A couple of days ago, Andy Borowitz published a “report” headlined Russian Lures Confused Old Man to Alaska in Elder Scam. That turned out to be prophetic. Trump’s display of fawning obsequiousness to Vladimir Putin was a national embarrassment. And in the end, Trump got nothin’. It reveals big time that Trump has no clue how international relations work. He seems to think he was buttering up somebody to make a real estate deal.
One of the best things I’ve read about yesterday’s debacle — although I don’t agree with it entirely — is at Daily Beast, by David Rothkopf, Why Trump’s Latest Reality TV Show Is a Flop. I disagree with Rothkopf that the summit was primarily a distraction from the ongoing Jeffrey Epstein mess. Trump is obsessed with getting a Nobel Peace Prize. He’s making a fool of himself over it. There are reports he even cold-called the Prime Minister of Norway to ask about it. A cease-fire in Ukraine would give it to him, he surely believes.
But I agree with Rothkopf that Trump was more interested in getting validation from Putin than with doing anything for Ukraine.
His most important long-term goal was closer to his heart and addressed issues much more deeply meaningful to the president. He wanted to get Russian president Vladimir Putin to publicly support a series of lies that are now crucial to both Trump’s own deluded sense of himself and to his fake public narrative about who he is.
Watching Trump during the event, you could see his palpable satisfaction as Putin, understanding Trump’s psychological and political needs completely, fulfilled the role he was asked to play. Trump smiled and clapped like a little boy about to get to sit in Santa’s lap at the mall as Putin approached him on the red carpet at the beginning of the day’s events. Message sent to the world: Trump’s still got juice with the world leaders that really matter to him. …
… Later, even though Trump often appeared exhausted during the event, he would light up or nod approvingly when Putin spoke the words Trump had most hoped to hear. They weren’t about peace in Ukraine, of course. That was a secondary consideration. For this president, whose foreign policy is more driven by vanity rather than U.S. interests, they were a validation of long-standing, if demonstrably false, Trump claims. Putin said during the post-summit press conference that he wouldn’t have invaded Ukraine if Trump were the president. He went along with Trump’s assertions at the same event that what Trump called the Russia hoax was a distraction. (Never mind that this was yet another documented instance of Putin stepping in to support Trump and of Trump showing a completely inappropriate closeness to Putin that was damaging to U.S. national security.) According to Trump, in a post-summit interview on Fox, Putin even agreed with Trump that the 2020 election was rigged, stolen from Trump.
And here I’m going to skip over to Marcy Wheeler, Steamrolled: Vladimir Putin Shares an Existential Secret with Trump and You Just Saw the Result. Putin is the one person in the world who could absolutely blow apart the ur-mythology upon which Trump built his power — that it was Hillary Clinton who created the “fake” Russia scandal to try to steal the 2016 election from Trump. Putin knows the truth. And Trump knows Putin knows the truth. And it wouldn’t do any real harm to Putin to reveal the truth. But it would be a huge blow to Trump. Putin will keep the truth to himself as long as Trump is useful to him.
“For Trump, this meeting was about sustaining the lies on which all his power is built: it’s not that Putin put him in charge because he would sell out America. Rather, he’s the victim. And by sustaining that lie, he renewed Russia’s great leverage over him,” Wheeler writes.
And Putin got what he wanted — a U.S. president’s doting subservience, on camera. Putin didn’t even stay for the whole meeting. We know the plans, because Trump’s incompetent staff left them in a photocopier in an Alaska motel. The meeting was supposed to go on for four hours and include a “working lunch” of salad, a “duet” of filet mignon and halibut olympia, and crème brûlée. And then on to the joint press conference. But the meeting was cut short and the lunch was skipped. And while Putin seemed upbeat and reasonably jovial at the “press conference” that didn’t include questions, Trump to me seemed a bit subdued, like he was still processing what had just happened and wasn’t sure he was happy about it
(I had to look up “halibut olympia.” AI says “It typically features halibut fillets baked on a bed of savory onions and topped with a creamy mixture, often including mayonnaise, sour cream, and sometimes other flavorings like cheese or herbs, then finished with a crunchy breadcrumb or cracker topping.” Seems a bit fussy. But I assume this meal was cooked and the kitchen staff got to enjoy it.)
