President Trump took some questions on Tuesday as he finished yet another round of golf and wound up another long weekend at his Florida resort. Elon Musk was a big topic, which appeared to get on Trump's nerves, especially when a reporter wanted to know what position the multi-billionaire actually held now that the White House has said he is not actually running the DOGE department after all. He responded, "So, you know, you could call him an employee, you could call him a consultant, you could call him whatever you want... but you know what? Ukraine's a bigger deal."
He sounded quite irritated that they were asking him about such trivialities when he is the one who has world leaders quaking in their boots as he re-makes the whole world in his image. He's obviously delegated the wrecking of the federal government to Musk, to which he's only peripherally paying attention, so that he can concentrate on wrecking the world order. Both men are doing a bang-up job so far.
Trump may think he's the King of the World, but I think we know who the real winner is in all this.
Trump's still planning on threatening allies and adversaries alike with draconian tariffs virtually designed to destabilize a fragile world economy only recently recovered from pandemic lockdowns. He's being advised by his fellow convicted felon Peter Navarro, who is reportedly pushing Trump to go fully maximalist under the assumption that they will force foreign manufacturers to completely move their operations to the United States in order to avoid them. Yes, they really seem to think that will happen.
But Trump's real interest these days is as the creator of a new American Empire, the prince of peace and prosperity who will end all wars simply by exercising what he believes to be his infinite power to force the people of the world to pay up.
He's quite serious about annexing Canada, buying Greenland, invading Mexico, seizing the Panama Canal and "owning" the Gaza strip to turn it into a shopping mall. As unlikely as those all are, there is one plan that looks as though Trump may pull off — and it's absolutely terrible. Trump is now in the process of selling out Ukraine and Europe to Vladimir Putin for which he thinks he'll win the Nobel Peace Prize.
You'll recall that he vowed to end the war within 24 hours of being elected and then immediately after the inauguration, neither of which happened, of course, because they were daft promises. He has also always said that the war never would have happened if he were president, by which I think most of us assumed he meant that Putin would never have had the nerve to invade in the first place. But his comments in recent days indicate something quite different. He holds Ukraine responsible for the war and apparently thinks that had he been in office when Putin invaded they would have followed his orders to surrender immediately.
Just yesterday, he excoriated the Ukrainians saying they never should have started the war, that they could have "made a deal."
He also claimed that they need to have elections because Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelenskyy is at a 4% approval rating ( He is actually between 50% and 60%, which better than Trump) saying, "I like him personally, but it is the leadership that allowed the war to go on." As always, never a bad word to say about Vladimir Putin.
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Trump's angry comment was in reaction to the fact that Zelenskyy expressed his unhappiness that the U.S. and Russia have decided that they are now going to negotiate a deal without any input from Ukraine or Europe, the two parties who have the biggest stake in the outcome. He said, quite rightly, that there can be no deals without Ukraine at the table.
It's pretty clear how this is going to go and it's very bad news for Ukraine, Europe, NATO and global stability in general. It started with Trump's triumphant phone call with Putin a week ago in which Putin clearly made Trump feel all tingly inside because he's had a glow about him ever since.
He dispatched his Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Vice President JD Vance to Europe for meetings last week where both of them embarrassed the United States almost as much as Trump usually does. Hegseth blathered on about "hard power," sounding more like a 70s adult film star than a defense secretary and gave away most of America's leverage by saying outright that Ukraine would have to give up territory and would never be allowed to enter NATO. (I'm fairly sure Trump told him to do that — since that part of the deal's already in the bag.)
Vance, meanwhile, was expected to speak about Ukraine but instead lectured the Europeans on their culture and values and told them they should be nicer to Nazis. He did meet with Zelenskyy for the purpose of getting him to promise to pay the U.S. $500 billion for the United States' support over the last three years. (The U.S. has not spent even a quarter of that and most of it went to American military contractors.) The proposed deal included no security guarantee and included not only the rare earth minerals that Trump's all excited about, but ports, infrastructure, oil and gas. Zelenskyy politely declined.
The conservative British paper the Daily Telegraph described the proposed deal this way:
If this draft were accepted, Trump’s demands would amount to a higher share of Ukrainian GDP than reparations imposed on Germany at the Versailles Treaty, later whittled down at the London Conference in 1921, and by the Dawes Plan in 1924. At the same time, he seems willing to let Russia off the hook entirely.
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They point out that Trump has said publicly on Fox News that unless Ukraine agreed, the country would be handed to Putin, saying “they may make a deal, they may not make a deal. They may be Russian someday, or they may not be Russian someday. But I want this money back." Spoken like a true mob boss.
A mineral deal was actually proposed by Zelenskyy last September in the hopes that the U.S. would be more likely to continue to protect it as an asset. The idea has recently been pushed by S. Carolina GOP Senator Lindsey Graham, who thinks he's very clever at manipulating Trump like a three-year-old by giving him a financial incentive to continue backing Ukraine. But Zelenskyy will not turn over all the resources of the country in perpetuity or turn it into an American colony. And Trump clearly has no intention of continuing to support Ukraine militarily. He sees this deal as payback for services already rendered.
As for the future, the Financial Times reported that Trump is now considering withdrawing U.S. troops from the Baltics and perhaps even further west. At the meeting on Tuesday in Saudi Arabia between the U.S., represented by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov the focus was more on the ecstatic reconciliation between the U.S. and Russia than any potential cease fire or peace deal in Ukraine. There was lots of talk about "economic opportunities" which would obviously include the lifting of sanctions.
All of that comes with the understanding that Russia gets to keep whatever territory they've taken, the growing disdain for Europe by the U.S. government, the slow dissolution of NATO and absolutely no demand for anything from Russia in return. Vladimir Putin must be a very happy man indeed. Trump may think he's the King of the World, but I think we know who the real winner is in all this.
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