An annual camping trip in the foothills of the Cascades that has been a tradition in my wife’s family for decades—organized around huckleberry picking near the Pacific Coast Trail—took me far beyond the reach of the Trump/Putin circus in Alaska.
I’ll choose a camping trip any time.
Returning to Alaska, I see that Sen. Dan Sullivan continues to suffer from grand delusions about the phoniest deal maker since Monty Hall, casting Trump as something other than a hapless Putin puppet.
The U.S. chose to address Putin as “excellency” on the documents left behind by accident in the Captain Cook, a small example of the incompetent execution of the entire ill-planned exercise.
Trump repeatedly demanded a ceasefire by Putin or else.
But it turns out that “or else” meant nothing. Trump promised there would be severe consequences if Putin did not accept a ceasefire.
Now Trump is demanding that Ukraine give Putin what he wants or else.
On Monday in the White House, Trump was caught on a hot mic telling European leaders about Putin, “I think he wants to make a deal for me. Do you understand? As crazy as it sounds.”
On Friday, Trump allowed Putin to take center stage on U.S. soil, while Trump, who loves to hear himself talk, refused to take questions from the press. It would not have been possible for Trump to take questions in a joint press conference without his excellency also taking questions.
As $1 billion worth of U.S. military aircraft flew over Joint Base Elmendorf Richardson, Sullivan recorded the scene on his phone and could be heard saying to himself, “Take that Vladimir,” as Putin strolled over the red carpet.
No amount of military hardware could hide the truth on the ground.
Trump as much as said, “Take whatever you want Vladimir.”
James Fallows, one of the best journalists in America, doesn’t suffer from Sullivan’s crippling delusions about Trump.
“Those with experience in US-Russian relations have been quick and near-unanimous in pointing out that Vladimir Putin got nearly everything he could have wanted from his encounter yesterday with Donald Trump. And no one else got anything at all,” Fallows wrote Saturday.
“‘No one else’ includes the people and government of Ukraine; the people and governments of Europe and the broader NATO alliance; and the people of the United States. (Contrast Trump’s obsequiousness to Putin with his open hostility in the Oval Office toward Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy six months ago.)
“It also includes the person who cares about imagery and theatrics more than anything else. But who let himself be owned and mocked by a foreign leader, in a way that people around the world recognized more quickly than he did himself. Of course I am talking about Donald Trump.”
“At the joint press event yesterday, Putin spoke first. This may sound like nothing. But it was an enormous power move, which the Trump team must idiotically have agreed to. To my knowledge, no American president has ever let it happen before,” Fallows said.
“Then, after he had kicked things off by taking the mic, Putin went on to establish even more clearly who was boss. He spoke at great length—more than twice as long as Trump finally did. Trump’s eventual response was his usual ramble, rather than Putin’s prepared and crafted discourse. Putin can speak English, but he did not deign even to utter a few pleasantries in that language, while speaking on American soil.”
Here is the complete analysis by Fallows.
The Economist said the meeting “transformed Mr Putin from a pariah of the West into an honoured guest on American soil.”
The BBC said Putin’s “welcome would have surpassed the Kremlin’s wildest dreams. In a short six months Putin has gone from being a pariah of the West to being welcomed on US soil like a partner and friend.”
The Guardian said that Putin didn’t agree to “Trump’s pet proposal for a ceasefire. It was Trump who ended up accepting Putin’s position that a ceasefire must be preceded by a comprehensive peace agreement that addresses the “root causes” of the war.”
The Atlantic Council said, “For the second time in two weeks, Putin achieved his tactical objective of avoiding “severe consequences” from the United States for his refusal to end the shooting in Ukraine.”
Washington Post columnist George Will said the Alaska debacle “was not just another drop in our overflowing bucket of mortifications. It was proof that for the next 41 months, no interlocutor can believe a word the U.S. president says.”
In a CBS interview taped August 14, before the summit, Sullivan talked up Trump’s demand for a ceasefire by Russia as a measure of success.
“So I think the President is going to assess Putin’s seriousness on a ceasefire. And if he assesses that, that he’s serious, and Putin agrees to a ceasefire, then I think that would be success. Then you move on to the other elements for round two,” Sullivan said the day before the summit when Trump was still calling for a ceasefire.
Without a ceasefire, Trump would demand “very significant sanctions” on countries that are doing business with Russia.
In a Fox interview just before Putin and Trump emerged with no ceasefire, Sullivan continued to claim that the way to decide the success of the summit would be whether Putin agreed to a ceasefire.
Sullivan said Trump had promised after landing in Alaska on Air Force I that he would insist on Putin accepting a ceasefire or there would be severe consequences in the form of sanctions for buying oil and gas from Russia.
“He talked about hey, we will move to severe consequences and maybe secondary sanctions on China could be coming if this isn’t successful. So I hope the threshold issue of a ceasefire has been reached and if that’s the case, this is a very successful summit,” Sullivan said on Fox while awaiting speeches from Putin and Trump.
The summit ended with no ceasefire. And no support for a ceasefire from Putin. And no demands by Trump for severe sanctions. He demanded that Ukraine succumb to Putin.
After the summit Sullivan changed his story. He claimed the summit was a success, even though it did not achieve what he had claimed moments earlier was the threshold of success, a ceasefire.
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(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by PostX News and is published from a syndicated feed.)