Trump went into the Alaska theatrical with higher expectations. .
Trump went into Friday’s meeting in Anchorage with the goal of securing a ceasefire, telling reporters on Air Force One, “I want to see a ceasefire rapidly. I don’t know if it’s going to be today, but I’m not going to be happy if it’s not today.” Putin has resisted calls for a ceasefire, while Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, along with other European leaders, have stressed the importance of a commitment to stop fighting in order to begin negotiations for a lasting peace deal. On Wednesday, Trump promised “very severe consequences” if Putin did not agree to a ceasefire.
After the meeting with Putin, Trump backtracked on the idea of a ceasefire entirely on Truth Social. “It was determined by all that the best way to end the horrific war between Russia and Ukraine is to go directly to a Peace Agreement, which would end the war, and not a mere Ceasefire Agreement, which often times do not hold up,” he wrote.
The Guardian: is now reporting that “At the Alaska summit, Putin demanded Ukraine withdraw from Donetsk and Luhansk as a condition for ending the war, but offered Trump a freeze along the remaining frontline, two sources with direct knowledge of the talks told the Guardian.”
WaPo:
Hours after Trump and Putin met Friday in Alaska, Trump said Ukraine and Russia should go straight to negotiating a settlement, a split with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and European allies that aligns the United States with Putin….
… After the summit, Trump told Zelensky and other European leaders that in addition to land Russia has seized in the war, Putin wants all of Donbas in exchange for a promise to end the war, according to four people familiar with the discussion. All spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive matter.
In years of fighting, Russia has been unable to seize all of Donbas. Russian forces occupy almost all of the Luhansk region of Donbas but only part of the strategic, fortified Donetsk region.
In the phone call, Trump conveyed that he was shifting away from the ceasefire demand and toward reaching a swift deal, which could make the Russian proposal the starting point for talks, two of the people said.
Trump told the Europeans he would be open to providing security guarantees for Ukraine in a deal but the details were unclear, according to two European diplomats. European leaders were invited to join Zelensky and Trump in the White House on Monday, the diplomats said.
Any “security deal” made with Trump is worthless. He’ll keep it only if he feels like keeping it. If Russia attacks Ukraine again and Trump isn’t in the mood to defend anybody, forget about it.
And next week Volodymyr Zelenskyy is supposed to come back to Washington, the scene of his previous humiliation by Trump, probably to be lectured by Trump to just give Putin what he wants. What a waste.
Trump was more interested in getting validation from Putin than with doing anything for Ukraine.
I don't really understand that (I couldn't be bothered to "register" to read the Daily Beast article).
What I do know:
Trump desperately wants the Nobel Prize, for a number of reasons, including deflection from the Epstein dirt. If he can make himself look good in the eyes of the world, it will perhaps lessen the condemnation he's going to receive when it all comes out.
I think "validation" misses the point. Putin controls Trump. He did a lot to get him installed into White House. Trump disabled all our intelligence activities going on against Putin's agents. Putin has dirt on Trump and controls him. Putin is the only person in the whole world who Trump looks up to, for this reason. Otherwise he wouldn't care.
Because Putin is Trump's master, I'm a whole lot more interested in Putin's geopolitical aims, including regaining the state of Alaska, which Russia formerly colonized. If you have a total doofus in White House, who will do anything for you, why not ask for Alaska? Before said doofus leaves this earth?
Again, Ruth Ben-Ghiat's article about this.
I'm a whole lot more interested in Putin's geopolitical aims, including regaining the state of Alaska, which Russia formerly colonized.
A good joke but roughly equivelent to Mexico retaking California or Oregan.
I agree with you that it's a joke insofar as it's unlikely to happen. It's nonetheless alarming when a US President echoes Russian geopolitical goals involving land transfers of Alaska, Canada, Greenland. By stating them openly, he's doing Putin's PR work, helping them materialize.
If you look to just before the start of what the Russians call the Special Military Operation you see that Russia was not making any territorial claims. It simply wanted the Minsk Accords implemented and an end to the Ukrainian civil war.
If nothing else, it did not need the costs of bring two poverty-striken oblasts (republics?) up to Russian standards. Crimea had already cost a fortune.
