Donald Trump finally called “bullshit” on Vladimir Putin this week, though nobody seems to quite know what it means. One explanation, and perhaps the best one, is that Trump, belatedly, recognized what has long been apparent to the rest of us: that Putin has been playing him, pretending to talk peace while escalating Russia’s war of aggression on Ukraine. On Monday, Trump announced that he was “not happy with President Putin at all” and overruled his own Pentagon to re-start arms shipments to Ukraine. A day later, during a Cabinet meeting at the White House, Trump said bluntly, “We get a lot of bullshit thrown at us by Putin,” observing that when the two talk—as they have frequently in recent months—he’s “very nice all the time, but it turns out to be meaningless.”
Soon enough, the Wall Street Journal editorial board was praising Trump’s “pivot on Mr. Putin.” One could practically hear the sighs of relief in European capitals. In Kyiv, Ukrainian officials welcomed the news, even if they were understandably wary. On Capitol Hill, Republicans seized the moment to announce that they now expected to call a vote as soon as this month on bipartisan legislation—co-sponsored by more than eighty senators—that would allow Trump to impose a crippling tariff of up to five hundred per cent on countries that purchase Russian oil, gas, or uranium.
On Wednesday, the Senate Majority Leader, John Thune, revealed the plans to move ahead with the bill. Lindsey Graham, who has been the measure’s chief proponent in the Senate, claimed that Trump “is ready for us to act,” though an unnamed White House official told Politico that the Administration still had qualms about being “micromanaged” by Congress on foreign policy. Later that day, I spoke with Richard Blumenthal, the lead Democratic sponsor of what he called “a measure whose time has come.” Blumenthal was at the airport with Graham, on their way to meet with Volodymyr Zelensky and other European leaders. What had changed with the President?, I asked him. “Judging by what I’ve seen publicly and what I’ve heard privately, he is recognizing that Putin is playing him and the United States for fools,” Blumenthal told me. “I think he rightly feels personally affronted, and Putin has been slow-walking and stonewalling the United States.”
Blumenthal and Graham both refer to the bill as “bone-crushing” punishment for those who aid Russia’s war effort; in our conversation, Blumenthal added that he had been told that, more than once, Putin had raised his concerns about the measure privately with Trump—which suggested that its passage might constitute a real inducement for the Russian President to come to the table. But Trump has not yet offered any endorsement beyond saying he was “strongly” looking at the measure. Nor has he asked Congress for additional military assistance for Ukraine, which will soon become an urgent problem, when the $1.25-billion aid package that Joe Biden approved at the end of his Presidency runs out later this summer. There is zero indication at the moment that Trump will ever do so. And, if he doesn’t, will it matter at all to Ukraine’s fate that he once cursed about Putin in a Cabinet meeting?
The risk here is in the wishful thinking that Trump has done something other than recognize the embarrassing reality that Putin is not prepared to end the war he himself started just because Trump asks him oh-so-nicely to do so. It sure did take Trump a while to admit the obvious, that the peace deal he promised to deliver within twenty-four hours of returning to office does not exist—a hundred and seventy days later. But does that also mean that Trump has become an overnight convert to Ukraine’s cause? Will he now, as certain fervent corners of the old-style Republican right hope, increase sanctions on Russia, send billions more in weapons to Kyiv, and lock arms with America’s European allies?
This is the play that many foreign-policy hands expected Trump might run back in January—it would be a smart bid for leverage in forcing Putin to the negotiating table, they figured, and would have the added benefit of shattering the conventional wisdom that Trump was willing to sell out to Moscow. But not only did that not happen; Trump leaned hard in the other direction, fawning over Putin, voting with Russia at the U.N. Security Council, berating Ukraine’s President in the Oval Office. So which is Trump’s real policy? For a frequent flip-flopper like him, can anyone ever tell which flip or flop is for real?
The most definitive conclusion from this episode so far may not be what it reveals about Trump’s true intentions toward Putin as what it tells us about the dysfunction within Trump’s own Administration. After news of the Pentagon’s halt of arms to Ukraine was reported, the President himself seemed to know nothing about it, raising two possibilities, both of which are alarming—either he really was unaware and the Fox News host turned Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth was empowered to make such a consequential decision on his own, or Trump did know and had changed his mind and was now lying about it. Neither scenario could be excluded, as was apparent from a “Waiting for Godot”-like dialogue on Wednesday between Trump and Shawn McCreesh, a reporter for the Times:
Got that? Of course not. As Blumenthal observed when we talked on Wednesday, the exchange reminded him of his old prosecutor days: “Are you lying now, or were you lying then?” Trump’s contorted answer left open either interpretation. What came through more clearly was his perennial wish to be seen as making all decisions at all times, which is both physically impossible and absurd.
The reality being reflected here is that he trusts no one, and that includes those, such as Hegseth and his Under-Secretary of Defense for Policy, Elbridge Colby, who have styled themselves as ideologues of Trump’s America First doctrine. In cutting off the flow of weapons to Ukraine, I’m sure they thought they were carrying out Trump’s wishes. But they forgot a basic rule of working for Trump, which is that “America First” is whatever Trump wants it to be. The President himself made this point during last month’s intra-MAGA frenzy over his threat to bomb Iranian nuclear facilities, which many of the self-proclaimed America Firsters took to be a betrayal of Trump’s own commitment to avoid Middle Eastern military entanglements. As Trump explained to The Atlantic’s Michael Scherer at the time, “Well, considering I’m the one that developed America First, and considering that the term wasn’t used until I came along, I think I’m the one that decides that.” Then he went ahead and bombed Iran. This week’s jarring course correction on Russia has played out along similar lines. Ideology, for Trump, is never the most important thing, in a town where all too often it is seen as the only thing that matters.
So, is the love affair between Trump and Putin over for good? All week long, I’ve been thinking of Trump and his mentor Roy Cohn, the avatar of McCarthyism who taught the aspiring New York real-estate developer how to play hardball politics. The two were once so close that they talked as often as five times a day; Trump kept a picture of Cohn in his desk. Yet, after Cohn was diagnosed with AIDS in 1984, Trump “dropped him like a hot potato,” as Cohn’s former secretary said, and did not speak at his funeral. But, years later, it was Cohn’s bare-knuckles counsel that Trump often pined for when he was in the White House. The point is that nothing is forever with Trump, except his own perceived self-interest. This is the first lesson of Trump, and, in geopolitics or anything else, one that so many have yet to learn. ♦
