Give credit where it’s due: the European Union had effectively outmaneuvered Donald Trump in the past eight months. Trump badly wants to give Vladimir Putin everything Putin wants in Ukraine and in general. But EU leaders have stood strong with Ukraine and President Zelenskyy, and effectively shamed Trump on the world stage. Even if Trump made some splashy “deal” with Putin, it wouldn’t have gone anywhere because the EU (not to mention NATO) wouldn’t recognize the deal, and they would have effectively taken Ukraine’s side over the US’s side. The international press would have ripped Trump a new one as well. So what happened when Trump and Putin came face-to-face in Alaska last Friday? A whole lotta nothing. I mean, some notable things happened – America’s president looked weak, compromised and stupid on the world stage. But Trump was also boxed in from giving Putin what he really wants in Ukraine, so Putin settled for making Trump look like a f–king moron instead.
President Donald Trump has tried to put a positive spin on his “failure” of a summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin, but things are not as rosy behind the scenes. Longtime Trump biographer Michael Wolff tells The Daily Beast Podcast that a member of the president’s inner circle texted him bluntly on Friday: “F–ked.” The insider did not elaborate. However, Wolff noted that it is clear that Trump left Alaska as the loser, and those in the president’s camp surely know it, too.
“Trump got f—ed,” he said, agreeing with The Washington Post’s assessment that the summit was more pomp than substance. “We got nothing out of this. This is, you know, this is really, really a loss for Trump, and potentially a loss for Ukraine.”
Trump, 79, raised eyebrows from the moment he arrived in Anchorage, starting with his team ordering U.S. airmen to roll out a red carpet to welcome Putin. Trump, after meandering his way to a meeting point, applauded Putin as he approached. F-35 fighter jets and a B-2 bomber completed a flyover. The men shook hands, smiled, and Trump invited the former KGB officer to take a ride inside the “Beast,” his presidential limo. Once inside, they smiled and waved out the windows. It was a grand welcome for a leader who invaded a U.S. ally, causing the deaths of hundreds of thousands and the displacement of millions more. And what, exactly, did Trump gain from offering this extravagant PR gift to the Kremlin? Practically nothing, Wolff says.
“It was a failure,” he stated. “There is nothing that [Trump] could say. So he decided to, and remember, he threatened, ‘If we don’t get a deal, I’m going to walk away. I’m going to do tariffs. I’m going to do, you know, all of this.’ No, he did not do that. Instead, he basically embraced Vladimir Putin.”
Critics of the president noted that he appeared “defeated” after emerging from his meeting with Putin. The two leaders briefly sat for what was billed as a “press conference,” but no questions were answered.
Podcast Co-host and Daily Beast Chief Content Officer Joanna Coles said that Trump’s relative silence at the news conference was particularly telling given that he is usually not one to pass up answering questions from shouting reporters. She added of Trump’s cuddling up to Putin: “It’s embarrassing and it’s dirty.”
Ultimately, though, Trump had not received assurances of a ceasefire, which is what he said he sought to achieve by scheduling the high-profile meeting. Sources told Axios that Trump called Zelensky to break the bad news while making the 3,500-mile trek home from Alaska on Air Force One, where Trump also sat for an interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity. Trump and Zelensky spoke for an hour and a half in what Axios’ source described as a “difficult” conversation. Other European leaders joined the call in its final half hour, but their reactions were not recorded in the report.
Apparently, in the closed-door meeting between Putin, Trump, their senior staffs, something happened which left various Trumpworld people feeling shattered and shocked. Maybe Putin whipped out his kompromat on Trump, or gave Trump’s staffers a glimpse of some of the photos the FSB has compiled of Trump’s many compromising positions. MSNBC host Antonia Hylton said on-air that: “A lot of the press corps that was there, they reported in the minutes and hours after the presser that they saw members of the administration, like Karoline Leavitt, look ashen, almost frightened after what they had seen behind closed doors.” Additionally, Trump’s dipsh-t staffers left sensitive documents behind in a copier in Alaska. Only the best people.
You know what I said about European leaders in the opening? Well, after Trump’s 90-minute call with Zelenskyy, Zelenskyy called his European allies and the whole posse is coming to Washington today. Zelenskyy is bringing France’s President Macron, Prime Minister Keir Starmer, Finland’s Alexander Stubb, Italy’s PM Meloni, Germany’s Chancellor Merz, EU’s president and NATO’s secretary-general. They’re clearly outflanking Donny Dementia and letting him know that whatever he promised Putin in the closed-door meeting (the promises which apparently left Trump’s staffers ashen and shocked) will not hold and will not be recognized by them.
And finally, it’s absolutely amazing to see how few political reporters speak about Trump’s obvious physical decline. He looked half-dead after his meeting with Putin, but only a few sites have noted his swollen cankles and his inability to walk in a straight line.
Photos courtesy of Getty, screengrabs courtesy of PBS.