Thing get messed up after the shooting starts; see the War of the Spanish Succession. IIRC at one point there was a French nobleman commanding British and Spanish troops fighting a French army commanded by the son (illegitimate) of the former King of England and King of Scotland.
On the other hand Donnie boy hit the ground running with plans of annexing Canada, part of Denmark (Greenland) and re-occupying Panama.
“If you look to just before the start of what the Russians call the Special Military Operation you see that Russia was not making any territorial claims. It simply wanted the Minsk Accords implemented and an end to the Ukrainian civil war.” So what drugs are you on these days? The only “Ukrainian civil war” I know about was stirred up by Russian paramilitary forces in the Donbas. And if Putin was only concerned about the Donbas why was the initial ground attack a line of Russian tanks rolling from Belarus toward Kiev? I put up with you because you usually make reasonable points, whether I agree with them or not, but from here on consider yourself on probation.
There's something deeper going on with Trump regarding validation and Putin. Trump always acts like an eager puppy around Putin. It's clear Putin is more to him, on a psychological level, than just an ally of expedience. Putin represents something that Trump wants, or also possibly Trump has big-time Daddy issues (his dad Fred was a psychopathic asshole, like Trump) and we're looking at a massive case of what the psychoanalysts call "transference." But IMO he doesn't just want Putin to go along with Trump's lies. He's desperate for his approval.
I'd be more interested in this line of reasoning – which is probably true – if Putin didn't have something damaging on Trump – which is likely. This "fact" skews what is already a murky subject – someone's inner psychological dynamics.
I agree with Maha that Trump has some weird psychological thing about Putin, most likely related to Daddy Issues. IMO, this explains more of Trump's behavior than the simplistic 'Putin controls Trump via Kompromat' framework. In particular, Trump's body language around Putin fits the 'psychological fixation' theory best; I find it hard to believe that Trump would be able to hide his resentment at being controlled via extortion.
To me the timing points to this being a distraction. Stump could care less about the death toll in Ukraine so his only reason to pursue peace is as you say: he wants what Obama has, the Nobel peace prize. But the hap-hazard timing and execution points to distraction. There was very little planning done, the meeting was thrown together in a matter of days. So Vlad did his boy diaper Don a solid, head faked the media and stroked Stumps ego at the same time. For his minimal effort Putin seems to have completely fractured the alliance between the US, EU and Ukraine. Puty won't have to worry about further sanctions, increased funding to Ukrane, I'd say it was a rousing success, for Russia of course.
Trump doesn't do planning, and haphazard is his staff's default mode. He'll suddenly decide what he wants to do and then the staff slaps it together as best it can.
I find it interesting that in the event after the event, Trump and his Daddy took no questions from the press. IMO, this is partly because Maxwell and her status at a camp with (reportedly) a "work" exemption to leave might have come up.
IMO, Putin wanted Trump to openly endorse the surrender of land to Russia and for Trump to prohibit, under threat of leaving NATO, any more European support for Ukraine. (I offer no evidence other than my impression that ending NATO is a Putin goal right up there with Zelensky's slow death to one of Putin's more exotic poisons.)
But Europe's leaders and Zelinski seem to have persuaded Trump that he's erode his support even further within and outside the US if he sides with Putin so obviously that Trump's loyalty is called into question. Again. The net result was/is that Trump will carry water for Putin privately in his meeting with Zelinski (Monday?) and probably cut off all military support. But not as part of a public declaration.
Are we going to see Trump in much more staged appearances with fewer opportunities to perform foot-in-mouth gymnastics? Normally, Trump would prohibit being "handled", but he's soiling himself over questions about Epstein and Maxwell.
I feel like this mid August is a turning point.
Even Fox News couldn't spin the Alaska disaster. People, especially business-people are seeing more and more who Trump really is.
Gavin Newsom is finding his groove, writing hilarious tweets that utterly mock Trump's inane patois, in ALL-CAPS. "TO DONALD 'TACO' TRUMP…FROM YOUR FAVORITE GOVERNOR, GAVIN C NEWSOM"
Mocking Trump is gaining ground, thanks to South Park, Stephen Colbert, and now Gavin Newsom, and other Democrats, following Newsom.
