Contrary to what you may have heard on television or read in news accounts, President Donald Trump achieved virtually all of his primary objectives during Friday’s summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin. But that is what happens when you have reporters covering a reality television show as if it were actual international statecraft.
Trump’s primary short-term goal for hosting the meeting was to distract from the demands of his base and the vast majority of the American people for more information about the president’s involvement with convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. A related secondary goal was to shift focus from a U.S. economy that is circling the drain as a consequence of Trump’s reckless trade policies and fiscal irresponsibility.
Check and check.
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. Message sent to the innermost parts of Trump’s brain: Daddy finally approves of little Donny. (Putin’s triumphal arrival Friday at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson was the real “Daddy’s coming home” moment MAGA world was touting in the run-up to Trump’s inauguration in January.)
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.
Check. Check. Check.
Furthermore, Putin dutifully mouthed words that described Trump as a peacemaker and offered platitudes that made it sound publicly like he was going along with Trump’s plan to seek an end to the war in Ukraine. It was clear that wasn’t true and that big obstacles to getting to peace remain, but it was enough for Trump to declare victory and head home. Trump called the event a 10 out of 10 in a conversation with Fox’s Sean Hannity. No matter that there were no concrete deliverables from the event. No matter there were no summaries of areas of agreement. No matter that even Trump acknowledged that big areas of disagreement remain. No matter that no questions were taken at the so-called “press conference.” No matter that the whole day’s program was cut short, and all the shows of pomp and military force lavished on the Russian dictator and indicted war criminal were all for naught. Putin said he appreciated Trump’s efforts to bring peace. Please alert the Nobel Prize committee in Oslo.
Check.
Following the event, Trump spoke to Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky and got him to agree to come to the White House on Monday in an effort to move the discussions forward. Trump also said in a social media post following the summit that he was now promoting the idea of a peace agreement rather than just a ceasefire.
While such developments might be seen as progress, it is important to remember that nothing in reality television is what it appears to be.
Trump framed himself as the host of the summit. But Putin was the center of attention, the person who spoke first at the post-event press conference, the one who was clearly setting the rules going forward. Shifting away from a ceasefire to seeking a full peace accord was Putin’s idea, not Trump’s. And conversations with sources close to the administration’s national security team suggest that, leaving the meeting, they were unsettled by how intransigent Putin remained in private on core issues like Russian claims on Ukrainian land and what kind of security guarantees for Ukraine would be acceptable. Further, the word filtering out of the meeting was that Putin showed no real eagerness to end the conflict. Indeed, Putin’s stance could be less as a move to stop the fighting and more as a way of shifting the blame for the likely failure of peace efforts to Ukraine and the Europeans, while also fueling tension between Trump and Zelensky.
It is important to note that while Trump threatened to get tough on Russia if it did not go along with peace plans, what Trump really did was the opposite. He gave Putin a huge win by inviting him to the U.S. He literally rolled out the red carpet for a mass murderer, ending Putin’s well-deserved isolation from the U.S. and the international community. Trump spoke not of penalties for Russia but of future economic deals the two nations could celebrate. In other words, once again, Trump got fully played by Putin.
That is because Putin has realized all along that Trump was just a reality TV star playing at being president. The Russian thereby understands how to give Trump what he wants and therefore how to get what he seeks from Trump. He granted Trump just enough of a victory for the cameras while also sending an unmistakable message to those who really understand the game that is being played that Trump is weak, a stooge, a transitory character Putin will use and ultimately move on from.
There was a pathos to the whole event because if you watched closely, particularly during the closing press conference, it appeared Trump understood this as well. He was low-energy. He seemed defeated. He was going through the motions. In fact, in a predictable irony, the 79-year-old Trump appeared to be just the president he asserted Joe Biden would’ve become had he been reelected, too old for the job, not up to the challenge, more elderly than he has ever previously appeared on the world stage.
With off-hand comments about his possible involvement in future negotiations, and by raising the goal of future talks to a seemingly impossible lasting peace accord, Trump signaled that he was already at least subconsciously scripting his way out.
Maybe in Alaska on Friday, Trump began to realize that just as he wasn’t really the business mastermind he played on TV, nor was he capable of being the kind of world leader he has been portraying in his current role. If you looked into the resignation and bewilderment in his eyes as he scuttled off the stage at Elmendorf-Richardson, you couldn’t help but wonder if he wasn’t starting to think it will be easier to returning to the kind of low-level grift that is his main line of work when he is in the one place in the world he least likes to be… the one place he knows awaits all shallow, all-sizzle-no-substance TV personalities like him… and that is off camera.
