Trump aspires to be like Putin
President Donald Trump (the title still makes my eyes cross) travels to Alyaska (“Аляска”) or Alyeska today to meet with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin in Anchorage. Trump wants to make a deal for a ceasfire in Ukraine. We’ll be lucky if the man who embodies “the soft bigotry of low expectations” doesn’t trade away the 49th state.
After a virtual meeting with Trump on Wednesday, however, European leaders were cautiously optimistic that Trump’s meeting would not make things worse (BBC):
Still, in their statements European leaders restated the need for Kyiv to be involved in any final decision – betraying an underlying nervousness that Putin could ultimately persuade Trump to concede Ukrainian land in exchange for a ceasefire.
“It’s most important thing that Europe convinces Donald Trump that one can’t trust Russia,” said Poland’s Donald Tusk, while German Chancellor Friedrich Merz stressed the leaders had “made it clear that Ukraine must be at the table as soon as follow-up meetings take place”.
If the Russian side refused to make any concessions, “then the United States and we Europeans should and must increase the pressure”, Merz said.
S.V. Date writes:
As President Donald Trump heads to Alaska on Friday to meet with the KGB agent-turned-dictator for whom he has long held a fawning admiration, Russia experts worry that the big loser will be Ukraine, the neighbor Vladimir Putin invaded three and a half years ago.
“There’re lots of ways this can go wrong,” said Fiona Hill, a Russia analyst on the National Security Council during Trump’s first term. “I’m kind of worried about the fact that it’s supposed to be a one-on-one.”
More like one on one-quarter. For his part, Trump promised “very severe” consequences if Russia does not halt its war against Ukraine. In Trumpian terms, that’s likely untruthful hyperbole.
Trump is traveling to Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage for the meeting with Putin, with the stated goal of ending the bloodshed caused by Russia’s invasion. It will be Trump’s first meeting with Putin, now widely considered a war criminal, since Trump returned to office in January. Putin would face arrest traveling to most countries and needed a waiver of U.S. sanctions to set foot on American soil.
Trump’s summit, though, was hastily scheduled with little groundwork, apart from meetings conducted by his friend from his New York real estate days, Steve Witkoff, whose last trip generated confusion after Witkoff apparently misunderstood Putin’s demands.
Regarding the Alaska meeting, Heather Cox Richardson concurs with Date, observing, “Putin generally cannot travel outside Russia because he has been indicted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes, including the theft of Ukrainian children. And yet Trump is welcoming him to the United States of America.”
Should Trump never face justice in the U.S., one can only hope that a future International Criminal Court indictment for his treatment of migrants will keep him from ever visiting the Trump-branded international golf resorts and hotels upon which he’s constructed his bloated self-image. The DOJ might never touch him. If only karma would.
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