The tide is turning. This is what it looks like.
Murdock recently announced he's going to start a paper in California, "The California Post". It sounds like a mirror of his rag in New York.
I read this as him believing Newsom is going to be big in 2028. He's moving his chess pieces into position, to once again control our elections through his media.
I stream "BBC Select", a very cheap documentary channel on Roku. I'm in the middle of a British documentary, circa 2005 on the Murdock family. Rupert used his tabloids to help Liberal Tony Blair win in the early 2000s. There was a price however. Blair agreed to put to a referendum, whether the UK should abandon the pound for the euro.
The referendum was held, and people voted to stay on the pound. Many people mark this as the fork in the road that Britain took which ended up in Brexit, where they left the European Union altogether, with disastrous consequences for England.
Because that's what Rupert Murdoch wanted.
One more thing. Republicans are lining up to defeat CA redistricting, and no doubt "The California Post" will play a role.
Having been through many political battles fought at the proposition level, I'm cheered by the fact that there are often David and Goliath outcomes. A well funded concern will spend gazillions of dollars trying to win a proposition, only to be resoundingly turned down by the voters.
Here's hoping "the Election Rigging Response Act" survives this battle.
If the Guardian's report that "Putin demanded Ukraine withdraw from Donetsk and Luhansk as a condition for ending the war, but offered Trump a freeze along the remaining frontline" is true, that's a deal that Ukraine should take ASAP.
Ukraine is running out of Infantry to defend the 'remaining frontline', and Russia is taking more land more quickly now than it was even a few weeks/months ago. So far, Russia seems to be focusing on pushing Ukrainian forces out of the Donbas (Luhansk & Donetsk Oblasts), but I saw something today which indicates that they are starting to push the line in Zaporizhzhia Oblast also. Sadly, that could be related to the purported offer that the Guardian reported: a [not-so-veiled] threat that every day Ukraine drags its feet on negotiating peace, it (Ukraine) gets smaller.
In April 2022 – only a few months after the invasion – Russia and Ukraine held peace talks in Istanbul. The deal on the table was roughly that Russia would get Donbas (Luhansk & Donetsk) and keep Crimea (which it had held since 2014). Ukraine appeared ready to agree to this until (1) Boris Johnson flew to Kiev to instruct Zelensky to reject it and (2) Ukrainian security services murdered one of Zelensky's negotiators ( Ukrainian peace negotiator is shot dead amid claims he was a Russian spy | Daily Mail Online ) .
Zelensky took Johnson's 'advice', and a million Ukrainians have died in the war since then.
Ukraine – with British/US help? – attacked the Kerch bridge, and Russia decided that it needed to take control of the entire Azov coastline as a land bridge to Crimea. So now, Ukraine will have to give up the southern portions of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia Oblasts to 'buy' peace.
I am NOT saying that this is 'good' or 'fair'. I am saying that Russia is [obviously] willing to fight a serious war to make sure that it controls Crimea, the Donbas, and the entire Azov coast, and that Russia is militarily strong enough to enforce that.
For more depth, plz watch John Mearsheimer:
John Mearsheimer BREAKS DOWN Trump Putin Summit
" I am saying that Russia is [obviously] willing to fight a serious war to make sure that it controls Crimea, the Donbas"
Russia is willing to fight a war against an out manned and out gunned Army, if the US and NATO would step in which is what should have been done in 2014 and certainly in 2022 it would be a very different situation. I'm not sure the Ukrainians want to give up land to a man they know will only begin another invasion within months.
"Zelensky took Johnson's 'advice', and a million Ukrainians have died in the war since then."
A million Ukrainians have not died in the war – total. Not even close. Not that you are deterred by facts, here's a researched article from The Independent from Feb '25 By all means, let us know your source.
No one has exact numbers but the estimate is 90,000 Russian dead (soldiers) And 45,000 Ukrainian military dead with "tens of thousands" MIA. Civilian deaths in Ukraine, around 12,000 Go to the high end and you are nowhere close to a quarter of a million TOTAL
I tend to have reservations about your political conclusions when your math is that far off.
Making a "deal" now because "Moscow is winning" neglects two factors.
