Self-Own Summit with Vladimir Putin

___Nothing says standing up to Russian aggression quite like welcoming the aggressor on a red carpet and applauding him. On Friday, Donald Trump did both at the start of his summit in Alaska with Vladimir Putin. This triumphant greeting was followed by multiple friendly handshakes, a cordial pat or two on the arm, and a companionable stride past an enfilade of American F-22 fighter jets at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson. When the pair got within shouting distance of the American press corps, a bit of harsh reality crept in. “President Putin, will you stop killing civilians?” someone called out. But, on the twelve-hundred-and-sixty-eighth day since Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine, Putin and Trump never wavered from the chummy cordiality with which they had greeted each other for their first meeting in six years. Putin pantomimed not being able to hear the question and shrugged. In an instant, Trump ushered him away for an apparently impromptu ride in his Presidential limousine; pictures of the Beast rolling slowly toward the venue where their formal talks would be held showed Putin, through the window, grinning broadly.
When they emerged a little more than three hours later, after a shorter-than-expected session that did not include a scheduled lunch, the mutual admiration still flowed freely. Both men smiled. Trump gushed to the media about the “fantastic relationship” he’d always had with Putin and praised his “very profound” opening statement. Putin was, if anything, more over the top than Trump, praising the American President’s personal commitment to “pursuing peace,” as the logo projected on the stage behind them put it. Putin even played to Trump’s loathing of his predecessor, Joe Biden, adopting his talking point that the war with Ukraine never would have happened if Trump, not Biden, had been the American President. After twenty-five years in power, the former K.G.B. agent has learned well how to stroke the ego of his fifth U.S. counterpart.

Sometimes the news is what it seems to be, meaning, in this case: No deal. The day began with a hellish war in Ukraine, with air-raid sirens in Kyiv and fierce battles in the east, and that is how it ended. The only difference is that Putin got one hell of a photo op out of Trump, and still more time on the clock to prosecute his war against the “brotherly” Ukrainian people, as he had the chutzpah to call them during his remarks in Alaska. The most enduring images from Anchorage, it seems, will be its grotesque displays of bonhomie between the dictator and his longtime American admirer.

Right around the time that Trump was on the tarmac, clapping for the butcher of Bucha, his fund-raising team sent out the following e-mail:

"Attention please, I’m meeting with Putin in Alaska! It’s a little chilly. THIS MEETING IS VERY HIGH STAKES for the world. The Democrats would love nothing more than for ME TO FAIL. No one in the world knows how to make deals like me!"

The backdrop for this uniquely Trumpian combination of braggadocio and toxic partisanship was, of course, anything but a master class in successful deal-making; rather, the impetus for the summit was the President’s increasing urgency to produce a result after six months of failure to end the war in Ukraine—a task he once said was so easy that it would be done before he even returned to office in January. Leading up to the Alaska summit, nothing worked: Not berating Ukraine’s President, Volodymyr Zelensky, in the Oval Office. Not begging Putin to “STOP” his bombing. Not even a U.S.-floated proposal to essentially give Putin much of what he had demanded. Trump gave Putin multiple deadlines—fifty days, two weeks, “ten or twelve days”—to agree to a ceasefire and come to the table, then did nothing when Putin balked. When his latest ultimatum expired, on August 8th, instead of imposing tough new sanctions, as he had threatened, Trump announced that he would meet Putin in Alaska a week later, minus Zelensky, in effect ending the Russian’s global isolation in exchange for no apparent concessions aimed at ending the war that Putin himself had unleashed.

read more: https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-trumps-washington/donald-trump-self-own-summit-with-vladimir-putin