First, Russia can suppress the public domestic dissatisfaction over a three-year war because it controls the media and polls. The cost in wounded Russian soldiers dumped on Russian society continues to grow. Inflation in Russia continues at a rate of almost ten percent per year. As happened in the US with Vietnam, the price of "winning" against a smaller opponent with limited resources can get too high. Especially if the opponent won't give up.
The second point: I was in Russia ten years after the end of the Russia-Afghanistan war. There were still veterans, amputees, on street corners begging. (Not a lot, but not to be forgotten or ignored.) Are they there now in Russia? I expect so because Russia tends to discard their vets once they are done with them. My opinion is that Putin has bigger domestic problems than the West suspects because the war that the public expected to last three days is not close to an end after three years.
Third point: (I know I promised two – I lied.) Russia clearly "won" the Afghan war quickly, but the defeated Afghans refused to quit. And the US supplied them with modern weapons. Russia discovered what the US also learned. You can't beat fanatics who will not quit. After three years, the Ukrainians are looking like fanatics. Europe is visiting Trump with Zelensky tomorrow to say, Europe will have Ukraine’s back, which might include supplying the resistance if Russia "wins."
Doug – Hmm, not sure where I got my figure of 'a million' dead; I don't blame you for challenging it. Perhaps I meant 'casualties' (it was after midnight when I wrote that!). Perhaps I did some 'napkin math' starting with Trump's figure of '5,000 dead' in one day (from the video clip in a prior Mahablog post?), but of course Trump's numbers can't be trusted. I'll try to be more careful with such numbers in the future.
Most of the Usual Sources I've been able to find (via Google) agree with your numbers, in magnitude at least (less than 100K). But frankly, those numbers don't make sense, given the weakened state of Ukraine's army. They have been losing territory, slowly but steadily for over a year now, and that pace is now accelerating.
Even worse, it seems to me that Western news sources are actively suppressing information about Ukrainian losses, and actively inflating estimates of Russian losses. I agree with your statement that Russia uses its 'media and polls' to control opinion (inside Russia); sadly, I see a similar problem here in the USA (and even worse in the UK, where they actually have laws which prevent the 'free' press from questioning certain things).
IMO, the most egregious example of this was the way our press blindly accepted 'Western Security experts' claim that Russia had blown up the Nordstream pipeline.
A more recent example of why we have to be careful of our favorite sources is something odd that I've noticed about NPR's coverage of the war. When they speak of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, they /always/ use the phrase 'full-scale invasion'. IMO, unnecessary adjectives (like 'full-scale') are a red flag for detecting propaganda; they are there to reinforce opinion, not to increase understanding.
I would love to hear more about your trip to Russia! Sounds like that was in the late 1990's, when Russia was in terrible shape. A decade of 'austerity' – as Yeltsin followed the advice of the Harvard economists we sent to 'help' – had destroyed the old Soviet safety net and created the new Oligarchs. Sadly, that's basically the same plan that the GOP has been working towards here in the USA since Reagan…
Lastly, I suspect that Putin is quite aware of how the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan turned into such a disaster for the USSR. Unlike our 'leader', Putin is well versed in the history of his country (no wonder he's so paranoid!). That's why I strongly doubt that Putin wants to conquer and occupy all of Ukraine; he's smart enough to know that such an occupation would be disastrous for Russia, in the long run. (The US would covertly support endless bloody revolution there, as we did in Afghanistan).
Peace…
Fearless leader claims the meeting was a 10. Perfect and 10 is the extent of his scale when rating anything he does. Others are quite flawed, even ones who not felons or war criminals while he tends to excuse if not laude war criminals or convicted sex offenders. Strange.
Iran must offend him by only referring to the USA as the Great Satan. As He is the USA, Iran dishonors him by not referring to Him as the Greatest Satan. That would be proper if I understand his rating scale as He seems to apply it.
South Park's ratings are reported as through the roof. What a win in these dismal times. The series has always been cutting edge, but today's political environment of humorless incompetents make it a must see for many. It raises my hope in Americans that they are willing to spend time and treasure to tune into what continues to be excellent and thought-provoking satire. Kenny is my favorite, as he is the master of reincarnation.